Oppo A53s 5G is completely different from how I thought it would be. Before I go ahead, I would like to address how competitive the smartphone industry has become. At one particular price point, say Rs 15,000, there are probably more than 20 good smartphones available for you to choose from, which makes the art of decision making very tough. Further, I would like you guys to note that I haven’t had a big experience with Oppo smartphones before using the Oppo A53s 5G. Let’s dive into the review, and I will share what I thought of the device.
Oppo A53s 5G Review: Body and Design
I got the ‘Crystal Blue’ colour variant of the device. Right out of the box, I could see how it would be able to stand out in the market. There’s a solid camera layout at the rear with 5G branding, which looks sleek, and the Oppo logo right at the bottom, honestly it doesn’t create a big difference for me. I would have liked it more if the logo was present at the center of the rear.
The fingerprint sensor is present on the power button of the device, which is located on the right side of the body. The volume rockers and the SIM tray is located on the left side of the body. The device is a little thick and bulky, but I don’t have many complaints, given it is a budget smartphone after all.
Then there’s a Type-C port at the bottom, along with a speaker and a 3.5mm audio jack. The edges at the rear are slightly curved; however, at the top, you get a flat-screen display. The bezels at the top and sides are thin, while at the bottom, they are slightly bigger than I would like them to be. There’s a tear-drop notch at the front on the top center housing the selfie camera.
There is also a small speaker right above the selfie camera so that your calling experience is excellent at all times. Oppo A53s 5G has a plastic body at the rear and a glossy finish which attracts a lot of fingerprints. But I don’t mind that since the ‘Crystal Blue’ colour is a little dark, and it does a pretty good job at hiding the fingerprints most of the time.
Oppo A53s 5G Review: Display
The Oppo A53s 5G has a 6.52-inch HD+ touchscreen display, and the users get 88.7% screen-to-body ratio. The device comes with 60Hz refresh rate and touch sampling rate support. It has an LCD panel, and the maximum brightness offered by the screen isn’t the most striking or powerful. The display is very responsive and smooth regardless of whatever you are trying to do.
One thing that I didn’t like about the smartphone was the colour accuracy of its display. The colours were way off when I was watching something on Netflix or YouTube. This is something to factor in if you watch a lot of content, primarily on your smartphone.
Apart from this, there isn’t anything too great or too bad about the Oppo A53s 5G’s display.
Oppo A53s 5G Review: Performance and Battery
One thing that I didn’t expect was the Oppo A53s 5G to deliver strong performance on the gaming front. I downloaded and installed heavy games such as PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9 and played for 1 hour continuously.
To my surprise, the device didn’t overheat and didn’t lag. I could play the game comfortably in really strong settings, which I expected would drag the phone down, but boy, I was wrong. The Oppo A53s 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 700 SoC. I had the 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage variant.
One really cool thing about the Oppo A53s 5G is its RAM booster ability. I could simply increase the RAM of the smartphone by 3GB if I was using multiple heavy applications in the background. So my device, which initially came with 8GB of RAM, could become an 11GB RAM smartphone.
The smartphone is running on ColorOS V11.1 based on Android 11. It lets you do everything a basic Android smartphone allows, and moreover, it has a surprisingly good battery life.
The Oppo A53s 5G comes with a big 5,000mAh battery. One of the most impressive things about the smartphone is its battery life. Sure, it is a new phone, and it is expected to give a good battery performance, but it still impressed me a ton. It comes with basic fast-charging support, which is good.
Talking about the ColorOS 11, I will honestly say I found it better than I had hoped I would. Before going into reviewing the smartphone, I had a certain bias against the ColorOS. But that is almost gone now.
It offers a very clean experience to the user. I didn’t become a big fan of the default icon packs, though. But I don’t see why I or anyone else can’t get used to the icons over time.
Oppo A53s 5G Review: Camera
The Oppo A53s 5G comes with a triple-camera setup at the rear, where the primary sensor is a 13MP lens paired with a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro sensor. For selfies and video calling, there’s an 8MP sensor at the front.
Before I go ahead with explaining how I found the camera, I want to explain to you how I do the camera test. Everyone has their own way; I do it with a cricket ball. It is one of the best objects for me to understand how good the different sensors of the smartphone’s camera work. Another thing that I would like to point out is that the smartphone comes without a wide-angle sensor which is sort of a bummer.
The camera is almost what I expected how it would be. The pictures capture good detail, but they are not the most colour accurate. But you still get pretty awesome images because of the software. The camera app is very familiar and easy to understand.
The portrait mode captures good images. The colour is good, the details are nice, and the image comes out crisp. Then the normal camera mode can shoot up to 5x zoom. Below are the images captured with 1x, 2x, and 5x zoom. Then there’s the macro mode which also captures pretty awesome details. All the images shot have been taken while it was raining outside.
Overall, I am quite satisfied with the camera experience of the Oppo A53s 5G.
Oppo A53s 5G Review: Price and Conclusion
The Oppo A53s 5G comes with almost every feature that you can want in a smartphone. The device is somewhat of a compromise because at the price range it is selling for, you will get much better 4G smartphones. But being a 5G device, it is one of the most affordable ones you can get in India. Also, it is not a bad device. You can comfortably use it for at least two years which is how long a budget smartphone should ideally run.
The Oppo A53s 5G is selling in two variants in India - 6GB+128GB for Rs 15,990 and 8GB+128GB for Rs 17,990. If you are going to buy this smartphone because you want an affordable 5G phone, well and good. But if you are looking at this phone as one of the best in this price range, you should look more.
