OPPO’s newest flagship smartphone, the Reno 10x Zoom, is finally here. It comes with a new and beautiful design and powerful specs which includes the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset and triple rear cameras with impressive zoom range. Do we recommend this phone over other flagship smartphones in the market? Find out in our review.
Table of Contents
Design and Construction
Like most flagships nowadays, the OPPO Reno 10x Zoom is clad in glass. Unlike most flagships, there is no camera hump on this device, the camera module at the back is flush under that Gorilla Glass 5 protection, and OPPO also added this little ceramic dot here too, which they call the “O-Dot.”
It’s there to protect the glass of the camera module from getting scuffed when laid down flat on a surface, and it does work. You do get some wobble because of the O-Dot but only if you tap at the top of the device.
Our unit is in the Jet Black color, and it does look super clean. I do prefer the Ocean Green color they have, like on our unit of the standard Reno more but the black is cool, too. The gradient on these phones go from side to side, and I’m a fan of this one. The way the sheen passes through reminds me of like satin fabric, and I think it’s beautiful.
In front, you get a true full-screen display. No notch, no pinhole, just the display. One of the main attractions of this device is that pop-up shark fin. On the fin, you can find the front-facing camera, speaker grille, and front-facing flash. That’s also where the flash for the rear cameras are, so do note that if you’re using your flashlight, that fin is out.
I like it more than the standard pop-up cameras we’ve seen. It’s different, and it’s unique, I like that. You also get a pass-through speaker grill on the top bezel, just wanted to mention that if you were wondering how you take calls, so yeah no need to worry about that fin poking your ears.
For buttons and ports, starting on the left side, you can find your volume buttons. Up top, aside from the fin, there is a noise-canceling mic for speakerphone. At the right, you can find the green accented power button. Lastly, at the bottom, you get your hybrid dual SIM + microSD card tray, USB Type-C, noise-canceling mic for calls, and one out of two media speakers.
So far, I am a fan of the design choices OPPO made here. The ergonomics are on-point, it feels good in the hands. Without the protective case, it can get slippery, especially if on a fabric surface. The one thing I feel iffy about with this device in terms of design is the size. The length is at 6.38-inches, and I do find it to be on the plus-size of the smartphone spectrum, you guys might be into that or not so just thought I’d share.
Display and Multimedia
The Reno 10x Zoom gets a 6.6-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel with a pixel density of 387ppi and it does look good. It isn’t the best panel I’ve laid my eyes on in terms of brightness and image quality, but AMOLED plus a big non-intrusive display is perfect for media consumption. The display is protected with Gorilla Glass 6. So, it’s great to know that you get Gorilla Glass protection front both sides of the phone. I mean, it gives me more of a peace of mind, so that’s nice.
You also get an Always-On display feature here, on Color OS it’s called “Off-Screen Clock” it only displays the time and date, I think it would’ve been nice if you could get some notifications here as well, maybe in a future software update? It is nifty to have this thing on if your main form of biometric security is the in-display fingerprint scanner.
Going back to media consumption, watching something on this thing is fantastic. I’ve got the screen color set to vivid, and I set my color temperature a little bit to the warmer side. And Netflix on this is just like eyes-glued-to-screen, 24/7. There’s no 3.5mm audio jack here, but you get a stereo audio setup so finally, a true all-screen smartphone that thought about built-in audio hardware too. And it is loud, like did I buy a smartphone or did I get a Bluetooth speaker, too?!
Camera
The Reno 10x Zoom gets a triple-camera setup that consists of 48MP F1.8 main shooter, an 8MP F2.4 ultrawide, and a 13MP F2.4 periscopic telephoto. On the front-facing side of things, you can find the 16MP F2.0 selfie camera in the fin. Now, it’s interesting to see a periscope camera capable of some lengthy zooms that it debuted in MWC 2019.
Quality is excellent, as expected. Photos come out with great accurate colors, plenty of detail, and good contrast and dynamic range. Low-light performance is also good especially if you turn on Night Mode. For portrait-mode, subject-background separation is excellent, it isn’t the best, but I’m totally fine with it. Given the camera configuration, the Reno 10x proved to be a good all-around shooter, and so far it didn’t fail.
Check out the samples from the rear camera below:
One of the main features of the Reno 10x Zoom, as the name suggests, is its zoom capabilities. From 2x optical zoom, it can go further to 10x hybrid zoom, then up to 60x digital zoom. Quality is excellent for optical zoom. The quality though takes a slight hit at 10x hybrid, but the 60x images are muddy and lack details. Still, that kind of zoom range in a smartphone is an impressive feat.
For selfies, the Reno 10x Zoom does a fine job as the photos are detailed, dynamic range again on-point. Shooting in low-light will drastically affect quality, but the selfie flash takes care of it.
For video, you can shoot up to 4K in either 60 or 30 fps, and the image quality from this thing is something I think is usable like if you wanted to make vlogs and cinematic shorts with a smartphone, the Reno can handle it.
I do want to mention that if you want the most stable footage from this phone, you might want to record in FHD because that’s when the electronic image stabilization comes into play.
OS, UI, Apps
For software, you get Android 9.0 Pie out of the box with Color OS 6 skinned on top. I’m not the biggest fan of Color OS, but it’s not that bad. I went through the theme store, and I just had to activate the dark theme on, I wish that it had a built-in Dark Mode to it.
I also wish that the drop-down and settings menu weren’t so iOS-esque. I mean, the Apple influence did help me a bunch when it came to navigations. I switched to gestures and found that I was way more used to the iOS copy-paste gesture configuration, so I guess it all worked out in the end. I did find the three-finger swipe up for split screen handy since there isn’t a way to activate split screen quickly if you’re using a gesture-based navigation system.
When it comes to biometrics, you get optical facial recognition on here, and it does work quick for a pop-up camera, it’s been my primary way of unlocking the device, and I didn’t find it to be a problem.
I’ve probably had more uh-oh’s unlocking the device with the optical in-display fingerprint scanner, but then again take that with a grain of salt that in-display fingerprint scanner is real-quick compared to in-display scanners of early 2019, and I’d say it works 9 times out of 10.
Performance and Benchmarks
For hardware, the Reno 10x Zoom is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, an Adreno 640 GPU, 8GB of RAM and 256GB UFS 2.1, which is the memory configuration we’re getting in the Philippines. When it came to day-to-day tasks like being on social media, consuming media, and playing a bunch of games, the Reno 10X Zoom handled it like a true flagship. No lags, no delay, apps open fast, no complaints.
Check out the benchmark scores below:
• AnTuTu – 355,601
• Geekbench 4 – 3,077 (Single-Core), 10,876 (Multi-Core) , 7,400 (RenderScript)
• 3D Mark SSE – 5,576 (OpenGL ES 3.1), 4,910 (Vulkan)
• PC Mark – 8,597 (Work 2.0)
• AndroBench – 782.8 MB/s (Read), 254.87 MB/s (Write)
Connectivity and Battery Life
You get the usual connectivity features which include dual-SIM, 4G LTE, WiFi ac, Bluetooth 5.0, and support for a slew of satellite navigation systems. Call quality is loud and clear, connects to mobile data quickly, and navigation apps work as advertised.
For battery, the Reno 10x Zoom gets a large 4,065mAh battery, capable of 20W VOOC Flash Charge. In our standard video loop test, which entails the phone being at 50% brightness, 50% volume, airplane mode turned ON and with headphones plugged-in; The device lasted a whopping 23 hours and 2 minutes.
So yes the Reno 10x Zoom can surely last you two days if you were pushing it. The best thing about it though, for me is the inclusion of VOOC. It takes no more than an hour to charge up this 4,065mAh cell with the included charger, that’s crazy!
Conclusion
Let’s talk about price. The Reno 10x Zoom has already launched in the Philippines for PHP 45,990 (8GB + 256GB). With that in mind, the OnePlus 7 Pro of the same configuration is cheaper by PHP 3,000, and you might want to get that instead if you don’t need that periscopic telephoto lens.
So, do I recommend the OPPO Reno 10x Zoom? Well if you can afford it, you’ll be getting a device that can handle your day to day tasks easily. It has a great design, battery performance, cameras, and speakers. Not to mention the periscope camera with a whopping 60x digital zoom and the rising front camera design. So yes, I do recommend this shark of a flagship killer to those looking at the OnePlus 7 Pro and any other flagships out now.
OPPO Reno 10x Zoom Edition specs:
6.6-inch FHD+ (2340 x 1080) AMOLED display, 387ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 6
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 2.8GHz octa-core CPU
Adreno 640 GPU
8GB LPDDR4x 2133mhz RAM + 256GB UFS 2.1
microSD card support (SIM 2 slot)
48MP Sony IMX586 F1.7 main + 13MP F3.0 Periscope telephoto camera + 8MP F2.2 super wide-angle camera, Dual OIS
16MP F2.0 front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, Galileo, QZSS
NFC
USB Type-C
In-display fingerprint scanner
Face Recognition
Dolby Audio
ColorOS 6 (Android 9.0 Pie)
4,065mAh battery w/ VOOC Flash Charge 3.0
162 x 77.2 x 9.3 mm
210 g
What I liked:
• Beautiful design
• Great performance
• Great display and speakers
• Good cameras w/ impressive zoom
• Large battery w/ fast charging
What I didn’t:
• Non-expandable storage
• No 3.5mm audio jack
• Pricey
With inputs and editing by Louie Diangson.
Product shots by Alyza Angeles.
Black
Beautiful
jenesis