By now, OPPO is a well-known brand in the New Zealand phone market. And they keep pushing it harder, with new devices that offer a rich set of features without hurting your pocket.
The OPPO Reno12 Pro is one such example. Its stylish design combines a tough screen based on Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with an extremely light metal alloy frame and a beautiful glass back cover with a 3D special effect OPPO calls Fluid Ripple Texture.
Inside, a new design incorporates cushioning materials, providing extra shock absorption and protecting the phone from impacts.
All this in a 180-gram package, making it so light that it’s almost too easy to miss it when it is in your pocket.
Despite its skinny profile (only 7.4 mm), it houses a 5,000 mAh battery, giving it that extra power to get you through the day. And being an OPPO phone, you can rely on its SUPERVOOC Flash Charge technology for fast charging that can quickly get you back on the road. Imagine getting your phone charged to 30% in just ten minutes.
The new OPPO Reno12 Pro is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7390-Energy mobile platform, which is power-efficient and makes the most of the massive battery. This system uses four high-performance cores and four efficiency cores, so you get the high performance you want with low power usage.
And it shows. Depending on the use, it will last for a full day, or sometimes even longer if you are not actively using the phone.
It comes with 12 GB RAM, which is a nice size, but you can expand this working memory by 4 GB, 8 GB or 12 GB by adopting storage space, making the system work as if it had up to 24 GB RAM. This is a nice touch when you juggle multiple apps and want them to be in memory for fast switching between tasks.
The total storage is 512 GB, but a microSD card can expand it to an extra 1TB. It runs ColorOS 14, which is based on Android 14.
The 7.6-inch AMOLED screen (2412 x 1080 pixels, 394 PPI) is bright and easy to see. The system has three refresh rate options: 60 Hz (saving battery), 120 Hz (for smooth scrolling) or a hybrid rate that will automatically select the best one depending on what you see on the screen.
To make things more exciting, you can choose between different colour modes (Vibrant or Natural) and even select a Pro mode called Cinematic, which uses Display P3 mode to give you colours closer to what you would expect from some digital content like movies.
The OPPO Reno12 Pro camera doesn’t disappoint. It uses a 50-megapixel Sony LYT-600 sensor with faster and more stable focus. The 50-megapixel telephoto camera has a 2x optical zoom to get better portrait shots with a more natural bokeh effect.
The sound on the OPPO Reno12 surprised me. It is nice and clear, but you can make it even louder. For example, if you are listening to a video clip or music stream, you can push the volume button one more time once you hit 100%, and it jumps to a 300% volume, so you can hear everything anywhere. I mean, it’s loud, and you will notice it.
The biggest thing about this new release, though, is the new AI-based functionality. These features cover a range of apps you use daily, such as image editing, web browsing, chat and voice recording.
The AI-based image tools are interesting, but I am not sure the quality is up there yet. Take, for example, the AI Eraser. The tool recognises people in a photo, and you can tap on the screen to remove someone from the photo – an unwanted person in the background, for example. The tool does an excellent job of recognising the person to remove, but the replacement filler is not always clean, and you can see that something was there before.
If you take a group shot and someone blinks at the wrong moment, the AI Best Face feature can help by adjusting the photo and editing those closed eyes for you.
The AI Toolbox text and voice-based assistants are better but still need work. These sit on the sidebar and are available in some apps. For example, if you load a webpage on Chrome, you can have an AI read the content or create a written summary. You can then share this summary or export it to your notes. It works well, but it doesn’t work with other mobile browsers – at least not with my favourite one, Opera.
In my opinion, the AI Recording Summary is the best one. It creates a summary of recorded voice notes and stores those in the Notes app, including the original recording.
The AI Toolbox and AI Recording Summary features are based on the Google Gemini model.
In all cases, the AI-based tools are fast and easy to use. They need more work – support for other browsers or better image generation - but they are progressing quickly.
And I was surprised to find something I hadn’t seen in a while: an IR remote control. Yes, you can control your TV, sound system, heat pump and more with a built-in IR app.
The OPPO Reno12 Pro supports the latest 5G mobile networks in New Zealand, so you should be able to pop in your SIM card (the Reno12 Pro is a dual-SIM phone, but no eSIM support) and get fast mobile data speeds. It also supports the latest Voice over Wi-Fi settings (also called Wi-Fi Calling) for those areas with poor mobile coverage but good Wi-Fi connectivity.
So, there you have it. The OPPO Reno12 Pro brings some good spec updates, including camera and storage. The image tools and AI features are nice, but I think they still need more work. Overall, the text and voice-based AI features are better. The image editing features (non-AI) are powerful and work well.
