Review Verdict: At just a hair under Php 10K, the OPPO A55 gives budget-conscious photographers a solid choice for a camera phone in the Philippines.

Pros

• Excellent front and rear cameras
• Long-lasting battery

Cons

• Generic design, hard to distinguish from other A series smartphones
• Unimpressive display
• Underpowered processor

OPPO A55 Review Philippines Specs

• MediaTek MT6765G Helio G35
• 4GB RAM
• 64GB 
• 6.51-inch HD+ (1600 x 720) IPS display, 269 PPI, 60hz refresh rate
• Triple Rear Camera: 50 MP f/1.8 26mm (main); 2 MP f/2.4 (macro); 2 MP f/2.4 (bokeh)
• Selfie Camera: 16 MP f/2.0 26mm
• LTE, 4G
• WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, side-mounted fingerprint scanner
• 5,000mAh battery
• 18w fast charging
• Android 11, ColorOS 11.1

The OPPO A55 is a phone that should be on every budget photographer’s Christmas list thanks to its performance that outshines all other A-series smartphones in terms of camera performance. Unfortunately, the phone’s generic design and underpowered processor make it a hard sell for everyone else.

Unboxing and packaging contents

The box that the OPPO A55 comes in is your standard A-series fare. Written at the front are the brand name and the model, while written at the back are the technical details of the phone.

Inside the box, you have the phone itself, documentation, a SIM ejector tool, USB-C cable, 18W power brick, and a jelly case.

Design

The overall design of the OPPO A55 is unremarkable, especially in Stary Black color. Both the front and the back look very simple and utilitarian, making the phone hard to distinguish VS the glut of phones out in the market today (OPPO’s own products included).

The Triple camera module is tucked on the upper left side of the back, while the OPPO branding is positioned at the lower right corner. As plain as the matte black finish is, it’s still a magnet for fingerprints, making the use of the included jelly case in the box mandatory if you make it your daily driver. 

At the front, bezels are hardly noticeable as they are pretty thin. Even the earpiece is stealthy at the center-top corner. 

Oddly enough, the OPPO A55 breaks smartphone design convention by placing the volume rocker on the left side (which also holds the SIM tray), with the power/fingerprint unlock button placed on the right. The bottom of the phone holds the pinhole for the microphone, along with the 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C port and speaker grille.

Display

To cut it short, the OPPO A55 doesn’t have anything impressive display-wise. It has a 6.51-inch IPS LCD panel with  HD+ (1600×720) resolution, a 60hz refresh rate, and 269 PPI.

This, however, does not mean that you will not enjoy watching Netflix or Youtube on this device. Despite having an LCD panel, the colors are bright and vibrant, just don’t expect jaw-dropping picture quality. Understandably, features like HDR10+, Widevine L1, and the likes are non-existent in this budget smartphone.

Moreover, this phone has a 3.5mm jack. This means that you can forget all about the crappy single speaker on this phone and plug in your wired cans to get better audio quality.

Cameras

One of the strongest selling points of the OPPO A55 is its camera. At the rear, it has a 50-megapixel AI Camera, a 2-megapixel bokeh camera, and a 2-megapixel macro camera with 5x digital zoom. At the front, it has a 16-megapixel camera with a 360° Fill Light feature that can make your selfie shots brighter.

Unfortunately, despite the high megapixel count, the phone was not able to produce ultra-fine photos. The photos were still decent and presentable, though. Shooting in broad daylight will give you warm and sharp photos while shooting indoors will give you vivid and low-contrast photos. At nighttime, photos turn out a bit grainy yet bright, especially when using night mode.

Check out the sample photos below:

Internals and Battery Life

Powering the OPPO A55 is a MediaTek MT6765G Helio G35 processor, paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. This processor may be a bit outdated but it has no problem dealing with usual tasks such as social media browsing, streaming, video conferencing, and the like. Also, the storage is expandable via the dedicated micro SD card slot.

The processor is also enough to let you enjoy games like League of Legends: Wild Rift at max settings. I was able to play it the whole night without any lag or heating issues. It was smooth as butter. However, when it comes it more demanding games such as Genshin Impact, the phone straight-up struggles — no amount of tweaking the settings could solve the problem.

To be honest, we really wish it had a better processor. The Helio G35 processor in this phone seems like a thing of the past, considering the fact that there are phones with Mediatek Helio G96 in the same price range, such as the Infinix Note 11S. Thankfully, the ColorOS11.1 operating system on this phone, based on Android 11, is straightforward and easy to navigate.

We were able to test the huge 5,000mAh battery using PCMark’s battery benchmark. It took the phone 13 hours and 12 minutes of usage to go down to 20% from a full charge, which is good, but not great. However, charging the phone gets a bit frustrating as the 18W fast charging is not enough. The phone with its huge battery capacity needs more than that.

Wrap up and conclusions

The OPPO A55 has an impressive camera quality and a solid battery for the price. However, those alone are not enough to make it the best budget smartphone. Clearly, other essential qualities are missing, such as a competent display, processor, and more. Nevertheless, it is a good smartphone for those who are after taking quality photos and working on a budget.

OPPO A55 Review Price Philippines

OPPO A55 has a price of Php 9,999 in the Philippines. It is available in all OPPO Brand Stores, online stores, and both e-commerce platforms Shopee and Lazada.