Lately, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding Infinity Displays and FullView designs we’ve seen on several flagship phones from LG, Samsung, Google, Huawei and Xiaomi, among others.
However these designs might look impressive, getting your hands on any of them will set you back nothing less than Ksh 60,000. I’m talking the LG G6, LG V30, Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+, Galaxy Note 8, Huawei Mate 10, Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 and Google Pixel 2 XL. In fact, we aren’t sure if some of these phones will make it to Kenya and even if they do, they’ll cost you a fortune.
Fortunately, we have Oppo, the Chinese OEM that has been so good at emulating what the big boys are doing in the smartphone business but at more affordable prices. A closer look at most Oppo phones reveals huge design similarities with the iPhone and now that Apple’s iPhone X offers a bezel-less design with a massive 19.5:9 aspect ratio, Oppo is also giving its fans an almost similar treat with two phones – the Oppo R11s and Oppo A73. Our focus is on the latter because so far, the Oppo R series isn’t sold locally.
Not so long ago, Oppo A71 started selling in Kenya priced at Ksh 20,000. If anything, the Oppo A73 should be the successor (or bigger sibling) to the A71 – and you’ll like it. Even though the Chinese OEM has not confirmed the coming of the phone, the official body for certifying smartphones in China, TENAA, has just cleared the Oppo A73 and in so doing, it has also given us a sneak preview of what to expect when the phone is finally unveiled possibly before the end of this year.
The standout feature is the massive 6-inch display screen with no bezels on three sides and 18:9 aspect ratio. As pointed out earlier, this is a feature we’ve gotten used to seeing on flagship phones, but with the Oppo A73, it’s coming to the lower market segment. One interesting bit about this phone is that it has no bezel at all at the bottom, rather, there’s one at the top. Most “bezel-less” phones we’ve seen so far come with either no bezel at all, tiny bezels at the top and bottom, or a tiny bezel at the bottom.
Honestly, I have never understood why Xiaomi Mi MIX (2), for instance, would have a small bezel at the bottom housing the selfie camera, shifting it from the ideal location at the top of the screen. At least Oppo saw this mistake and for me, the approach on the Oppo A73 is much better than Xiaomi’s.
In addition to giving us full views of the Oppo A73 from nearly all angles, the listing on TENAA also sheds some light on the hardware specs. Apparently, the phone will be powered by an octa-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz and mated with 4GB RAM alongside 32GB of expandable storage. As usual with Oppo, the cameras will also take center stage, with the main shooter rocking a 13MP lens while the front gets a 16MP lens.
To keep the phone alive will be a 3115mAh battery, which seems a little smaller compared to the size of the display, but with a Full HD+ resolution and optimizations from Android 7.1.1 Nougat, this should still take you through a full day on a single charge. Due to the new design on the front panel, the Oppo A73 has a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and it will come in black and gold color variants.
As noted earlier, we have no specific release date for the A73, however, when a phone hits TENAA, it usually means that the launch is happening very soon, probably this November.
