As expected, Oppo took the wraps off its latest A-series smartphones in the country and you can now purchase them starting at Kshs 30,000. Context here is important since you can get Oppo A-series smartphones for much less than that but those won’t be the ones that the company started selling in Kenya last week. The ones from last week include the A98, the A78 and the A58.
According to the company the Oppo A98 is going for Kshs 46,000 (just as we had learned ahead of its official unveiling), the Oppo A78 is going for Kshs 35,000 and it is the A58 that is fetching the entry-level price of Kshs 30,000.
Here’s a quick summary of the three devices’ features and specifications as we had highlighted earlier:
While the three smartphones share the same 6.7-inch Full HD+ display, it is the A98 that gets 120Hz refresh rate, a first for the series. It also happens to be the only device in the series that is getting 5G network connectivity, making it a solid recommendation at its sub-Kshs 50,000 price point which has it competing with the Reno8 T 5G it offered in the local market at the start of the year.
Heck, the Oppo A98 5G (pictured above) even shares the same chipset as that on the Reno8 T 5G’s: the Snapdragon 695 from Qualcomm.
Another standout feature on Oppo smartphones that we not only liked in the Reno10 but have loved on Oppo devices over the years is SuperVOOC fast charging. On its 2023 A series devices, Oppo is bringing it to both the A78 and the A98 at 67W, the same rate that we see in the Reno10 series. That gets one going for up to two and a half hours with a 5-minute top-up. Or 0 to 100% in just three-quarters of an hour. The A58 gets 33W fast charging, something that we have previously seen on an A series device we reviewed: the Oppo A93 back in 2020.
On the camera front, the A98 gets a 64-megapixel main sensor with a pair of 2-megapixel mono and microscope lenses at the back and a 32-megapixel selfie sensor. Both the A78 and the A58 have 50MP main sensors, 2MP backup sensors and 8MP selfie shooters.
In Kenya, Oppo is offering all the three devices with at least 8GB RAM while the A78 and A98 come with 256GB onboard storage right off the box.
The three devices get the same 5,000mAh battery unit and run on ColorOS 13.1 which is based on Android 13. There’s no word on their Android 14 status, now that it is here with us, but, going by our past experience with Oppo smartphones, they should be on course to getting it sometime next year since they are unlikely to benefit from Oppo’s long-term software support.
