If you want elegance, you’ve certainly got it in the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom smartphone. They could have named it more elegantly and succinctly, but there’s a plain Reno, so the whole mouthful must be said to distinguish the more advanced version. But that doesn’t take away from how interesting the phone looks.

I’m not sure why they bother with a black, but the sea-green edition is beautiful, with a head-turning back that has several fascinating things about it. The first is a nice vertical metallic strip that houses the Oppo logo. It goes straight down the middle and looks exceedingly smart. The second thing is that the cameras are all totally flush with the body of the phone with no bump at all that sticks out. In fact, they’ve put in a little metallic dot to just about keep the cameras from touching a surface on which the phone is placed. The third is that the phone seems to attract no fingerprint smudges. Its smooth teal green back will look clean at all times, if you want to skip the case. There is however one provided in the box, which makes room for the metallic strip to show, so for once you have a case that still makes the phone look great without itself looking cheap and plastic-y.

BL13TechLead1
 

Stealthy shark

Before we get to what’s attractive on the front of the phone, I have to stop to point out that the Reno 10X Zoom is really quite solid and heavy. That’s a serious consideration for many users, so if you’re one of those specifically sensitive to heavy phones, this is fair warning: you’ll feel the weight of this phone in your hand.

Turn to the front and the really nice display and you’ll meet one of the two innovations this smartphone is famous for: a pop-up camera that silently and stealthily slides out of the top like a shark’s fin.

It isn’t rectangular but triangular in much the same way as a shark’s fin and because it comes out of a sea-green or “Ocean green” device, it looks all the more inspired by nature.

It’s fascinating that the front camera hardly makes a whisper as it comes out or retracts, which it does quite fast. This is a 16 MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture. There’s no versatility here but in good light, the selfies it takes are rather good. Drop the light level and there’s noticeable softness. For those who want to beautify themselves up, there’s a ready-at-hand set of tools in the camera app to make you look impossibly perfect.

The display is a 6.6-inch AMOLED all free of notches and punch-holes. It’s very vibrant and can be toned down a bit from Settings should you prefer that. You can also warm it up to be more comfortable to the eye. The screen is bright though nowhere near as sophisticated as what you’ll see on top-end Samsung phones. Using the display, you’ll find it quite totally smooth and fast.

Unsurprising, considering the phone runs on the latest Snapdragon 855 and our review unit was the one with 8 GB of RAM, but on the other hand, surprising because Oppo uses its own skin called ColorOS on top of Android and it has been full of features and heavy customisations that generally annoy techies and slow a phone down.

In this case ColorOS doesn’t slow anything but it’s still annoying and has an arrangement for settings and navigation that takes getting used to. It’s also got a lot of pre-loaded stuff. But most annoying of all, it has notifications being hurled at you all the time from its Oppo App Store. You would need to explore settings to turn that off.

One of the reasons the Reno 10X is as heavy as it is, is because it has a whopping 4,065 mAh battery on the inside. Obviously that would last ages, but a lot depends on how battery life is handled, which is quite well on this phone.

On top of that, Oppo has its proprietary VOOQ charging with a 20 W charger, so the phone gets topped to 50 percent in just half an hour.

Getting to the famous zoom, the primary camera is a 48 MP Sony IMX586 Quad Bayer sensor with an f/1.7 aperture and optical image stabilisation.

Up close x 60

This lens uses pixel binning and results in 12 MP images which in good light are pretty good. The telephoto lens has a periscope arrangement like the one used on Huawei’s P30 Pro but doesn’t beat that phone at how it works. You tap the zoom button to get closer and closer to a subject. The actual optical zoom is 5x.

But the lens steps from 1x to 2x to 6x and 10x, by which time we’re in software territory and images can be grainy and blurred and of course very sensitive to the most minute shake. Theoretically you can now zoom in 60 times over but you probably won’t like what you see.

Details and clarity seem to be much greater using the P30 Pro’s telephoto lens, but it’s nevertheless nice to see such features come to smartphones, and let’s remember that the Oppo Reno 10X Zoom costs a whole lot less.

The cameras include an ultra-wide lens that results in 8 MP images but getting to that lens takes going through several zoom options and the moment may be lost. But there’s plenty to like about the whole camera set-up. Low light images are good and clean and can even be zoomed a little without softening, but just a little.

Before we leave the Oppo Reno, one thing worth mentioning is that unlocking the phone either by fingerprint sensor or face unlock is really really fast.

With the latter, you barely notice the shark fin peeping out and dipping back in what is a wonderful implementation of this little innovation.

Price: ₹49,990

Pros: Innovative front camera, maximised screen space, very smooth performance, big battery with excellent battery life and very fast charging, high zoom though images turn grainy, great price

Cons: Feature-filled but ColorOS software still tedious, heavy and slippery, too many push notifications from Oppo App Store, some odd choices in use of camera lenses, zoom can be a bit theoretical

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