The Oppo Reno 5 series was the company’s last major launch of 2020 in its home country. Just about a month later, the mid-range smartphones are on their way to global markets, including India.
Oppo’s Reno series has one of the shortest refresh cycles of any smartphone series, currently averaging three iterations each year. The latest update includes the Reno 5, the Reno 5 Pro and the Reno 5 Pro Plus. It seems like the latter will not be available outside of China any time soon, leaving the upcoming Oppo Find X3 as the next major flagship.
At this moment, it appears as though the Oppo Reno 5 Pro is surely launching in India later in January, and could be joined by the Reno 5 and some other connected devices such as the Enco X earphones with ANC. An unveiling now will mean it comes exactly six months after the Reno 4 Pro. Unless the Indian variant has any major spec changes, we have a fair idea at what to expect from it.
Cut to the chase
- What is it? Oppo’s next mid-range smartphone
- When is it out? Mid-January
- How much will it cost? Around Rs 35,000
Oppo Reno 5 Pro price in India and launch date
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Just like its predecessors, the Oppo Reno 5 Pro price in India is expected to be around the Rs 35,000 mark, putting it in the premium mid-range segment. For context, in China, it is priced at CNY 3,399, which converts to about Rs 39,000. There could be variants at higher price points.
India seems to be amongst the first overseas markets to get the Oppo Reno 5 series. Since Oppo India has already started teasing the launch, we expect it to be unveiled in a few weeks, possibly some time in second or third week of January.
As for other markets, it’s confirmed that the model will be unavailable in Europe, and Oppo doesn’t sell smartphones in the U.S. either. That leaves us with Asia and Australia as the only other probable markets.
Design and display
The Reno series has always been about the design, experimenting with new materials and finishes each year. The Oppo Reno 5 Pro has a unique back panel that has a blue hue with a matte finish, with tiny specks that glow under light, resembling stars. There are likely to be other subtler colour variants as well.
With a thickness of 7.6mm and a weight of just 173 grams, it should be a pretty ergonomic phone to use, especially with the curved front and back panels. The cameras are housed in a rectangular housing which is slightly raised from the rest of the back. The Chinese variant has a big “Reno Glow” logo on the bottom, but historically, the Indian variants have skipped that branding.
There’s a curved 6.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a Full HD+ resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. There’s a single hole-punch notch on the top left and an in-display fingerprint scanner underneath. With a peak brightness of 1,100nits, it is also HDR10+ compliant.
Cameras
The Oppo Reno 5 Pro has a quad-camera array on the rear: a 64MP f/1.7 primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, a 2MP macro shooter and a 2MP monochrome lens. On the front is a 32MP selfie shooter.
At the unveiling, Oppo talked at length about the various shooting modes that would be available on the phone such as night mode, video portrait mode, AI, timelapse, multi-view and more. It’s unclear if all of them will make it to the global variants.
Performance
Under the hood, the Oppo Reno 5 Pro will be amongst the first smartphones in India to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ chipset, offering a high-performance octa-core architecture along with 5G at 7nm. There could be other configurations available beside the standard 8GB + 128GB variant.
In the past, the Oppo Reno series has had relatively poor performance for the price. If Dimensity chipsets are as good as claimed, that issue might finally be gone.
The battery is rated at 4,350mAh with support for 65W Super VOOC fast charging, which should charge it completely in about half an hour. The global variant is likely to run on Color OS 11 atop Android 11 out-of-the-box.