Unboxing and Quick Verdict: OPPO’s leaning into the tough and ready section of the market with their new A5 Pro 5G. Backed with a beautiful exterior, tough interior and a large battery, the OPPO hopes their new budget mid-range toughie can make a dent in a very competitive market.

Pros:

• IP69 rating
• Great-looking back
• Military grade-shock resistance
• Big battery

Cons:

• Still uses an LCD display
• Questionable processor of choice

Durability is the current smartphone meta for budget devices in the Philippines for 2025, it seems, and the brands are all pulling out their chosen champions to do battle in the budget and mid-range market. OPPO’s latest offering is the A5 Pro 5G, sporting a classy, aesthetic back but tough innards plus massive battery. It does come with a few concessions to cost though, including an LCD display, and we’re still not sure how the downgrades are going to play with the local market once it officially drops.

OPPO A5 Pro 5G Philippines: Design

OPPO’s been on a roll when it comes to making pretty, affordable smartphones, and the A5 Pro 5G is no exception. The phone comes in multiple colorways and materials, from the usual plastic back, to the faux Olive Green, to the glass-looking (but still plastic) Flower Pink colorway that we have, which has color shifting elements that react to the angle of light.

The phone uses a mostly boxy design for the sides and back, with rounded corners being the only nod to added ergonomics. The phone is supposedly a budget device, but it doesn’t look or feel like one, at least from the back.

Like we mentioned earlier, the phone has an IP69 rating, which is becoming more and more common on cheaper phones. Once just a feature reserved for higher-end devices, the IP69 rating means your phone is safe from water and dust ingress, and can stay submerged for 30 minutes in water as deep as 1.5 meters.

OPPO’s also proud to announce that the phone sports military grade-shock resistance, which is done via adding tougher tempered glass protection on the display (which nets it 160% increase in protection supposedly), as well as high strength AM04 aluminum alloy in the phone’s motherboard cover so components and solders don’t get rattled or popped when the phone is handled roughly.

OPPO A5 Pro 5G Philippines: Display

One of the things that I’m a little concerned about is the display of the A5 Pro 5G. It’s a 6.67-inch LCD panel running at 120Hz refresh rate with a 1604 x 720 resolution. That’s a little over HD+ resolution, and while it’s a perfectly decent LCD panel, it’s a little out of place for a phone that’s as expensive as the A5 Pro 5G, considering most phones past the Php 10K mark already come with brighter, and better-looking OLED panels.

The bright side here is that the phone has a Corning Gorilla Glass 7i layer to make it even more resistant to drops, but again at the price point it’s tough to accept a phone that’s still rocking an LCD panel.

Because of that, the fingerprint scanner is embedded in the power button, since there’s not a way to put an on-screen fingerprint scanner if you’re using an LCD display.

OPPO A5 Pro 5G Philippines: Cameras

The rear of the phone might look like it holds two cameras, but it’s only just one – a 50-megapixel f/1.8 aperture lens, backed up by a 2-megapixel monochrome lens.

We haven’t tried the cameras of the phone, but OPPO has a good track record of providing their phones with capable sensors, though we’ll have to fully test out the device and its cameras to render a final verdict.

OPPO A5 Pro 5G Philippines: Processor, software, battery

The OPPO A5 Pro 5G comes armed with a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The new processor is mostly made for budget devices, and as it stands, posts meh benchmark numbers.

It’s enough to get you by most basic tasks like doing social media or light gaming, but the chip isn’t really for heavy gaming or anything computationally intensive.

The OPPO A5 Pro 5G also gets access to a number of OPPO’s AI tools, including AI Portrait Retouching when taking photos, AI unblur, reflection remover and AI eraser, a feature that’s usually only made available on more expensive smartphones.

Battery-wise the phone packs a large 5800mAh battery as well as fast charging via the 45W SuperVOOC charger included in the package.

OPPO A5 Pro 5G Unboxing, Quick Review: Wrap-up and Initial Verdict

OPPO’s trying to offer a tough, attractive smartphone that has a pretty exterior and an impressive set of software tools powered by AI in the A5 Pro 5G. Unfortunately, it’s going up against stiff competition from HONOR as well as Xiaomi, especially since the phone has a sticker price of Php 15,999, quite steep considering the specs.