Focused on capturing the perfect shot, the Oppo Reno 10 5G is a portrait of the modern camera phone.
Back before smartphones became jack-of-all-trades devices, flagship handsets tended to focus their efforts on the camera. In the era of iOS and Android the term “camera phone” has fallen out of fashion, but it comes to mind when getting to grips with the Oppo Reno 10 5G.
While the Reno 10 5G is a very capable Android handset with a very competitive price tag, the camera is clearly the major selling point – particularly the telephoto portrait lens. If the camera is your highest priority in a smartphone, but you’re shopping on a mid-range budget, the Reno 10 5G is certainly worth a look.
Oppo Reno 10 5G first impressions
With a 6.7-inch display the Oppo Reno 10 5G is quite tall, but thankfully not too wide and cumbersome due to its narrow 20:9 aspect ratio. This ensures that it fits comfortably in your hand, assisted by a lightweight design and bevelled edges which are in part thanks to a slightly curved screen.
The handset features a plastic frame with a shiny faux-metallic finish and a coloured glass back to give it an elegant look and feel. The Ice Blue model features a sparkling, shimmering blue that shifts in the light, or you can opt for the more subtle and sophisticated Silvery Grey.
The power button is on the right, close to the centre of the handset with the volume buttons above, to reduce the risk of it overbalancing in your hand as you reach for the buttons. One trade-off for the size is that the onscreen fingerprint reader is a little low to comfortably access with your thumb. It’s doable, but you might find it easier to unlock the handset with the thumb or pointer finger on your other hand.
Turn the handset over and you’re immediately struck by the Reno 10 5G’s big selling point: the hefty rear camera array. The large top lens is a 64 MP six-piece lens equipped with the Sony IMX709 flagship sensor. It’s worth noting that it’s not a periscope lens, for that you need to step up to the Reno 10 Pro+. The lack of optical image stabilisation is also disappointing for a phone focused on photography.
Below this is a 32 MP telephoto portrait camera lens with 2x optical zoom, designed to deliver professional portrait focal lengths with subtle background blur. It’s accompanied by an 8 MP 112-degree ultrawide-angle lens. The array also supports 2x hybrid optical zoom and 20x digital zoom.
Meanwhile, you’ve got a 32 MP selfie camera at the front, completing your options when it comes to capturing great shots. Oppo has stuck with a punch-hole camera on the front rather than relying on a notch.
Fire up the handset and you’re presented with a bright and vivid 2412×1080 AMOLED display, with 500 nits typical brightness but peaking at 950 nits to make the most of HDR10+ content. It offers 10-bit colour with a 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, along with 120 Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling.
At the bottom, you’ve got a USB-C port, alongside a dual SIM port which can also take a microSD card. There’s no old-school headphone jack, but there is an IR blaster so you can use the handset as an infrared remote.
Oppo Reno 10 5G specifications
| Display size | 6.7-inch, 20:9 aspect ratio |
| Display resolution | FHD+ (2412×1080), 394 PPI |
| Display technology | AMOLED, 10-bit colour |
| Bands | 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G sub-6 |
| Chipset | MediaTek Dimensity 7050 |
| CPU | 8 core |
| GPU | ARM Mail-G68 MC4 |
| Rear cameras | 64MP; f/1.7; FOV 81°; 6P lens; supporting AF; using an open-loop focus motor |
| 32MP; f/2.0; FOV 49°; 6P lens; supporting AF; using an open-loop focus motor | |
| 8MP; f/2.2; FOV 112°; 5P lens, fixed focus | |
| Front camera | 8MP; f/2.2; FOV 112°; 5P lens, fixed focus |
| RAM | 8 GB + 8 GB virtual |
| Onboard storage | 256 GB |
| microSD slot | up to 2 TB |
| Charging | SUPERVOOC 67W, SUPERVOOC 2.0, SUPERVOOC, VOOC 3.0, PD3.0 (9V/2A） |
| Battery | 4870mAh/18.94W |
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax/ac/a/b/g/n WLAN Display; WLAN sharing |
| Bluetooth | 5.3, Bluetooth Low Energy |
| Audio codecs | SBC, AAC, aptx, aptx-HD, LDAC, and LHDC |
| Operating system | Android 13 with ColorOS 13 |
| Security | Fingerprint, Face Unlock |
| Ruggedness | IPX4 |
| Dimensions | 162.43 x 74.19 x 7.99 mm |
| Weight | 185 gm |
| Colours | Ice Blue, Silvery Grey |
| Price | $749 RRP |
| Warranty | 2 years |
| Official website | Oppo Australia |
Features
The Oppo Reno 10 5G runs Android 13, customised with Oppo’s own ColorOS UI. ColorOS adds a range of tweaks including a “shelf” of dropdown widgets, a reconfigured quick settings menu and extra options on the always-on display.
Oppo says the handset will receive three Android OS updates and four years of security patches. ColorOS has a slick look and feel but, like all third-party UIs, it can feel a bit bloated and intrusive if you’re used to stock vanilla Android favoured by some other handset makers.
Under the bonnet, the Reno 10 5G packs the mid-range octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chip accompanied by 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM. You can add another 8G of virtual RAM thanks to Oppo’s Memory Expansion Technology, which lets you temporarily convert some of the onboard storage into RAM.
The handset features stereo speakers, but audiophiles might be more impressed with the great range of Bluetooth codec support including AAC, aptx, aptx-HD, LDAC and LHDC.
As the name suggests, it’s a 5G handset but, like most handsets, it only supports sub-6 5G bands and not the faster millimetre wave 5G networks.
The Reno 10 5G packs a generous 5000 mAh battery which should easily be able to go more than 24 hours before recharging if you don’t push it too hard. When you do need to top up, it can take advantage of 67-watt SUPERVOOC wired charging, using the chunky supplied AC charger, which takes roughly 47 minutes to get to 100 per cent charge.
There’s no support for wireless charging, which is a bit of a surprise at this price point, but it’s a compromise that people might be prepared to make in order to gain other improvements such as the camera.
Perhaps more surprising is the IPX4 ruggedness rating, which means it’s splashproof rather than waterproof.
Quality
The GeekBench 6 benchmarks tell an unsurprising story considering the spec sheet, which boasts a mid-range MediaTek powerplant rather than a top-of-the-line Snapdragon. The phone scores 963 on the CPU single-core test and 2444 on multi-core, along with a GPU OpenCL benchmark of 2387.
This falls short compared to similarly priced rivals like the Google Pixel 7a and Samsung A54 5G. That said, it’s still more than enough grunt to cope with day-to-day tasks, especially with 8 GB of RAM at hand.
When it comes to photography, the camera makes a good first impression but, if you’re a stickler for image quality, you might nit-pick the results compared to rivals considering that it’s pitching itself as a camera-centric phone.
The main rear 64 MP lens certainly holds its own, producing sharp and vivid images that rarely look over-processed. Likewise with the ultrawide 8 MP lens. They cope well with difficult lighting conditions, but can sometimes leave things looking a bit soft – such as losing some of the detail in white clouds floating across a bright blue sky.
Thanks to the 2x hybrid optical zoom and 20x digital zoom, zooming in to 5x on a tree in the distance still produces decent results but the full 20x is pretty average, as you’d expect from digital zoom.
Turning to low light conditions, the results are respectable but perhaps with a little more noise and a little less detail than you might hope for.
When it comes to portraits, which is the phone’s big selling point, that 32 MP telephoto portrait camera lens with 2x optical zoom gives you a lot of flexibility. It lets you capture tight portrait photos without getting right up in someone’s face, although the background blur effect suffers slightly at 2x zoom.
Unfortunately, like many Android phones, the Oppo Reno 10 5G is too aggressive when it comes to automatically retouching portraits and selfies in an effort to beautify people. Retouching is dialled up to 40 per cent by default, which can leave people looking a tad fake and plastic – which admittedly is the look that some people want in their portraits and selfies.
Disable retouching and the results improve, looking a lot more lifelike. Those with an eye for detail might note that the skin tones and tiny details still don’t always look as natural as they could, particularly from the selfie camera.
Who is the Oppo Reno 10 5G for?
The Oppo Reno 10 5G is a respectable handset, with a premium look, vibrant display, fast charging and enough grunt for everyday tasks. That said, weighing up the price tag against the spec sheet, it really doesn’t stand out from the crowd.
Considering the tight competition in the mid-range Android space, you really need to be making the most of that 32 MP telephoto portrait camera to justify favouring the Reno 10 5G over its rivals. If you tend to reach for your phone because you want to capture the moment, then the Reno 10 5G deserves a place on your shortlist.
Which makers have the ‘stock vanilla Android favoured by some other handset makers’?
Exactly what I want, Oppo make a phone, don’t need or want the bloat.