After two years of leaving the “value for money” selling point behind in the full-screen market, OPPO has finally made a comeback today with the OPPO A9. The highlights of “6+128GB large memory, 4020mAh large battery life” showcase the advantages of this product; the 16-megapixel dual rear cameras demonstrate its ability to capture both people and scenery effortlessly; and ColorOS 6 offers deeply customized services with rich features for convenient operation. It can be said that the OPPO A9 is not only a unique value-for-money product in the A series but also a king among smartphones priced below 2000 yuan.

This time, we got our hands on this performance powerhouse with a large screen—the OPPO A9—immediately after its release. Below, I will share with you the actual experience of this product.

A Large Screen Rarely Seen in Full-Screen Phones

Since the popularization of full-screen displays, 6 inches has become the standard for various models. Full-screen displays have evolved from mainstream notch screens to the current water drop screens while maintaining the same device size, leading to an increase in screen-to-body ratio, which has shifted users’ focus from “screen-to-body ratio” to “screen size”. Users have developed a strong demand for a phone with a screen larger than 6 inches.

The OPPO A9 does not compromise; while ensuring a high screen-to-body ratio of 90.70%, it also adopts a size of 6.53 inches, making it feel like a small tablet in hand, which is incredibly satisfying whether watching movies or binge-watching shows.

Additionally, the device uses Gorilla Glass 5, which is quite rare for a phone starting at 1399 yuan. This further ensures the screen’s drop resistance.

In terms of the screen, the OPPO A9 features a 1080*2340 full-screen display, with a maximum measured brightness of 480 nits, an NTSC color gamut of 81.5%, and a pixel density of 394ppi. We were pleasantly surprised that these values are all relatively high for this price range.

On the back, the OPPO A9 features a 3D gradient body, with a micro-arc curve that provides a warm grip feel, and weighing 190g, it does not tire the hand even after prolonged use. The vertically arranged camera, flash, fingerprint unlock, along with OPPO’s slogan and logo, are neatly aligned on the back of the OPPO A9. This central axis design ensures the symmetry of the beautiful back, which I personally find very appealing.

Interestingly, the A9 comes in three colors: Mica Green, Fluorite Purple, and Ice Jade White. According to the launch event, the color inspiration for the A9 comes from the natural world, drawing from the purple fluorite, green mica, and white jade. Inspired by gemstone polishing techniques, it reproduces the translucent luster of jade on the phone. Additionally, the ice jade white body is covered with a pearlescent layer to create a flowing light effect.

The A9 I have in hand is in the ice jade white color, and interestingly, whether viewed from afar or up close, it resembles a piece of jade, with a faint translucent green hue inside, reminiscent of the jade’s “white on the outside, green on the inside” characteristic. Overall, the first impression of the OPPO A9’s appearance did not disappoint me. It is not an exaggeration to say that the high screen-to-body ratio, large screen, and 3D gradient color make the OPPO A9 one of the closest flagship designs in the 1399 yuan price range.

Outstanding Photography Effects with 16MP Rear Camera for Detail Control

In terms of photography hardware, the OPPO A9 features a 16MP AI dual rear camera that can create natural bokeh effects and intelligently recognize 22 independent scenes and 416 scene combinations, optimizing for different scenes.

For the front camera, the OPPO A9 inherits OPPO’s legacy of beautiful photography, featuring a 16MP sensor with customizable beauty modes, offering eight options such as face slimming and touch-up. Moreover, the AI can intelligently learn your beauty habits, providing a more natural and personalized beauty solution.

In the camera interface, the OPPO A9 adopts a simple design style, with four buttons at the top for flash, HDR, filters, and settings. The options below only include three: video, photo, and portrait. The left button allows switching between night mode, slow motion, professional, panorama, and time-lapse photography functions, while the right button can toggle beauty settings, including skin smoothing, face slimming, and chin adjustments. Overall, it is somewhat similar to a point-and-shoot camera, requiring minimal operation, allowing for immediate capture.

The vibrant color mode is quite unique and is a relatively rare feature in this price range, having also appeared in the OPPO Rneo flagship. This mode can provide pixel-level color enhancement algorithms for multiple scenes, making your photos more vibrant.

Next, let’s take a look at some sample shots to experience the imaging effects of the OPPO A9.

In normal daylight conditions, the OPPO A9, by enabling the vibrant color mode, further enhances the color performance of the samples, preserving good shadow details whether capturing flowers or tall buildings, resulting in impressive samples.

When shooting close-ups in portrait mode, the OPPO A9 continues OPPO’s excellent performance in bokeh processing, not only highlighting the subject but also managing the bokeh background’s light sources with pleasing effects.

When capturing fruits and vegetables of various colors, although the OPPO A9 has certain differences compared to flagship models, its color reproduction and white balance control are among the best in its price range.

By enabling the Super Clear Night Scene 2.0 mode and shooting in low-light conditions, the OPPO A9’s composite multi-frame noise reduction and HDR technology can achieve noise reduction in night scenes and enhance dynamic range, allowing you to capture good photos without obvious noise and with excellent detail control at night.

Normal Beauty Mode

Portrait Mode

In the front selfie mode, the OPPO A9 showcases its unique selfie capabilities: the person’s face is bright and clear, and on this basis, AI intelligently beautifies the features, while a special algorithm adjusts facial details, keeping the brightness relationship between the person and the background harmonious, making the photo look lively and vibrant, highlighting the product’s strong intelligent optimization level.

MediaTek P70 “Left Hook” Strikes with Flexible Scheduling Mechanism

The OPPO A9 is powered by the MediaTek P70 processor. This processor is positioned in the mid-range smartphone market, with a 12nm process, featuring 4 ARM Cortex-A73 cores (2.5GHz) and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores (2.0GHz), which is very similar to Huawei’s Kirin 960 processor.

From AnTuTu benchmark scores, the MediaTek Helio P70 processor scores as high as 147215 points, with CPU computing power exceeding MediaTek’s flagship processor Helio X30. In Geekbench scores, it achieves a single-core score of 1533 and a multi-core score of 5646, comparable to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 and Samsung’s Exynos 7872 processors.

Exploring CPU Operating Principles

Next, let’s explore the actual operating mechanism of the MediaTek Helio P70 in different working scenarios based on daily use.

1. Low Frequency Operation and Light Load

First, let’s leave the OPPO A7 on the table for a while and use monitoring software to check the activation status of the 4 A73 cores and 4 A53 cores.

MediaTek Helio P70 CPU Performance at Rest

In a state with no programs running, the MediaTek Helio P70 remains relatively quiet, with all eight cores in low-frequency standby, averaging between 780-800MHz, which is a relatively ideal state. Next, let’s test the core activation mechanism while playing online videos.

MediaTek Helio P70 CPU Performance While Playing Videos

When playing online videos, the MediaTek Helio P70 does not consume much energy to cope; our test video is a high-definition video from iQIYI, with frequencies similar to that of a stationary desktop.

2. Large Game Test

It is worth mentioning that the OPPO A9 comes with a gaming space, featuring smooth optimization, network protection, latency improvement, and easy answering features to enhance gaming performance. Additionally, it offers ultra-high-definition graphics mode and ultra-high resolution options for games like “Honor of Kings”, which is quite rare for a device starting at 1399 yuan. As a large online game, all eight cores are fully activated, but the utilization does not exceed the limit, indicating that there is still considerable headroom for running games with larger memory requirements.

When playing “Honor of Kings”, the OPPO A9’s CPU operates at full capacity when running large online games, delivering an extremely smooth experience for players; during two hours of gaming tests, the OPPO A9 maintained a full frame rate of 60 frames and did not experience the forced exits, stuttering, or screen glitches that are relatively common in this price range.

It is evident that the OPPO A9 can smoothly run mainstream large games like “Honor of Kings” and “PUBG” through mainstream hardware and OS optimization.

ColorOS 6 Makes Smooth Operation Even Smoother

The OPPO A9 is equipped with ColorOS 6, which is deeply optimized based on Android 9. The UI design incorporates a boundary-less aesthetic concept, creating a very pure visual experience through the use of white space. ColorOS 6 has undergone a complete upgrade of the HyperBoost technology, addressing lag issues for gamers while also enhancing smoothness.

Before ColorOS 6, ColorOS used a lot of dividing lines to distinguish the hierarchical relationships in the interface. Although the distinctions were clear, they also created a sense of visual limitation.

ColorOS 6’s new interface eliminates a lot of dividing lines, handling the hierarchical relationships of the interface through white space design, using blank space to construct areas, achieving a visual effect that surpasses boundedness, similar to the blank space design in Chinese painting, allowing users to perceive and distinguish information in an open interface, freeing them from the oppression of dividing lines.

Comparison of ColorOS 6 (left) and ColorOS 5 (right)

Next, let’s briefly introduce Breeno, ColorOS 6’s unique personal assistant.

How to Set Up Breeno:

First, let me teach you how to set up Breeno. First, click on Breeno Voice and select the wake-up word; you can choose from “Xiao Bu Xiao Bu” or “Hey, Breeno”. Then, in a quiet environment, the user needs to record the chosen wake-up word several times, which is quite simple, right?

Next, let’s take a detailed look at Breeno’s major functions:

1. Smart Contextual Reminders, Staying Ahead of the Game

Ø Smart Scenarios: Breeno learns user behavior habits, personal information, and preferences (both learned and manually added) to provide personalized services based on context, such as travel scenarios, movie-watching scenarios, commuting scenarios, and driving scenarios. For example, when a user enters a movie theater, Breeno will intelligently remind them, “Do you need to turn on silent mode?”; when a user is rushing to catch a flight, Breeno has already planned the navigation route in advance.

Ø Proactive Suggestions: Breeno can learn user habits, intelligently predict, and provide usage suggestions. For example, reminders for hotel check-ins, movie ticket pickups, taxi rides home, and reminders to control smart home devices, as well as reminders for frequently used applications, making the phone a helpful assistant for users.

Ø Information Overview: Breeno displays users’ recent itineraries, flight and train information, etc., in a card format, allowing users to be aware of important matters.

2. Multi-Modal Interaction: Able to Listen, See, and Recognize

Ø Voice: Voice + Object Recognition enables efficient execution of complex operations; for example, when seeing an interesting product, voice inquiries can directly display purchasing information. Voice interaction frees hands, understanding complex semantics that involve multiple operations, such as sending red envelopes or topping up phone credits through voice commands; voice shortcut commands can trigger multiple operations with a single phrase, such as “Good morning” for weather reports, schedule broadcasts, and commuting navigation.

Ø Object Recognition: Image processing can recognize animals, flowers, red wine, famous paintings, and products for shopping; text processing can translate, scan documents, search questions, and scan business cards.

Ø Screen Recognition: Smartly analyzes screen information, parsing Taobao commands, schedules, addresses, etc., and proactively provides possible services.

Ø Voice to Find Phone: If you can’t find your phone, just wake up Breeno with your voice and say, “Where are you?” and the OPPO Reno will respond.

Ø Call Voice Control: When receiving a call, saying “Answer the phone” or “Hang up the phone” will directly execute the actions of answering or hanging up.

Overall, Breeno voice, with its global wake-up feature and one-command execution, has made significant strides in the contemporary voice assistant industry.

The Long Battery Life is the Last Straw for OPPO A9 to Overwhelm Competitors

The OPPO A9 is equipped with a large memory combination of 6+128GB and a large capacity battery of 4065mAh. Moreover, with the optimization of ColorOS 6 at the system level, it fully unleashes hardware performance, providing a smoother user experience.

Indeed, compared to other A series products, the most significant improvement of the OPPO A9 is the upgrade in screen size. With a larger screen, will it lower the A9’s performance in the battery discharge segment? We simulated operations in various scenarios such as photography, gaming, browsing Weibo, and listening to music, and after five hours of intensive battery life testing, the OPPO A9 still had 40% battery remaining, performing slightly better than other phones in the 1399 yuan price range. In terms of charging, the OPPO A9 charged 33% in half an hour, which is fairly standard.

In Conclusion

Overall, the OPPO A9 has many selling points: a 4020mAh large battery, a combination of soft and hard long battery life; 6GB+128GB large memory, ensuring smooth operation; MediaTek P30, a conscientious SoC in the same price range; a smarter and smoother ColorOS 6; high-definition photography at both front and back with 16MP; and a 6.53-inch large water drop full-screen…

This is a product that has virtually no competitors in its price range and offers a user experience comparable to the OPPO Reno. If you enjoy using a large-screen device and value high battery life and large memory, then the OPPO A9 is a worthy investment.