This is OPPO Philippines' newest smartphone which is now on under 10,000 peso ceiling in their recent price cut a few days ago. At, Php 9,990, is OPPO A39 can be your next phone on that budget? Here is my review.
The A39 has the Color OS 3.0 based on the quite old Android Lollipop. The UI was almost the same experience that I encountered on the OPPO F1s 3 GB RAM version but a bit lighter based on my day-to-day usage except for one not-so-good thing that I will tell you on the extras section. The 5.2 inch HD display was a-ok but as the time goes by, you will be noticing the TFT display aftereffects which the colors are a bit inaccurate especially but just looking at their main wallpaper
The pulldown menu and multitasking are also the same as to the F1s
Calls, texts, Bluetooth, OTG, GPS and mobile internet were all good on the A39. Nothing much to worry about.
Gaming was pretty much playable on the A39 on Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt 8. Unlike on what I encountered on F1s last year, I got no issues on the A39 on version 0.57.2 of Pokemon Go.
On battery, the phone survived on my video battery rundown test at 12 hours and 20 minutes. On my real time usage, I usually get the 16 hours of mixed usage with 4 1/2 hours of screen on time at 10% brightness.
On camera department, it has the same menu and filters like on F1s except on the aperture. The main camera has f/2.2 aperture while the secondary cam has f/2.4 aperture. The selfie cam also works fine as well as the beautification feature as long as you done the tweaking right. The image processing speed is a bit fast given for it's SoC. The main camera though sometimes struggle on defocusing on night. The pro mode was also good but not as good as the F1 Plus.
The camera output:
Oppo A39 Front Camera Sample from Normal to Beautify Mode (+ 25% on the fair side, level 2)
Extras:
The A39 has the Color OS 3.0 based on the quite old Android Lollipop. The UI was almost the same experience that I encountered on the OPPO F1s 3 GB RAM version but a bit lighter based on my day-to-day usage except for one not-so-good thing that I will tell you on the extras section. The 5.2 inch HD display was a-ok but as the time goes by, you will be noticing the TFT display aftereffects which the colors are a bit inaccurate especially but just looking at their main wallpaper
The pulldown menu and multitasking are also the same as to the F1s
Calls, texts, Bluetooth, OTG, GPS and mobile internet were all good on the A39. Nothing much to worry about.
The Antutu benchmark scored a bit higher at over 42,000 versus other counterparts with the MT6750 octa-core processor with 3 GB RAM/32 GB ROM combo which might be due to it's smaller display. There are 7 working sensors inside and the internal storage was supplied from Micron
Gaming was pretty much playable on the A39 on Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt 8. Unlike on what I encountered on F1s last year, I got no issues on the A39 on version 0.57.2 of Pokemon Go.
On battery, the phone survived on my video battery rundown test at 12 hours and 20 minutes. On my real time usage, I usually get the 16 hours of mixed usage with 4 1/2 hours of screen on time at 10% brightness.
On camera department, it has the same menu and filters like on F1s except on the aperture. The main camera has f/2.2 aperture while the secondary cam has f/2.4 aperture. The selfie cam also works fine as well as the beautification feature as long as you done the tweaking right. The image processing speed is a bit fast given for it's SoC. The main camera though sometimes struggle on defocusing on night. The pro mode was also good but not as good as the F1 Plus.
The camera output:
Oppo A39 Rear Camera Sample from Normal to HDR Mode
OPPO A39 main camera samples in normal mode
Pro mode using + 2 second shutter speed
Oppo A39 Front Camera Sample from Normal to Beautify Mode (+ 25% on the fair side, level 2)
Extras:
In the number of days that I played the A39, I am bit annoyed that sometimes the phone wil pop up a message regarding on some using third-party apps like using Google Messenger to take care of my SMS (OPPO's SMS app can't do batch delete of texts unless you need to open the entire conversation). During the review, I got an 160+ MB OTA update but still this problem persisted.
The smaller yet not that far in terms of battery capacity and battery life (if to compare to their OPPO F1s 3 GB RAM or it's rival at price Vivo V5 Lite) good looks and still a-ok camera output for OPPO A39. One important issue that they need to fix on what experienced on the extras section which included some third party apps. I will gonna give OPPO A39 at 3.75 out of 5
