Oppo has unveiled its latest Reno Series for 2024. The Oppo Reno 12 Series has made its debut in India, consisting of two smartphones – Oppo Reno 12 and Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G. This time, the focus is not only on aesthetics but also on incorporating Artificial Intelligence features to enhance the overall user experience. The Oppo Reno 12 Pro boasts specifications such as the Dimensity 7000 chipset, 512GB storage, a 50MP selfie camera, Oppo AI powered by ColorOS 14.1, and more. However, the question remains: does this make the Oppo Reno 12 Pro the best in its segment? Let’s delve deeper to find out.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Price & Availability
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G will be available in two storage configurations-
- 12GB RAM+256GB storage- Rs. 36,999
- 12GB RAM+512GB storage-Rs. 40,999
It comes in Space Brown and Sunset Gold colors and will retail via Flipkart, Oppo.in and offline channels starting 18th July.
Pros
- Appealing design
- Quad-curved OLED display
- Impressive AI features
- Good selfie camera
- Fast charging
Cons
- Moderate Hardware
- Bloatware
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review – Design & Build
In terms of design and build, Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G does carry forward the legacy of its predecessors. The smartphone is light (180 grams), sleek (7.40mm), and stylish which has been the case with Reno Series in the past as well. It features a gorgeous-looking dual-tone design at the back which feels matte and sports a chic metallic ribbon running horizontally across the lower side of the rear panel. It comes in Sunset Gold and Space Brown shades, out of which I received the former for review purposes. As soon as I laid my hands on the device, I fell in love with how it looked. The device feels sleek and comfortable in hand and flaunts your style even from afar.
At the back is the Oppo branding on the ribbon running horizontally along with a rectangular slightly protruded camera module at the top-left side. The module has three camera sensors aligned vertically along with LED flash and text ‘AI Camera system’. The back panel has two textures one for the camera module and part under the ribbon and one for the rest of the panel. The best part is that the smartphone doesn’t catch many smudges or fingerprints as well. The smartphone has curved edges along with a curved display at the front.
The right edge houses the volume rockers and power button while the bottom edge includes a USB-C port, speaker grille, and SIM tray. The top edge includes a secondary speaker and microphone while the left side has been left vacant. The body is IP65 rated which makes it endure water and dust comfortably. Splash touch capability allowed me to operate the device seamlessly even when my fingers were wet.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review – Display
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G sports a 6.7-inch OLED screen, which is a curved display with 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, 1080×2412 pixel resolution, and more. Oppo claims that it offers 1200 Nits brightness and when tested in real-life conditions, the brightness proved to be adequate.
However, since it’s the rainy season in India and the sun isn’t shining at its brightest, the test under the harshest sunlight hasn’t been possible. Nonetheless, while it may not be top the charts in terms of best-viewing displays under direct sunlight, I believe that it will be above average.
While brightness is okay, it is the refresh rate that is a mess. The Settings menu allows you to choose between auto-select, standard, and high options. I mostly used the device in auto-select mode and noticed how the refresh rate was 120Hz even when I wasn’t using the phone, but as soon as I opened Google Chrome, it went down to 60Hz.
When I selected high, aka 120Hz mode, the refresh rate while browsing was 90Hz even then. This means the software offered a 120Hz refresh rate when it wasn’t needed but offered lower levels when the device was in use. This can be felt in the scrolling experience as well, because when the refresh rate was 60Hz, the browsing sessions were not as smooth as we expected them to be.
Otherwise, the display offers bright and vibrant visuals with high pixel resolution and HDR capabilities. Viewing angles are decent and the dynamic range is acceptable as well. The display settings menu offers various options to customize the viewing experience.
You can choose between light or dark mode, auto-brightness levels, screen color modes, eye comfort, and sleep mode, adaptive tone can be enabled, along with choosing the font and display size. Bright HDR Video mode can be enabled to increase brightness while playing HDR videos. There is a screen attention toggle that keeps your screen on when you are looking at it.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review – Performance
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G is powered by a custom MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Energy chipset with 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. It is a brand-new chipset based on a 4nm manufacturing process ensuing excllent power efficiency. The chipset offers effective performance during most everyday tasks. When you are calling, texting, messaging, browsing, or reading, there are no issues of lag or slowdown.
All these apps can run simultaneously without any hang-ups, and switching between them is also seamless. 12GB of RAM offers lightning-fast speeds most of the time; however, this changes when heavy games like BGMI are involved. When I played BGMI for half an hour, the frame rate started dropping after 12–15 minutes, and there were lags too. Onboard storage provides ample space to keep anything you want. Here are the results of some benchmark tests:
Let us talk about software now. Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G runs ColorOS 14.1 based on Android 14 out of the box. The software comes with various options for customization and personalization and a ton of Oppo AI features as well. The UI is fun and colorful, but the only major issue is bloatware.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro has loads of pre-installed apps and games like LinkedIn, Snapchat, Spotify, Tile Match, Tango, Myntra, Netflix, Fruit Shooter, Finshell Pay, Agoda, and more. These apps can be uninstalled. Where ColorOS truly shines is in its AI features. It really changes the way the smartphone experience is. Let us talk about these AI features in the next section.
Oppo has promised three years of OS upgrades and four years of security patches with Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review - AI Features
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G is equipped with a plethora of AI capabilities, some of which come in handy for photography, while others make the smartphone a useful everyday assistant.
The first AI capability that I’ll be talking about is called the AI Toolbox. AI Toolbox is a part of the smart sidebar and includes three capabilities- AI Writer, AI Speak, and AI Summary. While AI Writer comes in handy when you are interacting with posts on social media, the other two have more intrinsic functions.
There were times when I opened a lengthy article to read but didn’t have the time or energy to do so. In this case AI Speak and AI Summary help by summarizing the article in brief. You can read it in short or listen to the main points to save time and energy. There is an option to choose a male or female voice to listen to AI Summary.
The other very important capability is the AI Recording Summary feature. Once I attended a conference wherein important information was being shared but I didn’t feel like writing anything down, so I used the AI recording summary feature that is a part of the Notes app. I audio-recorded the entire meeting and then tapped on the recording summary to get a gist of whatever was shared. This gets saved in the Notes app for future reference as well.
File Dock now allows you to save images from anywhere. All you have to do is drag the image and drop it in the file dock. If you are logged into your Oppo account, your images will be backed up as well.
Taking screenshots is an essential way of saving whatever you want to. However, there are times when only specific information is useful from the screenshot. This information was now able to be recorded using the Smart Touch feature. I just had to take a screenshot by three-finger swipe and choose the extract content option. Then you can long-press an image, text o even text within an image and drag it to File Dock to save it for later.
Using AI Clear Voice feature allows you to hear the other person’s voice more clearly while on call. It filters out background noise to make communication better. There are some more AI features as well, but that will be a part of the Camera section as they are photography-related AI capabilities.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review – Cameras
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G features a triple camera setup at the back. It includes a 50MP main sensor along with an 8MP ultrawide and 50MP telephoto camera. At the front is a 50MP selfie camera. However, this time what makes the camera setup even better is the AI capabilities.
The main 50MP camera captures vibrant shots during daylight. Overall, the images appear clear and attractive. However, when you zoom in, you might notice that some details are lost. The images have a good amount of contrast, which some may like. The dynamic range is generally adequate.
When you take the main sensor indoors (in low-light conditions), the images turn out to be decent, with noise suppression doing its job well. Switching to the Night Mode does improve the clarity and sharpness of low-light photos. The light sources also don’t feel too dispersed. However, shadows may appear darker than they are in reality. All in all, a 50MP camera is good.
The 8MP ultrawide sensor produces detailed shots covering a large FOV. The colors are lively but the saturation levels in these are lower than needed. The post-processing sharpening does try to boost the images but results aren’t always great. In low-light conditions, some ultrawide shots may appear noisy. The camera’s dynamic range is limited, often resulting in shadows losing detail. Overall, these shots could benefit from more fine detail and sharper focus, especially around the edges.
The third lens is the 50MP telephoto zoom sensor that offers clean, sharp, and detailed photos in 2x optical zoom mode. The color temperature of images taken in daylight is warm, and the zoom camera also goes easy on the exposure part. There are options to click photos in 5x and 20x zoom modes as well, but this is digital zoom. Further, there are various filters available for all three sensors, which can be used to make photos look aesthetic and fun.
As for selfies, the 50MP sensor clicks good ones. The selfies are detailed and sharp, and they capture even the minor details of human faces. There are three toggles (0.8x, 1x, and 2x) for selfies, but it is still a single sensor working with different crops. If you are a social media enthusiast, you will find various filters and effects useful. Otherwise, the selfies look natural, detect accurate skin tones, and capture emotions well. Even in low-light conditions, the selfie camera performs well.
AI Studio is a fun place that allows you to turn any of your photos in the gallery into a digital avatar of your choice. There are hundreds of looks to choose from, both for male and female users. Also, there is a group option available, which offers a couple of photo options. You can choose any of your photos and turn them into styles like school, professional, futuristic, playful, wedding, travel, featured western, workwear, or cartoons.
Oppo is offering 5000 diamonds for free, and since you need 10 of them for one single generation, you can easily create 500 avatars for free. The only downside is that, since this is a cloud-based AI model, it takes quite a bit of time to generate the avatars. There are occasional freezes where you have to backtrack and view it in a fresh column or drop an extra 10 diamonds to get things moving.
AI Best Face stands out as a game-changer. It was able to detect closed eyes in my photos and correct them so that my photos were perfect. Unsurprisingly, this feature only works in group photos of three or more people.
AI Clear Face is another AI feature that detects the number of people when you use a selfie camera and switches to optimization mode. Once you click a selfie, you can edit it in your album and use AI Clear Face to enhance facial details for up to ten people.
AI Eraser 2.0 saves your photos from being ruined by unwanted people or objects in the frame. You can remove people or objects, that you don’t want, from your photos using the AI eraser.
Natural Tone allows a more realistic capture of skin tone and lighting effects in selfies, while AI Portrait Retouching allows you to toggle between 0.8x, 1x, and 2x for perfect shots and also corrects face sharpness, cheekbones, and more.
Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G Review – Battery Life and Charging
The Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G packs a 5000mAh battery under the hood. With moderate to heavy usage, the battery still lasted an entire day. It included gaming, watching videos, listening to music, calling, chatting, and more. I had to plug it in for charging only at the end of the day.
The battery comes with 80W wired fast charging support. This flash charging capability recharged the battery from 0 to 100% in about 50 minutes. This means you won’t even need half an hour to get 50% power backup, which is great.
Review Verdict: Should You Buy the Oppo Reno 12 Pro 5G 5G?
Smartprix Rating: 7.6/10
Design and Build:
Display and Speakers
Software & AI
Performance
Camera
Battery Life and Charging
8/10
7.7/10
7.5/10
7/10
7.5/10
8/10
Overall, the OPPO Reno12 Pro 5G has a stylish dual-tone design along with a light and sleek build. It has a quad-curve display and a new Dimensity 7300-Energy chipset with up to 512 GB of storage—its AI features are what make it stand out from the crowd. The OPPO Reno12 Pro’s biggest USP is its design and its load of AI features, which are more extensive than anything you will find in this price segment.
Yes, there are some niggles, like pre-installed apps and not-so-impressive gaming performance, but if you’re looking for a stylish smartphone with some impressive AI features and cameras, then the OPPO Reno12 Pro is a good deal for you. However, if you’re looking for a smartphone that can do hardcore gaming or is heavy on performance, then you might want to look at the realme GT 6, Xiaomi 14 CIVI, or even the upcoming Honor 200.
First reviewed in July 2024.
