OPPO A79 5G review: a camera-centric phone that could do with more firepower

Name: OPPO A79 5G
Item: OPPO A79 5G
Rating: 7
Author: Shekhar Thakran

Published On: January 23, 2024

Review Summary

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In the Indian smartphone market, the sub-20k price bracket is one of the most competitive segments right now, with phones offering the latest features at lucrative prices. This is why every new phone in this segment must prove its mettle to win users over. In an attempt to do just that, OPPO has introduced its latest mid-ranger – A79 5G – in the market. Does this phone have what it takes to compete with the likes of Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G, OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite, and more? Read my detailed review down below to find out!

Verdict

OPPO A79 5G shines in the camera department and offers fast battery charging as well. It’s not as impressive in aspects such as display and performance, and is slightly behind some other phones in this price segment. At its current asking price of Rs 19,999, it does feel priced on the higher side, but could be worth a look if the camera is a priority.

Design and display

While OPPO is one of the few brands that are not afraid of implementing stylish new designs on their phones, the A79 5G sticks to a more conventional approach. Although the glittery back catches your attention right away, the phone’s design isn’t too flamboyant. The handset has a relatively thick frame (around 8mm) and a large 6.72-inch display, making it slightly unwieldy. While some other phones in this price bracket now have AMOLED panels, you get an IPS LCD panel here with FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080 pixels) resolution and 90Hz refresh rate.

I won’t go as far as to say that all IPS panels are necessarily inferior to AMOLED panels in terms of quality, and the one here is fairly decent, but missing out on the dark blacks and vibrant colours at this price point feels like a miss. Having said this, the phone’s display panel gets quite bright and serves you well even outdoors. If you like to watch video content on the go, the A79 5G could be a good fit for you.

Cameras

One aspect where OPPO phones usually shine the brightest is cameras. That’s why I was particularly excited about using the A79 5G to find out if it can outperform other handsets in its price range. Let’s talk about the hardware at offer first. The A79 5G comes with a 50MP primary shooter with f/1.8 aperture, 77-degree field-of-view, a 5P lens and support for AF. The primary camera is assisted by a 2MP secondary camera with f/2.4 aperture, 89-degree field-of-view, and a 3P lens.

One thing you will notice right away is that the A79 is capable of clicking some good pictures in the presence of ample light. In daylight pictures, the phone managed to offer decent colour accuracy and even the edge detection was reasonably good. I found that the AI mode in the default camera app amped up the colours to make the images look vibrant and ready for social media. While this affects the colour accuracy, social media-savvy users would likely prefer the images clicked using this mode.

Another interesting mode on offer here is ‘Extra HD’. This mode aims to offer extra details and manages to click decent pictures, but nothing extraordinary as such. Apart from this, the images with portrait mode turned out pretty decent as well. The 8MP front camera on the phone also managed to click decent selfies, as you can see in the gallery above. However, it is important to note that the pictures clicked in low light conditions lacked detail.

Performance and Software

The OPPO A79 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 6020 chipset. In case you get confused by the smartphone chipset nomenclature, as most people are these days, don’t worry. I’ll give you a fair idea of what you can expect here.

The phone is capable of handling day-to-day tasks without any qualms. More demanding tasks aren’t really its forte. The phone can heat up a bit if you are playing a game on it for more than half an hour. In the AnTuTu benchmark, the phone scored 3,92,118, which is not too far below its main competitors. In the Geekbench test, the phone scored 1862 in the Multi-Core test and 708 in the Single-Core test. Just like the AnTuTu score, the phone’s scores do trail behind its competitors in this benchmark too. Finally, we also ran the CPU throttle test on the phone where it ran 50 threads for 30 minutes and still managed to retain 92 percent of its peak performance, which is better than many other phones in this price range. This is a good indicator that the phone offers a consistent performance.

Coming to the software, one of the biggest issues I had was that despite choosing against installing any apps during the setup process, the phone still ended up installing dozens of apps and games that I simply didn’t need.

Battery and charging speeds

The OPPO A79 5G comes with a 5,000mAh battery capacity, which is fairly standard these days. In regular usage, I found myself charging the handset by evening when I used it excessively, and the next morning on light usage. If you don’t play games on your phone all that often, the phone will easily last beyond a day for you.

The handset supports 33W fast charging, which is extremely convenient as it lets you charge the phone fully from 0 to 100 percent in just 74 minutes.

Final Verdict

The OPPO A79 5G comes with a capable camera setup and supports 33W fast charging, which comes in handy to fuel it back up pretty fast. The phone also comes with a capable primary camera setup that will let you click some brilliant pictures, but keep in mind that low-light conditions could prove to be challenging for it. Worth considering overall, especially if you can get hold of it for a slightly lower price.