As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. This can also be used to describe the approach that Oppo took to develop its new mid-range smartphone, the A74. It focuses on three strengths that characterize Samsung's Galaxy A smartphones in particular: A good camera, a large battery, and an OLED display. The A74 is launched with exactly the same features.
AMOLED display reaching up to 781 cd/m²
One of the Oppo A74's highlights is its bright AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2400x1080 pixels (Full HD+), which corresponds to a high pixel density of 409 PPI in relation to the 6.43-inch display diagonal and consequently to a very sharp image. The AMOLED panel is supposed to reach up to 800 cd/m². In the test, we can still get up to 781 cd/m² out of it in the APL50 measurement, in which bright and dark picture areas are distributed uniformly. The average is still a good 605.9 cd/m².
The Oppo A74 can also deliver in terms of battery and camera. It lasted over 16 hours during our simulated web-browsing test, and it can be fully recharged in less than 1.5 hours using the included 33-watt power adapter. However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to the 48 MP triple-camera setup. Although it takes good and sharp pictures in daylight, it lacks both a wide-angle lens, which has almost become standard equipment in the mid-range, and an optical image stabilizer.
Entry-level Snapdragon 662 SoC
However, the Oppo A74 hampers its ambitions to challenge Samsung's Galaxy A smartphones with its SoC choice. The Snapdragon 662's power is sufficient for everyday tasks, but it doesn't make its use actually fast at any point. Nevertheless, the mid-range smartphone can even run modern games, but they usually only run smoothly with reduced graphics details.
You can read the full review of the Oppo A74 here.