Introduction

a list that is not all-inclusive of the devices in the Oppo Reno7. The Reno 7 proper is the one we have for you today and has the blandest of names.

There are no other names, and the lack of 5G in the term implies that there is no next-generation connectivity, which is true. Despite its lite moniker, the Reno 7 Lite supports 5G, but aside from that, it has a lot in common with this 4G-only phone’s genetic makeup. The Essentials is the same device as the Reno 7 and is offered in India under the F21pro brand name, thus the conclusions drawn here should also be applicable to that device. Just be careful not to confuse it with the F21pro 5G, which is the Reno 7 Lite’s other name. If we were able to resolve the issue, that’s excellent; if not, Oppo can easily take the fall.

Although the Reno 7’s spec doesn’t sound particularly thrilling, it is nonetheless reasonably nicely furnished. You get a 90Hz OLED panel, 8GB RAM, and at least 128GB of storage, and although though it doesn’t support 4K video recording, the snapdragon 680 should still be strong enough.

A dedicated “microscope” camera with a ring light may make up for the absence of an ultra-wide unit, which is still arguably more significant in terms of the camera experience. The 64MP primary camera is standard fare, and the 32MP selfie camera is a favourite.

Although the ColorOS unduly stood at 12, our team likes that the Reno 7 runs on Android 12. Most other non-flagship Oppo/Realme’s we’ve seen this year were still running on Android 11. The 6.43-inch display and 6nm chipset sound like a good match for the 4,500mAh battery, and the 33W fast charging should result in rather quick top-ups, though setting speed records is out of the question.

Oppo Reno 7 Specs

Body: dimensions are 159.9×73.2×7.5mm, weight is 175 grammes, and IPX4 water resistance is provided. The front is protected by Gorilla Glass 5.

Display: 6.43″ AMOLED, 90Hz, 430 typ., 600 typ., 800 typ., 1080x2400px, 20:9 aspect ratio, 409 ppi.

Chipset: Octa-core (4×2.4GHz kryo 265 Gold & 4×1.9GHz kryo 265 Silver) Qualcomm SM6225 snapdragon 680 4G (6nm); Adreno 610

Memory: UFS2.2; microSDXC; 128GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.

OS/Software: ColorOS 12.1, Android 12.

REAR camera : 64MP, f/1.7, 26mm, 1/2.0″, 0.7mm, PDAF for wide (main); 2MP, f/3.3, for macro (microscope); and 2MP, f/2.4 for depth.

Front camera : 24mm (wide), 1/2.74″, f/2.4, 32MP, and 0.8mm.

Video recording : Gyro-EIS, 1080p At 30 fps, on both the front and rear cameras.

Batter: 4,500mAh; 33W Reverse Charging; Fast Charging.

Misc: optical fingerprint sensor, 3.5mm Jack, and RGB ring light surrounding the camera (notifications, charging progress).

Unboxing of Oppo Reno 7

Our Reno 7 review unit arrive in a phone-only state – sometimes we get a suitcase full of accessories, sometimes it’s like this. But the retail box of Reno 7s do ship with a 33W adapter to match the phones specs, as well as the cable Ringo with it. A protective case also included in the box.

Design

The Reno 7 that we are reviewing takes us back a few years and is similar to the Find X2 pro. While the shapes and colours are off, the find reference is still there on the Reno in this sunset orange colorway, which also features a faux leather back and a frame that looks like gold.

Glass-fiber leather Oppo calls it, and they’ve tested a 200,000 unit in a lab for denim friction resistance. scuffs up jeans? Although a strange metric, the rear panel is nice to hold and won’t attract fingerprints.

Although we haven’t really seen the Cosmic Black version, it appears to have that glitter effect when exposed to intense light, and we enjoy that.

Reno 7 is IPX4 rated, whether it’s Cosmic or Sunset. The 4 indicates it should be okay in case of a water splash, so maybe don’t leave it on the table while you’re kneading that pizza dough. The X indicates it has no rating for dust resistance.

The design of the camera island is quite distinctive, with the two-tone colour scheme emphasising the usable cameras. While using the keyboard, at least, it doesn’t wobble despite being rather a sizable bump.

The ring light surrounding the microscope camera on the Reno 7 is a special feature that is somewhat of an outcome of the camera configuration. When photographing up close, it will not only illuminate your subject, but it can also serve as a notification light and a charge status indicator.

Although the frame of the Reno 7 may remind us of the Find, it actually looks completely different. One drawback is that it’s made of plastic, yet handling it doesn’t seem cheap despite this. More importantly, even though the Reno may be thin as a whole, it is flat, providing sufficient of surface area for gripping, making it simple to pick up the handset from a table.

Oppo quotes 7.54mm for the sunset edition and 7.49mm for the cosmic version as the device’s thickness. The Reno 7 has a respectably small footprint (159.9×73.2mm) and isn’t overly heavy (175 grammes). It is really pleasant to hold due to its size, form, and materials, something not all mid-range can say about their products.

The volume buttons (two discrete ones as opposed to rockers) are on the left, while the power button is on the right, according to Oppo, who claims the left-right separation invite controls placement too-ups. All three click responses were quite favourable.

The best application of the card slot is seen on Reno 7’s left side, where two nano SIM slots and a micro SD card can be inserted simultaneously.

Unexpectedly, the phone features an audio jack or 3.5mm jack at the bottom. It is accompanied by the standard speakers, USB-C port, and microphone.

A microphone is also located at the top of the phone.

If you’ll pardon the comparison, the 6.43-inch OLED display on the front of the Reno 7 is encircled by a black frame of mid-grade quality. It’s not insignificant per such, and the chin is thicker than the rest of it, but the quantity of the bezels isn’t in any way unsettling.

The selfie camera is visible through a cutout in the display’s upper left corner, while the earpiece is hidden behind a grille. The gorilla glass 5 that protects the panel itself should be rather durable on its own, but Oppo is also developing a screen for added peace of mind.

The optical under-display fingerprint sensor on the Reno 7 is positioned fairly low on the device. The less-than-ideal posture is less of an issue due to the broader chin and reasonable overall dimensions, and after a brief period of getting to know one another, utilising it becomes second nature.

Overall, the Reno 7 is user-friendly and easy on the eyes. Size and weight are also on the low end of the spectrum, which we see as an advantage in a world of excessively large phones, and the sunset orange colorway both deters fingerprints and looks good in the process.

Display

The Oppo Reno 7 has a 6.43-inch OLED display, which is the same size and technology as the majority of the Reno 7 series (the Reno 7 pro 5G stands out with a 6.55-inch panel). The screen features a 20:9 aspect ratio and a 1080×2400 pixel resolution for a 409ppi pixel density.

The refresh rate of the 6.43-inch Reno models varies; for instance, the Reno 7 genuine goes up to 90Hz whereas the Reno Lite is limited to 60Hz. Oppo also makes a peculiar distinction between a touch sampling rate of 120Hz for 5 fingers and 180Hz for 2 fingers.

The 6.43-inch Reno 7s are all comparable in terms of brightness, ranging from 430 nits in normal conditions to 600 nits in ambient lighting. Oppo’s claims are not unfounded because the Vanilla Reno 7 achieved 439 nits when the slider was operated manually and 624 nits when the boost was automatically triggered. For whatever reason, the Reno 7 Lite and Reno 7 5G are still slightly brighter than the Xiaomi and Samsung mid-range, which can push 150 to 200 nits more in auto brightness mode.

There are two colour reproduction settings available, neither of which is very accurate. While Natural is more subdued and sRGB-focused, Vivid mode provides provide vivid colours and a wide colour range, targeting the DCI-P3 colour space. We obtained an average dE2000 of about 5 for each mode for the corresponding test pattern, and the grayscale range between the two modes was rendered identically blue. The average numbers only slightly improved when the warm colours temperature preset was chosen, but the grayscale still couldn’t get very accurate, only shifting towards red/pink.

Despite the odd HDR checker app reporting HDR10, Oppo wasn’t mentioned as supporting HDR on the Reno 7/F21pro spec pages, and we received no HDR streams from any of the well-known platforms like YouTube, Netflix, or Amazon Prime Videos. Because Widevine L1 is certified, FullHD streams are available to you.

The Reno 7’s High refresh rate implementation is the same as the Reno 7 5G’s, and it’s very simple (not that we’d expect anything different). The objects are locked at 60Hz in the standard setting, which has two modes: high. The High setting will give you 90Hz in all compatible apps and throughout the user interface, but it will drop to 60Hz in video playback apps, games, the camera viewfinder, and Google Maps after a short period of inactivity.

Battery life

The Reno 7 has a 4,500mAh battery, which is a fairly respectable amount given the chipset/display combination and has the same capacity as the rest of the family. Indeed, this outfit provided us with outstanding endurance.

We used the Wi-Fi connection for around 17 hours total. Although our testing software had to run the test with the display operating at 60Hz because the phone wouldn’t support 90Hz, the result is still respectable. The video playback time of 21:28 hours (also at 60 Hz) is excellent, and the 33 hours of phone calls are also excellent.

When standby performance is taken into account, the Oppo Reno 7 achieves a good overall endurance rating of 127h.

Charging speed

As we’ve already mentioned, the Reno 7 review unit didn’t come with a full retail box, but it did come with a 33W charger that matches the one that comes with the phone.

With that one, we set the time for a full charge to take place from zero to one hour and ten minutes, and the battery was halfway full at that point. Although more expensive versions from both brands can charge more quickly, these are exactly the same results we saw with the Reno 7 Lite and the Realme 9 pro.

Speaker

The Reno 7 has a single, powerful speaker that emerges through a three-slot grille at the bottom of the phone.

For loudness, the phone received the same Average score as the Reno 7 5G and the Reno 7 Lite. The 5G version and the vanilla Reno 7 have very similar tones. clear vocals, well-defined treble, but still lacking low-end rumble. The lite stays a little louder and leans a little more toward the mid-tones.

Software

The Reno 7 proper stands out from the rest of the Reno 7 family in a positive way. It debuted with Android 12, unlike the others, however that distinction is mainly made up for by a constant layer of ColorOS on top. However, the new core OS version does include several new core functionality that are not included in builds based on Android 11.

Key among the new privacy features in Android 12. Your central resource for learning which rights have been given to which apps and when they have been utilised is the privacy dashboard. Another new privacy-focused option you get for apps that request that permission is precise or approximative locations. In the quick toggles section, you can add toggles for universally restricting camera and microphone access. When either of the twins is actively being used, a status bar icon appears.

The Oppo Reno 7 has unique features, and there are a few other models in the lineup (they incorporated slightly different middle to model) that have brighter backlighting. Another application for the ring light that surrounds the microscope camera is as a status indicator for notifications, calls, and active charging. The majority of us don’t, however, so we might not be aware of all the features.

The UI’s exterior resembles that of the other colorOS 12 smartphones. We already had an app drawer, but you can also choose a single-tiered, everything-on-the-homescreen style. Standard notification shading is used, and the quick toggles by default have an Oppo green accent colour (there is also an auto-brightness switch in there). In that you have side-scrollable vertical cards, the recent applications menu is a standard approach. To make navigation easier, Oppo’s vibrant icons are used in the main settings panel.

performance and benchmarks

The Snapdragon 680 chipset, a modest mid-range SoC that prioritises durability over performance, powers the Reno 7. It has an octa-core CPU in a 4+4 configuration with cores from the Cortex-A73 and Cortex-A53 architecture (4×2.4GHz + 4×1.9GHz). Oppo is very generous with memory, and the Reno 7 has 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The GPU is an Adreno 610.

All competing chipset have more potent cores in their performance clusters, even if it’s only two of them, thus the Reno 7 quickly reveals its lack of ambition in the performance sector by scoring notably poorly in the single-core test in Geekbench.

Under multi-core loads, there is a more even distribution; the multi-core score is 1653 while the single-core score is 380. The Reno 7 places similarly poorly on AnTuTu with a score of 289250, but it does edge out the Galaxy A23 in this area.

The Adreno 610 is a perfect fit for that understated CPU, and the graphics benchmarks show a similar distribution of power; the Reno 7 doesn’t pose a danger to any significant rival.

In addition to their efficient energy usage, lower-end chipsets also offer stable performance. The Reno 7 doesn’t have a lot of power, but it consistently produces good results. For the most part, at least. After 50 minutes of a full-power CPU throttling test, we noticed a slight hiccup, but it was not particularly concerning.

Camera

There are units in the Reno 7’s fairly unique camera system. The primary camera is an ordinary 64MP device with nothing unusual about it. Even though the 2MP depth sensor is practically nonexistent, it is still a pretty common option. The third camera—which is actually a “microscope”—is when things start to get a little interesting. This makes the total number of cameras on this phone three at the time, and those are all of them; there is no ultra-wide, which we now take for granted at pretty much any price point.

Returning to the last point, many Reno 7 versions actually do not have an ultra-wide camera, so the basic models’ specifications shouldn’t come as much of a shock. Even so, the Reno 7 could have been significantly more versatile with an inexpensive 8MP camera, but we’re not accountants. It’s important to note that the Reno 7 Lite lacks an ultra-wide camera as well.

Additionally, it lacks a microscope, whereas the Reno 7 (also known as the F21 Pro, since we were there) does. The GalacyCore GC02M1 sensor, which is a tiny 2MP 1/5 device with 1.75mm pixels and is mounted behind an f/3.3 lens, is not overly spec’d. Only a few mm separate the subject from the camera housing, and focus is fixed.

The main camera is brought across. It has a 26mm equivalent lens with an f/1.7 aperture and a 64MP OmniVision OV64B sensor (1/2.0 optical format, 0.7MP pixels). According to what we can tell, the main camera is found on at least five of the Reno 7 and probably many more mid-range smartphones.

Another well-liked piece of equipment is available for selfies: a 32MP Sony IMX 709 sensor (1/2.74″, 0.8mm, Quad-Bayer). It is coupled with a fixed-focus, f/2.4 aperture lens.

The camera app is unchanged since the switch to Android 12 and is identical to what we saw on the Reno 7 5G and Reno 7 Lite. Simple to use; the microscope mode may be reached through the More sub-menu, while the primary camera modes are displayed in a standard carousel configuration. On the viewfinder, there are two zoom toggles: one for the primary 1x mode and one for the 2x zoom, which is still sourced from the primary camera.

On top of the viewfinder are the standard HDR and AI mide controls. You can choose from shutter speeds as slow as 32s and ISO settings as high as 6400 in the pro mode, which also offers a histogram. Grid lines, geotagging, and a toggle for the shutter sound are all available in the settings menu.

Daylight image quality

The Reno 7s’s main camera—which is also its lone camera—takes good daylight images that are suitable for the class. The 16MP photos are created very organically and have a tonne of detail. However, there is an abnormally high amount of grain in them; it is not unpleasant, but it is noticeable. Although the dynamic range isn’t very great, it’s adequate enough to not be a problem. The colors, on the other hand, are very appealing; they’re neither garish nor boring. Additionally, we had a reliable white balance, which prevented any weird colour cast.

Although there isn’t a dedicated camera for the 2x zoom button in the viewfinder, the main camera still achieves some impressive results. Even at the pixel level, the images are extremely detailed and appear to be coming from a stand-alone 16MP tele. They’re not perfect, and you might occasionally see soft photos or details rendered in a jagged manner, but overall they deliver excellent zoom performance for a phone without a zoom camera.

As opposed to upscaling 16MP photos to 64MP like some other budget phones do, the 64MP option does seem to be arriving at the full resolution by demosaicking. With these well-lit daylight scenarios, you can capture more detail than in 16MP, but the images are typically much noisier.

Lowlight photo quality

The Reno 7 isn’t operating at peak efficiency in dim light. The dynamic range is somewhat limited, with particularly poor highlights and excessively black shadows. Although there is a lot of noise, the detail can be considered to be acceptable in areas with sufficient light for the phone to function. When images are generally underexposed and the highlights are blown to white, colours still retain their saturation well, but there are fewer of them.

The dramatic difference introduced by night mode makes the tonal development much more endearing. Highlights are rendered much more accurately, and where there was once a blob of white, there is now detail. Though it’s not as pronounced, the shadows also receive a slight nudge. One drawback of night mode is that detail becomes a little softer.

Low-light photographs are merely just usable at a 2x zoom. Use of Night Mode and examination above the level of the screen’s capability is advised.

Microscope camera

The Reno 7’s microscopic camera is incredible. Since you must be a very precise distance from your subject in order to have it in focus, millimetres, the shooting procedure requires some getting used to. Additionally, because the depth of field is so narrow at this focus distance, even the smallest motions will have an impact on how crisp your pictures are.

Due to the phone’s ability to shoot 1,200×1,200px square images, the 2MP nominal resolution is really reduced to 1.44MP. The native magnification, which is labelled 15x in the viewfinder, is one of two. Although there aren’t many pixels, it has decent per-pixel detail and lets you take pictures of things a regular camera wouldn’t be able to. It’s nice as a novelty and might even be kind of useful, for instance, if you need to check the supply setup for your display.

Things begin to appear too soft as a result of the upscaling introduced by the 30x magnification.

Portrait mode

Despite the occasional error, like the clipped ear in the first instance, subject identification in portrait mode is generally reliable. The third picture’s ambiguous depiction of the hair is nothing important, and it is typically corrected by taking additional pictures. It might be natural to tone down the blur level a bit, but this is a minor quibble.

selfie camera

Selfies taken with the Reno 7 are ok; they are stored at the nominal 32MP resolution, but they lack the detail to demonstrate this. We surmise that they were originally 8MP binned photographs that were then upscaled to 32MP and sharpened vigorously. However, they would undoubtedly produce superbly sharp 8MP or 12MP images. The majority of the time, colours are true, if not overly exuberant.

video recording

The maximum resolution and frame rate for video recording on the Reno 7 is 1080p at 30 frames per second. Although 1080p files are enormous when using h.264 and a bit rate of 20 mbps, which is already rather high for this mode, it does not have stabilisation in this top option and also allows you to encode your film using the h.265 standard for lesser file size.

Pro And Cons