You may never heard of the Oppo, but they are currently the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. As is the case with other top five entrants Huawei and Xiaomi, they are a Chinese manufacturer that has grown extremely quickly in recent years. Oppo is officially launching in South Africa and will bring a significant range of phones to the local market.
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The first device that Oppo will launch in South Africa is the A72, a device that is meant to deliver “the best blend of premium features,” according to the company. It has “large main camera sensors, big, crisp displays and long-lasting, fast charging batteries, but at an affordable price.”
The Oppo A72 as mid-range specs but with aesthetically pleasing colours and design. Of course, this class of device is extremely saturated in the South African market, so it will have to stand out from the crowd to be successful in the competitive market.
The A72 has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 chipset, coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of expandable storage. It runs Android 10 out of the box but will shortly be updated to Android 11, which is paired with Oppo’s software skin called ColorOS. It has a 5,000mAh battery with 18W fast-charging support.
The display is a 6.5-inch Full-HD+ (1080×2400 pixels) LCD display with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and it has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor.
According to Oppo, they will also launch the A53S and A15 in South Africa, which are more affordable than the A72.
The Oppo A72 will be sold in South Africa for R7,000. Taking a glance at the spec sheet gets us relatively excited to get our hands on the device, as it could offer decent competition at this price point.
We’re not sure which other devices the company will launch in the country, but we can assume that we will be getting most of their mid-range affordable devices, as this has been their strategy when launching in other countries. As consumers, we all are set to benefit from more competition so we welcome the move.
