Oppo Reno 3 Pro review: a practical phone with annoying quirks

Oppo Reno3 Pro release date and price

Oppo presented the Asian version of its Oppo Reno 3 Pro in December. Recently, the device has also been released in India and on the European market. The mid-range mobile phone is available in two memory variants. For the version with 8GB of RAM/128 GB of internal storage, you'll pay about $400. The 8/256 GB version comes in at around $450. If you buy the phone in the USA, you'll end up paying closer to $600 from selected Oppo dealers.

Lightweight design

The Reno3 Pro weighs a pleasant 176 grams on my kitchen scales and is thus in the healthy midfield of smartphones. So it is lighter than real heavyweights like the iPhone 11 Pro Max (226 grams) and the Oppo Find X2 tested by Shu, which reaches 200 grams in 'vegan leather'. For longer video calls, I still used my leg as support.

Besides an acceptable weight, the Reno 3 Pro wants to inspire with its design. However, many users will notice that Oppo has taken a different approach with the European version of this smartphone than with the Asian version. Instead of a waterfall display, a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display in 20:9 is in place. It's a bit of a pity, in my opinion, because I would have liked to see how different apps looked with a waterfall display. Just as unpleasant is the hole-punched display, which has a cutout for the dual selfie camera. Here Oppo would have been better sticking with the shark fin method, as it did with older Reno phones.

The display is embedded in a plastic casing with a metal frame. Both the display and casing are pleasantly smooth in the hand. However, you should get a suitable phone cover early on, because unlike the Reno 2, this model comes without a protective cover in the box. Apart from that, the smartphone is nice to hold but in my hands it does slide back and forth with pleasure. Besides that, and I find this even more unpleasant, the display and the back smeared much too quickly. Every fingerprint, no matter how small, can be recognized immediately. So if you don't want to clean your mobile phone permanently with the cloth, suitable protection is the best solution.

On the right side, you will find the power button with the well-known green accent in the middle. On the left is the volume rocker. The smartphone doesn't have more buttons but fortunately, it doesn't need them at all, because the most important functions are built into the display anyway. The fingerprint sensor is integrated directly under the display. A perfect solution that makes unlocking possible without complications even when standing. Perfectly suited for my next subway ride, when we are allowed back to the office.

The Oppo Reno 3 Pro is offered in three colors: Midnight Black, Sky White, and Auroral Blue. The latter was the one I tested, whereby the bright blue tone takes on darker and darker color steps and finally ends in a dark blue.

A 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display

With the display, Oppo follows old traditions. As already seen with the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom and the Oppo Reno 2, the Chinese company also uses an almost bezel-less display for this device. I like it a lot, especially since pictures and apps look more spacious. The 6. 4-inch Super AMOLED display has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 pixels and is in a 20:9 format.

For a more comfortable display usage, Eye Care mode can adjust the color temperature to something warmer. Instead of a cool white, a pleasant beige glows towards you and ensures relaxed eyes. For me, this was especially practical in the last few weeks, because in the evening I always like to check if everything runs smoothly on our AndroidPIT site. If the function is deactivated, you can still adjust the color temperature manually. You can also change the font and display size here.

In the end, the display had one problem for me. From time to time it did not react to the touch, so that I - more often than I wanted to - hammered around on the mobile phone. I found it very noticeable especially in those moments when I had to type more precisely. I felt that with my Tetris app it took minutes until I could finally move a long stone. Sorry - but I really don't have time for such nonsense.

Android 10 and ColorOS 7

The Oppo Reno 3 Pro comes with Android 10 installed out of the box, while the smartphone uses ColorOS 7 as its user interface. As well as Google's typical apps, Oppo adds further, practical features such as a dark mode, a multi-user mode, and live wallpapers. I really like the multi-user function. Here you can define guest profiles as well as other user profiles.

For anyone who shares their phone with children, this is a more than practical option. But I'm even more excited that Oppo uses Dual SIM in the Reno 3 Pro. Through my work, I always carry two phones with me. Having a Dual SIM phone for business and personal use in one is a feature I find more than convenient and makes things a lot easier.

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Whilst you can't find Google apps and services on the newer Huawei phones, the Reno 3 Pro has the most important of them integrated into individual tiles. This makes things a lot easier for me and ultimately saved me time, because I only had to open one folder to launch both Google and YouTube. A second folder contains tools like the recorder, the calculator or the FM radio.

A Mediatek Helio P95 onboard

Under the plastic hood of this smartphone is an Octa-core Mediatek Helio P95 processor, and it performs well. Admittedly, Tetris is not a computationally-intensive game, but the smartphone kept up with this app for a little more than two hours with a few more apps open without losing much battery power.

* Unfortunately not all test procedures worked as well for me as the mobile phone did during the benchmark tests. I had to do without test results of PassMark and the normal Sling Shot from 3D Mark.

Long live the headphone jack

Wired headphones are a dead market for most smartphone manufacturers. Otherwise, I can't explain why the current flagships of Samsung or Apple don't have a 3.5mm jack anymore. Oppo makes a pleasant exception here and gives the Reno 3 Pro this connection. The manufacturer also includes its own headphones in the box.

It is a pity that Oppo has not developed in this area from the Oppo 2. You only get plastic headphones without memory foam or rubber caps. The wearing comfort is limited. If you want to listen to music via a cable, I recommend you opt for another pair of headphones.

About the sound, I cannot complain. Both during music playback without headphones and during our daily video calls on Google Hangouts the sound was quite ok. Neither tinny nor muffled sounds disturbed the sound reproduction - with the Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro headphones, which I was also testing, the sound was also great.

Quad-cam on the back, dual-cam on the front

The heart of the Oppo Reno 3 Pro is its camera. Besides the dual selfie camera, which is built into the display in a hole-punch, there is also a quad-camera on the back for taking pictures and video. It's a pity that the quad-camera humps out of the back of the phone in a straight strip. This doesn't make the smartphone the ugliest Quasimodo among hunchback phones - but it's not nice either. It's not very secure and to be honest it really annoys me that I always have to find a way to put the device on a flat surface without any wobbles.

In addition to the 64-megapixel quad-camera, you can also use an 8-megapixel wide-angle sensor for shooting photos. I have listed the more detailed specifications below:

Dual-selfie camera:

• 44-megapixel main camera, f/2.4, 26mm (wide), 1/2.65", 0.7µm
• 2-megapixel depth camera, f/2.4

Quad rear camera:

• 64-megapixel main camera, f/1.7, 27mm (wide), 1/1.72", 0.8µm, PDAF
• 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle, f/2.2, 13mm (ultra-wide), 1/4.0", 1.12µm, AF
• 2-megapixel mono camera, f/2.4,
• 13-megapixel telephoto camera, f/2.4, 52mm (telephoto), 1/3.4", 1.0µm, PDAF, 2x optical zoom

I'm not a camera professional like Stefan, so I was really impressed by what the smartphone's built-in cameras can do. That Fabi also asked me why my picture was suddenly so good when I used this mobile phone for our video calls, I take as a hint that I am not completely wrong in my assessment of this camera. Pictures and videos taken with the phone have good and presentable results.

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There are more than enough functions to play and edit your photos. In addition to night mode and ultra zoom (up to 5x zoom) you can also edit your selfies as you like. I tried it myself. A little tip: the picture in the middle is the original.

Another little highlight for me was the night mode. To test how it affects the photos, I took the smartphone with me on my walks with our family do, Gassie. The differences can hardly be overlooked here. For example, the photos in the night mode have clearly stronger colors.

VOOC fast charging included

The rating of a smartphone rises and falls with its battery performance. But here the Oppo Reno 3 Pro performed quite well for me, which is due to the 4,025mAh battery. Despite doing video calls, listening to music, playing Tetris and serving me as an alarm clock, the device stayed fit for over a day.

In addition to a mobile phone and wired headphones, Oppo also includes its VOOC 30W quick charger in the box. For fun, I took a look to see if the quick charger really charges the Reno 3 Pro faster than an ordinary power cord. On the first run, I let the battery go down to 50 percent and connected the smartphone to my normal Pixel 3a power supply. The charging time here was about one hour and for me, it is already a bit long. I gave the VOOC quick charger a harder task: charging a smartphone with only 22 percent of the power. Within half an hour the device was recharged at my place. Guys, we have a clear winner.

Oppo Reno3 Pro technical specifications