So Tecno has that’s been in the market for what, 2 weeks? Yeah, the biggest selling point, at least as far as the publicity campaigns the Chinese brand has engaged in are concerned, is its 18:9 display. This is the first time that Tecno is doing so on any of its smartphones and by that, the CM now has the distinction of being Tecno’s first smartphone with an 18:9 display.
However, in the grand scheme of things, the CM’s launch last month came just weeks after another smartphone, the OPPO F5, became the first budget smartphone to become officially available in the Kenyan market with the said feature. Okay, that is if you ignore the many copycats to Samsung’s flagship devices that the likes of Hotwav have flooded the market with for over half a year now.
In the coming few days (mid-February), OPPO will be on our radar once again as it parades yet another budget device with an 18:9 display, the OPPO A83. This will be much cheaper than the F5 from last year in keeping with the company’s tradition of reserving the A series for its entry-level products.
The OPPO A83 will be a successor to the A71 which started selling in the local market last October for almost Kshs 20,000. There’s a caveat to this assertion, though. Being a successor to the A71 depends on where you are speaking from. For us in Kenya, that’s kind of true. For the rest of the world, not so much. There was an A73 that debuted in some markets like Singapore, China and Australia last year. Locally, we referred to that device model as the F5 Youth. Looking at the Youth’s pricing when it became available vis-à-vis that of the A71, that relationship somehow makes sense.
Other than the 1440 x 720 pixel-display, the other big draws to the OPPO A83 will be the decision to bring some of the notable features of its pricier siblings in the F5 family to the entry level. Yes, the A83 will also have the upgraded facial recognition experience found on the F5 as well as the latter’s Artificial Intelligence smarts.
Of course, you don’t expect us to have the pricing details at this moment but once we have them, so will you.
