OPPO A5 2020 In-Depth Hands-On

Back in October, OPPO Philippines launched its latest additions to its A series of smartphones to the country. Today, we’re looking at the OPPO A5 2020, which shares a lot of specs with the OPPO A9 2020, but comes with a lower price tag, less RAM, and inferior cameras.

The OPPO A5 2020 has a 6.5-inch IPS waterdrop display with a resolution of 1600 x 720 pixels. The top and side bezels are slim, while the chin is relatively thick. The low resolution paired with the large display does make the pixel seem more visible when viewing the phone at a close distance, but with regular use, it’s not as noticeable.

Housed within the waterdrop notch is the 8MP front camera, with a rather large speaker grill just above it.

The A5 2020 uses a glossy plastic back that looks and feels good, though not as great as the Corning Gorilla Glass body that other premium devices have. Our Mirror Black variant actually can act as a mirror as its super reflective. Unfortunately, it is an oil and fingerprint magnet. Using a case is highly recommended.

The quad rear camera set up is composed of a 12MP primary, 8MP ultrawide, and two additional 2MP rear lenses. The three lenses are grouped in the middle, and the fourth is situated below the LED flash. The fingerprint scanner is located just beneath the three cameras.

On the right, you can find the power button with a green accent in the middle.

Located on the left are the sim card tray and volume rocker.

The 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone, USB-C port, and speaker grill are located at the bottom.

Our model came with 4GB of RAM and 128GB storage powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 processor paired with an Adreno 610 GPU. We ran our usual benchmarks, and here are the results:

• AnTuTu (v8.0.4-OB) – 160,683
• Geekbench (5.0.3) – 315 (Single-Core), 1,333 (Multi-Core)
• PC Mark – 6,517 (Work 2.0)
• 3D Mark (Sling Shot Extreme) – 1,119 (OpenGL), 1,043 (Vulkan)
• AndroBench (Random Read & Write) – 119.48MB/s (Read), 15.85 MB/s (Write)

While it doesn’t perform as good as a snapdragon 700-series chipset, it is good enough for everyday use.

The camera of the A5 2020 is able to produce good shots in daylight, with ample sharpness and detail. However, when taking photos at night, even with artificial lighting, the photos appear to have some noise and artifacts. Check out our sample shots below:

The front camera employs too much beautification for our taste, even when under natural light. Nonetheless, the photos are still good enough for social media. Check out our sample selfies below:

Out of the box, it comes with Android 9 Pie with ColorOS 6 on top. Users have a choice between 3GB/4GB of RAM and 64GB/128GB of storage. The 3GB + 4GB variant retails for PHP 8,990USD 153INR 12,987EUR 146CNY 1,116 while the 4GB+128GB variants retails for PHP 10,990USD 187INR 15,876EUR 178CNY 1,364.

OPPO A5 2020 specs:
6.5-inch HD (1600 x 720) In-Cell display
Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 octa-core CPU
Adreno 610 GPU
3GB, 4GB RAM
64GB, 128GB storage
12MP F1.8 + 8MP F2.25 + 2MP F2.4 + 2MP F2.4 quad-rear cameras
8MP F2.0 front camera
Dual-SIM (nano)
4G LTE
WiFi
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, BDS, GLONASS, GALILEO
microUSB port
Fingerprint scanner (rear)
ColorOS 6.0.1 (Android 9 Pie)
5,000mAh battery
163.6 x 75.6 x 9.1 mm
195 g
Black, White