OPPO A98 5G Review – Another 5G phone that does most of the basic needs.

We all have been seeing mid ranger smartphone coming this season and apparently OPPO here has no exception, so I will just cut things short and get straight to the review without much of an introductions, simply said, they are releasing a pretty good mid ranger, but as of the time of this writing, I dont have the price yet, but if I do, I will update it as below under the pricing section.

Unboxing Contents

The OPPO A98 came with the following

• The phone
• USB A to C Cable
• SuperVOOC 67W Charger
• Translucent Case
• Pre-applied screen protector
• User Manual/User Guide
• SIM Ejector

Design : Pretty Much A Minor Follow Up

If you are following the news, or used any OPPO A Series previously, this follows the same design languages from any 2023 OPPO A/Reno series phones design, if looked closely, it resembles the A78 5G I might say, with the sandy, glittering back and the color tones that is the same follows the body as well. However since it is a combo of both Reno and A series together, it does blend well on the overall looks of it that includes the camera island area along with the color tones and shades combination. Other than that all the usual button placement, side mounted fingerprint scanner, dual speakers and USB C port were all present. A surprise to us that OPPO still retain the 3.5mm audio jack there, so that’s a good news. Overall weight is about 192 grams, with thickness of 8.2mm, and with that size, it is relatively easy to handle and using it on a daily basis, and no complains over the buttons positioning also, which seems OK for the most part.

Display & Audio

Lets have a look at the display, and its a 6.7 inch LTPS LCD with up to 120Hz refresh rate, FullHD+, wide color gamut support, which if you look around these days, seems to be a common thing already and judging from the quality of it, most of the videos and fast frame movies we viewed are stratifying so far and colors are near accurate, therefore OPPO did reasonably well on this, despite being a mid range device and this time around, they did catch up with the competitions. Since this is widevine L1 certified, that also means all your Netflix and Disney+ apps will stream at Full HD without problems. So far my experience on this is just ok only, with brightness delivery up to about 500 nits, which is usable for most situation, and daily usage wise, still pretty much viewable in a sense that if you are looking straight towards the screen as it has a very subpar viewing angle.

It may not be the loudest of them all but the OPPO A98 does have a stereo speaker setup with good audio delivery via the speakerphone and down firing speaker set. It can be loud and decently clear, with not much of distortion and suitable for small size room hearing, however it can be quite bland and tweaking is limited via the Sound settings options, allowing the user to only select few options without any equalizer settings built in to it, this renders the OPPO A98 audio department a standard one only. The good news is you still have a 3.5mm audio jack for almost no latency audio enjoyment.

Camera Experience

The Camera of the OPPO A98 may not seem as the top end ones, but still able to put off some fights within the mid ranger segments that is placed within similar category. Starting from the rear camera you do have the main 64MP sensor along with a 2MP depth sensor and a 40x, 2MP microlens. This results in deliverable nice day time shots which near close up shots can be comparable with most of the higher tier mid range phones you can find today. However it lacks of precise sharpness and zoomed in pictures can be pixelated, which could be a result of the backend process of binning. In case if you asked, no ultrawide lens and you can forget about taking wide angle pictures and no OIS, no EIS there, just PDAF and some software AI to improve things here and there. However I like the 32MP selfie cam, which is slightly above my expectation and if you love VLogging and Selfie with the front cam, this works well.

Now towards the rear video, 1080P 30FPS is the maximum you can go and while it cant produce high level video details, it still able to produce a good amount of object and subject clearly and for a quick video shoot, it is a yes, but detailed editing may not be suitable, perhaps simple ones may satisfy you abit and it is just nice for a quick upload towards you favorite social media platform.

Performance, Experience, Benchmarks

The OPPO A98 is powered by the slightly dated Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G SOC with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of internal storage. My experience with the phone is well above average with snappy operations over switching applications and games. Since this is powered by Android 13 and ColorOS 13, this is the same improvement and enhancement you can get mostly from all OPPO series lineup that one would appreciate from themes, RAM Expansion, Kids Space, Split Screen and many more. Gaming is a mix bag where popular titles such as PUBG and Mobile Legends perform its best while Genshin Impact may take some toll over framerates but still playable if you are just taking it casually. Overall daily use will last you roughly 12 hours with the supplied 5000MaH battery while recharging it back to full will take less than 1 hour and 45 minutes average, which you can back on your tasks real fast. The included UFS storage is not the fast but it gets the job done.

Here comes the benchmark also for reference, as usual no surprises there and thermal checks OK also within expectation over the combination of the internal hardware.

Technical Specifications

Verdict, Conclusion & Pricing

The OPPO A98 is a phone that is taking in what is essential for a smartphone multitasking capability in a basic level and in our majority of the use case scenario, it works and suitable for those who wanted a fresh change to an updated smartphone provided if you are using a very old ones in your hands, however that being said, if you are looking for a superb powerhorse, this might not be suitable for you and you might wanna check their higher end Find or Reno series, do take note besides the dated SOC, it still can punch thru most of your daily contents and games but judging from the camera quality, you will appreciate some of the quality you can get with use that last you the whole day. There comes the price tag, RM1399 seems like a good price but as new SOC competitions coming up with a compelling pricing, one might look and consider few more models also, it is entirely up to what you really needed by the end of the day.

For more information on OPPO A98, CLICK here to find out.