Oppo Reno 2 first impressions: Everyone’s got a gimmick now

"Everyone's got a gimmick now," said Falcon when he looked at Spider-Man for the first during the epic airport battle scene in Marvel's Captain America: Civil War. For smartphone companies gimmicks are important, especially because most of them have started to look almost same and offer similar specifications and price. From 'flagship killers' to 'killer notes', these gimmicks don't really translate into any useful feature for users. Oppo's shark fin-like rising pop-up camera is pretty much the same, but then, people seem to like it.

Oppo is sticking to the design with its second generation Reno 2 smartphone which launched in India today. It looked unique when we first used the camera in the original version. Since then there have been several versions of motorised pop-up selfie cameras including Asus 6Z's foldable camera. The rising camera on Reno 2 seems different for the sake of it. Unlike Asus 6Z's there's no manual adjustable features or cool side lighting like Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro. 

Oppo Reno 2 looks pretty much similar to the original Reno which certainly is not negative. The phone has a familiar reflective back panel and edge-to-edge screen on the front. The subtle change is an additional camera sensor on the back - Oppo Reno 2 has four rear cameras with several software-hardware optimisations. From design point of view, a 6.5-inch screen size seems pretty much on par with other large-screen phones in the market. It has an AMOLED display but it's not as impressive as on the premium phones such as Galaxy Note 10+.

Another thing that stood out during our usage of Oppo Reno 2 was the custom OS. The ColorOS appears to be heavily customised. The demo model which we used at the event seemed sluggish. We also tried out the camera of Oppo Reno 2. What we can say for sure is that the image processing has become much better and faster than the older generations. The much advertised hybrid 5x zoom is also quite promising.

At ₹36,990, Oppo Reno 2 is set to compete with the likes of Asus Zenfone 6Z and OnePlus 7. The competing phones are available at a much lower price and offer Qualcomm's top-end Snapdragon 855 processor compared to Oppo's Snapdragon 730G processor. Stay tuned for more insight on Oppo Reno 2's camera and overall performance in our detailed review.

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