An update to the Oppo Reno11 Pro, unveiled earlier this year, arrived recently in Singapore and impresses in many ways, particularly in the imaging department. The Oppo Reno series has always focused on selfies and portrait imaging, and the new phone is no exception.
The main imaging camera system is more than enough for the casual shooter, with a 50-megapixel wide camera, a 50-megapixel zoom camera, and an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera. The new phone’s front-facing camera shines too, with its 50-megapixel sensor capturing good details with good skin tones.
I did push the camera to its limit, setting it up to shoot the Malaysian night sky using the Pro mode. While it pales in comparison to flagship phones such as Oppo’s Find N3 and Honor Magic 6 Pro, the camera system can produce images that are acceptable for casual sharing on social media platforms.
The lack of an option to save in DNG RAW files, especially when I was shooting the Milky Way and fireworks also, counts against the new Oppo phone. The camera’s JPEG images do not allow me to maximise image quality when editing these photos.
Looks-wise, the Reno12 Pro has a similar profile to its predecessor. Weighing 180g for the Brown version with a 6.7-inch Full HD AMOLED screen, it feels good in your hands and is easy to place in a pocket.
With the matt-and-glossy back used on the brown version, the phone looks and feels luxurious. Oppo has also seen fit to include a nice plastic back cover with ridges that add a bit of class to the phone.
One of the new phone’s interesting features is the MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Energy chip that promises prolonged battery life. This is an alternative to the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips used on many flagships.
The new MediaTek chip ensures that the already-huge 5,000mAh battery on the phone can last the day even after heavy usage for photography and videography. After a full day of using the phone for workshops and shooting, I found 20 per cent of battery life remaining.
Perhaps more important is the phone’s operation. With 12GB of RAM, switching between apps is very smooth, and there is plenty of space with the 512GB onboard to store my 4K/30 fps videos and JPEG photos.
I believe the Dimensity chip delivers the needed performance, though it did cause my photo editing app to freeze on one occasion, when I attempted to do some auto AI enhancements on one of my images.
What else should Oppo improve on? High on my wishlist is an ultrawide-angle camera for shooting videos. Some footage may seem too much of a close-up so an ultrawide camera would give more video capture options.
It’d be great too if the Reno12 Pro came supported increasingly common eSIMs. This would make it easy to connect to a new mobile operator you sign up with, say, when you travel overseas.
Costing S$949, the Reno12 Pro with 12GB memory and 512GB storage is an interesting option for those looking for an alternative to popular makes from Apple and Samsung, and even Oppo’s own Find flagship series.
