Review Verdict: The A98 is an average mid-range phone from OPPO that is an upgrade over last year’s A96. It’s a sleek phone overall, but its pricing places the A98 in a tough spot with its competitors. 

Pros

-Decent gaming performance

-One of the better IPS displays in its segment

-Great battery life

Cons

-No ultra-wide camera

-On the pricey side

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Design

You’d probably mistake the A98 for a Reno8 T 4G, and we don’t blame you: Both have similar back panel designs, though you get a conventional polycarbonate material on the A98. Our review unit is in Dreamy Blue, which has a gradient design that’s typical of OPPO phones. You get a matte finish on the A98, so smudges should not be an issue with this phone.

Aside from being bigger than the Reno8 T 4G, the A98 employs a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. This means that you get an IPS display instead of an AMOLED one–more on that later.

The button and port layout of the A98 is typical of what you see on a mid-range OPPO device: volume controls on the left side, USB-C port and headphone jack on the bottom, and a pair of stereo speakers–with the earpiece doubling as a speaker.

 

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Display and speakers

The A98 uses a 6.72-inch IPS display with a 120hz refresh rate. If the panel sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same one you’d find on the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. It is one of the better IPS panels we have tried, with its maximum brightness being good enough for outdoor viewing. The A98 also has a dynamic refresh rate option that allows for changing refresh rate depending on the app you are using to balance smoothness and battery life.

While the A98’s bezels are not the thinnest in its class, OPPO did use a high-quality panel here–again, the same as what you’d find on the OnePlus Nord CE 3 Lite. Viewing angles are great, and the colors do pop out like you’re viewing on an AMOLED display. The A98 has Widevine L1, so all of your Netflix streams are in Full HD.

Following the trend of other mid-range phones, the A98 features stereo speakers, along with a headphone jack at the bottom. The overall sound quality is average, and that’s because the second speaker is in the earpiece. The sound quality could have been better if OPPO used a dedicated space for the second speaker instead.

 

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Cameras

The A98’s triple rear camera setup consists of a 64-megapixel main camera, 2-megapixel microscope camera, and a 2-megapixel mono camera.

OPPO keeps its 2-megapixel camera unique with the microscope feature. While this is a very niche feature, it’s nonetheless fun to use.

The 64-megapixel main camera takes decent shots with good lighting, with details being well-preserved. While the A98’s low-light performance is okay, it sometimes struggles with toning down highlights from light sources.

While the A98 does not have an ultra-wide camera, OPPO relies on the 2x digital zoom feature of the main camera. Unlike other more affordable mid-range phones we’ve tested, the A98’s digital zoom feature is a hit-or-miss in terms of image quality. You’ll need good lighting to make good use of the A98’s 2x digital zoom.

Selfies with the A98’s 32-megapixel shooter are average, with the best image quality evident with good lighting. While it can take good selfies in low-light situations, you will need a steady pair of hands for a blur-free shot.

 

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Internals and Battery Life

The A98 is equipped with a familiar setup for the internals: Snapdragon 695, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, and 256GB UFS 2.2 internal storage. We’ve seen this setup on a number of mid-range phones at the under Php 20k price range, and it’s a fairly balanced combo–especially with the A98 having MicroSD card expansion.

Looking through synthetic benchmarks, it appears that the A98 has a tweaked Snapdragon 695, as its single-core score is higher than phones equipped with the more powerful Snapdragon 778G.

The Snapdragon 695 is a go-to option for most mid-range phones, but it is showing is age especially with some brands using Qualcomm’s newer mid-range chips like the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1. Despite its age, the Snapdragon 695 can run demanding titles like Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact at medium settings with generally smooth gameplay.

Like the majority of mid-range phones in the market, the A98 comes with a 5000mAh with support for 67w SuperVOOC charging, which is a big upgrade over the 33w charging used on the A96. With its charging solution, it takes around 40 minutes to fully top up the A98’s battery. Battery life is excellent on the A98: we got 14 hours and 50 minutes in PCMark’s battery life test with the display set to dynamic refresh rate. That translates to more than a day’s use until you need to charge it.

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Wrap-up and Conclusions

OPPO’s top A-series variant for 2023 is a decent mid-range phone with all it has to offer. However, it faces tough competition with its asking price and lack of optimizations for its main camera. Otherwise, the A98 is a big upgrade over last year’s A96 beyond having 5G connectivity.

 

OPPO A98 Review Philippines: Price

The OPPO A98 5G is priced at Php 18,999.