Oppo A9 2020: It Gets an Excellent

Oppo A9 2020: It gets an Excellent

OUR VERDICT

A big screen, an almost everlasting battery and solid specs make the Oppo A9 2020 one among the simplest affordable phones for those that stream tons of video, and a still great option for nearly everyone else on a limited budget.

FOR

• Superb battery life
• Better than average night photos
• Good-quality stereo speakers

AGAINST

• Plastic back
• Two of the four rear cameras seem to try to to little or no
• Color OS isn't for everybody

The Oppo A9 2020 is a reasonable phone with an enormous array of features. It’s an enormous screen, a good bigger battery, four rear cameras, tons of storage and even one among the higher budget chipsets.

On paper the Oppo A9 2020 seems almost bafflingly good, but there are three obvious shortcomings. Its screen isn't as advanced as those of the Moto G series and therefore the outer shell is plastic. The sole glass sits on the screen and cameras, the sole metal round the camera housing.

At £220/AU$399 (around $250, but with no confirmed availability within the US), the Oppo A9 2020 is additionally slightly cheaper than the Moto G8 Plus.

This is one among the simplest budget phones for those that tend to hit their phone hard with video streaming and gaming on the thanks to work. It’s the screen inches and battery life to form the foremost of those jobs.

If that describes you then you'll probably safely pip out , while if you are looking for other things from your phone then read on to ascertain if the Oppo A9 2020 fits the bill.

Design

• Clad in plastic but looks good from a distance
• Big and thick
• Lacks water resistance

The Oppo A9 2020 could pass for a costlier phone from arm’s length. Its back looks almost like curved glass, and features a finish that reacts to light. A color-shifting ‘S’ snakes across the light’s path like some older Moto G mobiles.

It’s large too, and features a slim screen notch. If you told someone you paid twice the worth for the phone, they might probably believe you.

That illusion largely falls apart once you pick the Oppo A9 2020 up. The edges and back are plastic. You’ll tell the rear isn’t glass just by looking. Plastic tends to distort reflections around areas just like the fingerprint scanner and camera housing, because the pressure flexes the rear just slightly. Glass doesn't bend so easily.

The Oppo A9 2020 has curved sides for comfort, but it doesn’t feel remotely as high-end as Oppo’s own Reno 2. That phone is twice the worth, though, and this year even Motorola has reverted to using plastic on the rear rather than glass the Moto G8 Plus.

Size is that the other part in touch in mind. Oppo has made a budget powerhouse here, but the massive screen and battery mean the A9 2020 could seem intimidatingly large to a number of you. It’s also 9.1mm thick, although the slight curvature of the rear does take the sting off this.

The use of plastic ceases to matter if you employ the included silicone case, and you almost certainly should probably use a case. However, the bundled one isn't nearly as good as those bundled with the Reno 2 Z and Reno 2.

The silicone plastic is stiffer, and a scarcity of attention to detail in its construction results in the facility button losing its click. This is often oddly upsetting, and led us to removing the case - you’ll likely be ready to find something better online.

Thankfully, Oppo has not also tousled the screen protector. Like most other Oppo phones, a plastic protector is attached within the factory. It saves the heartbreak of scratching your phone within two days.

The Oppo A9 2020 lacks water resistance, like almost every phone at the worth. We did at one point accidentally dip rock bottom of the phone in some soybean milk and it’s still working fine, but this proves nothing quite that it won’t explode on contact with liquid.

Screen

• 6.5-inch 720 x 1600 screen
• Display might be sharper but this is not an excessive amount of a problem
• Color temperature is cold out of the box

The Oppo A9 2020 features a very large 6.5-inch screen. This is often significantly larger even than the Moto G8 Plus’s 6.3-inch screen.

Those trying to find problems will notice this is often not a Full HD screen. It’s a 720 x 1600-pixel panel. The primary limitation we noticed was something else, though.

Fresh out of the box, the Oppo A9 2020’s color temperature is sort of cold, which successively makes the just-okay color saturation look worse. One among the primary things we did was to travel to the Display a part of the Settings menu and switch the temperature to its ‘warmer’ setting.

This doesn’t make its color reproduction a match for a high-end mobile, but does give the screen a more pleasing character.

Does the screen resolution matter? Lower pixel density is more obvious on an enormous screen like this than the iPhone 11, which only has around 10% more pixels in each direction. But this usually manifests during a slight softness of text, instead of cruder-looking pixelation.

That's because of Android’s excellent resolution scaling which the panel is advanced enough to avoid making the pixel structure in the least visible. We’re truly surprised by how legible tiny fonts are once you zoom call at a browser window.

In old versions of Android, text would become ugly and blocky when made from this few pixels, but it now looks good.

Sure, we’d prefer a Full HD screen, but that's the Oppo Reno Z’s job. And crucially, we might rather a 720p+ LCD (as seen here) than a 720p+ OLED.

OLED displays for phones use a PenTile sub pixel arrangement, during which pixels share subpixels. Meaning the lower pixel density clarity we see here just isn’t possible in an OLED of an equivalent resolution (yes, an OLED would offer better contrast and color).

It’s also important to understand what the Oppo A9 2020 can still do alright. Even a 720p+ screen like this is often perfect for YouTube streaming. Video footage still looks excellent at this resolution, and therefore the very large canvas makes watching video more enjoyable. We thought we’d dislike this screen, but we love it, quite lot actually.

There’s one other thing in touch in mind too: did you recognize Netflix doesn’t actually stream at resolutions above 720p on most Android phones? Still, if only the sharpest text will do, consider the Moto G8 Plus.

Disclaimer: an earlier version of this review mistakenly claimed the phone did not have NFC. It does, so you will be ready to use Google Pay on the handset.