OPPO A52 Review

When you pick up a $300 phone that’s sprouting premium features, it’s just good sense to be skeptical. The OPPO A52 is clearly not a flagship but it does have a quad-camera set up, a massive 5,000mAh battery, and a Snapdragon 665 processor, which is similar to what you'll find in pricier phones like the Pixel 3a. Alas, great specs and stats don’t always translate into real world applications.

For the most part the A52 works a treat, but around 30% of the time there is a substantial lag which over the past three or so weeks has caused me to miss numerous doggo sightings, and forced me to leave a cringeworthy 45 second voicemail in which you can hear me apologising and swearing profusely while trying to hang up.

This lag/freeze cycle isn’t the be all and end all - seven out of ten times I would have no complaints but the other three caused a major pain point, staining my overall experience with the phone. Leaving voicemails is bad enough without the added embarrassment of 40 struggling seconds.

30% of the time

I have a lot of great things to say about the OPPO A52 so let’s get the 30% out of the way first. A $299 phone isn’t going to function how a $1500 phone is. Them’s the facts. It’s unreasonable to expect a budget phone to give you the same experience as Apple’s newest iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy S20. What is reasonable to expect however is to tap on an app and for it to open in less than three seconds.

30% of the time I did not have that reasonable expectation fulfilled. Opening the camera, especially using quick access from the lock screen takes around that three second mark, and at the worst of times much longer. Watching videos on YouTube also significantly slowed down the phone, and if I needed to run Google Maps it was the only thing I could use the handset for. Anything that needed too much power rendered the rest of the features useless. If the A52’s processor ran like a ship in Sci-Fi films, then they’d be pushing all their power to the thrusters just to direct you to the pub.

At this price point, I can ignore some lag or slower operation speeds but these became problematic when I missed a video of my dog rolling on a skateboard for the first time. Considering the higher-powered processor in the A52 I expected a snappier pick up, something closer to the Reno 2 Z which is a phenomenal mid-tier phone with a chipset that's only a tad faster. 

Admittedly the majority of the lag I experienced was in the camera app, but the voicemail incident was a whole other kettle of fish. I tried making a call which went directly to voicemail. It would have been less than two seconds before I realised and went to hang up, but when I tapped on the red phone symbol nothing happened.

I tried again, and again before the screen timed out and went to black. To no avail I tried to unlock the phone in order to hang up, but instead I continued to hear the voicemail prompt and the all-knowing beep at the end. For around 40 seconds I struggled to unlock the handset before eventually it relented, coming back from blackness and acknowledging my fervent tap on the red icon.

While this definitely the most extreme incident, I had similar experiences where I couldn't hang up the A52 when I wanted to or when the screen simply timed out. Budget phones don’t need to be flashy. They don’t need to take award-winning photography or have the smoothest scrolling, but they do need to end calls when you want them to. 

All things considered the 30% of the time I had problems with the A52 could have outweighed the positive experiences, and for a lesser device it very well might have but for this OPPO it's not the case.

The other 70%

Now that’s out of the way, we can get on with all the great aspects of the A52. Battery life, general performance, look and feel and the quad-camera set up yielded great results that match or best other handsets at the $299 price point.

Look and feel

At 6.5-inches with tight bezels you don’t feel like you’re holding a cheap phone. OPPO isn’t a fan of the camera notch, opting in this case instead for a hole-punch selfie camera in the top left of the screen. This positioning is entirely unobtrusive and possibly my favourite selfie camera spot for immersive phone viewing experiences.

We reviewed the Twilight Black model which pales in comparison to the stunning look of the Stream White. Like most plastic back panels, especially glossy black ones you’ll attract fingerprints and smudges but if you’re using a case - one is included in the box - then it’s non-consequential. The front display however is lovely, and a sharp 1080p+ resolution. 

Battery and performance

Apart from the the aforementioned issues, the day to day usage of the A52 is above what you’d expect from a cheap handset. It’s processor is the main selling point, usually ranged in mid-tier phones you can expect to get better performance out of this handset than others in the sub $300 category. 

Where the load is heavy on the processor there have been some faults (see above), but for light and moderate multi-tasking the A52 has shown its superior power. I’ve been listening to music, watching videos on Facebook, and messaging through a few apps simultaneously without any lag or too much of a difference when compared to a more premium device. Which once again considering the remarkably cheap price tag is a sterling recommendation.

OPPO’s software works in order to keep your phone running smoothly as well, offering notifications about unused data on your handset that can be deleted in order to improve performance. 

Battery performance is stellar partly due to the somewhat aggressive power-saving features. Unused apps will close automatically after a time, in turn conserving power and pushing the 5,000mAh battery to last as long as two full days without a charge. Even after turning the power-saving mode off the battery still outlasted 24 hours between charges.

Camera

Nabbing a quad-camera set up on a budget phone is a win in itself, but to have the AI functions that allow portrait and night mode, and for them all to work is a victory of the highest regard.

You can get some great shots, but as with most cheaper phones you’re still going to encounter issues capturing moving subjects. The shutter speed isn’t quite fast enough to snap a quick pic, and you’ll most likely end up with some motion blur. If your go-to pics are of animals or children then you’ll need to try a few times to get something usable. 

Note the blur around the eyes

More blur around the face

Crisper features, but blur on the leash

Low light will deteriorate the picture quality significantly too but switching over to night mode makes a huge difference. The side by side below is pretty much the same shot in the early morning hours with and without night mode. It’s a shame that night mode is needed in an environment that is still pretty bright for all intents and purposes, but at least it’s an option which most other cheap phones don’t have.

Low light

Low light with Night Mode

While Night Mode can drastically increase the detail in lower light settings, in actual darkness the results are less obvious. In the examples below you can see a slight change in the colouring and sharpness but it hasn't increased the overall quality much at all. Still though, it's a bonus to have this kind of computational photography included at all in such an affordable device.

Night Mode Off

Night Mode On

4K filming and video stabilisation is another impressive addition to the A52. I took the video below while going full speed on the boat on a rocky day on the water - although I was bouncing all over the place and so was the subject I was filming, the shot itself is relatively smooth. 

While the OPPO A52 is definitely on the budget side when it comes to camera quality, with some care you can create vibrant shots that you wouldn’t expect from such an affordable handset.

Final Thoughts

As disappointing as the 30% was it was not enough to dissuade me from continuing to use the OPPO A52. After all 70% is nothing to scoff at, at uni it’s a credit and as any student knows “P’s get degrees.” And in that style, the OPPO A52 would need to do a lot worse for me to not recommend it as a great budget phone.

Equipped with a great camera for the price and a two-day battery life it’s safe to say that the OPPO A52 is a noteworthy budget handset.

OPPO A52 Camera Samples

1x Zoom

2x Zoom

5x Zoom

10x Zoom

Anula Wiwatowska

Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram

Anula is the Off-Site Editorial Lead for WhistleOut Australia, and an award winning tech journalist. She has been writing about the Australian telco industry, and consumer technology for over five years, and has been known to tell her Uber driver which phone they should upgrade to next.

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