Looking for a budget smartphone that looks premium? Well, the intense competition between OEMs in India has brought several such smartphones that fit the bill and all you have to do is narrow down the options. Sounds simple right? Not so much when there are two phones, both great and affordable, and you have to pick one.
That said, if your budget is less than Rs 15,000, you'll find plenty of options from various brands like Xiaomi, Motorola, Oppo, Vivo, Samsung and many more. Most recently, two handsets were launched in India that made total sense for anyone who wants to buy a budget premium smartphone.
While Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and Redmi 5 series have been popular among consumers, Oppo A3s and Moto E5 Plus are equally worthy of attention. Both phones are light on the pocket, high on specs and most importantly, they have unswerving brand recognition.
That doesn't mean you must buy both Oppo A3s and Moto E5 Plus when you only need one unless you actually want to buy two phones. Here's a comparison of how Oppo and Motorola smartphones compete against each other in this tough space.
Price
The biggest decision maker is the price and in this case, buyers won't be disappointed. Moto E5 Plus is available exclusively on Amazon India and in Moto Hubs and other retail outlets for Rs 11,999. But Oppo A3s is slightly cheaper than its rival as the handset can be bought for as low as Rs 10,990. Oppo A3s is available on Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm and in offline stores, so there shouldn't be any trouble ordering one for yourself.
With lower pricing, Oppo A3s takes the lead over Moto E5 Plus.
Camera
But it's not all about the price. It is important how good the cameras are on smartphones these days, and here's how Oppo and Moto phones compete.
Moto E5 Plus sports a 12MP f/2.0 rear-facing camera with PDAF and an 8MP front snapper with f/2.2 aperture for selfies. Sounds decent enough right? But Oppo seems to gain an edge here as well.
Oppo A3s comes with a dual rear-facing camera combining 13MP and 2MP sensors with LED flash. The main function of dual cameras is to capture shallow depth effect, and the company claims the A3s can do it effortlessly. On the front, Oppo uses its expertise and packs an 8MP snapper with AI Beauty Technology to get those perfect selfies.
We haven't tested the cameras first-hand yet, but the on-paper specs give Oppo A3s an upper hand.
Battery
Another key USP for OEMs these days is the battery. Moto E5 Plus justifies the "plus" moniker in its name with a plus-sized battery. It comes with a massive 5,000mAh battery with 15W TurboPower charger, which gives 6 hours of usage in 15 minutes of charge. The battery life on the smartphone is expected to be 1.5 days, but it varies depending on usage.
Oppo A3s, on the other hand, also has a large battery – just not as big as Moto E5 Plus. There's a 4,230mAh battery powering the A3s smartphone, but there's no mention of a fast charging tech. For that reason alone, Moto E5 Plus takes a lead in this one.
Display
This is where all the action happens. Moto E5 Plus comes with a 6-inch HD+ display with 18:9 aspect ratio, which is pretty much standard for budget smartphones these days. Oppo A3s, however, goes a notch higher (literally).
Oppo A3s sports a 6.2-inch display with 19:9 aspect ratio and 88.8 percent screen-to-body ratio. If you, for some reason, love the notched display design, Oppo A3s is your cheapest bet. Given it is something we've seen in premium phones, it is interesting to see how Oppo decided to make notch display available to the masses through its A3s.
That's one point for Oppo's notch.
Performance
Moto E5 Plus and Oppo A3s cannot be labelled as powerful devices, but they are decent enough to get most of the tasks done with ease. There's a Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor clocking at 1.8GHz powering the Oppo A3s, which is paired with 2GB RAM, Android Oreo-based ColorOS 5.1 OS.
Moto E5 Plus gets a 1.4GHz octa-core Snapdragon 430 chipset paired with 3GB RAM and Android Oreo OS out-of-the-box. Moto E5 Plus offers 32GB onboard storage with an expandable option, which is twice as much as Oppo A3s gives.
Performance-wise, we don't think there will be a vast difference between both phones, but the higher inbuilt storage in the Moto E5 Plus gives it a lead.
Add-ons
Moto E5 Plus comes with nano water-resistant coating, fingerprint scanner, 4G LTE and dual SIM card support. Oppo A3s doesn't have a fingerprint scanner but tries to compensate with the facial unlocking feature. In addition, the Oppo smartphone has dual SIM card support with 4G VoLTE and a unique feature called Music Party, where users can connect their Oppo phones together in a hotspot to play the same song in all devices.
Also, did we mention the Oppo A3s comes in cool red and dark purple shades as opposed to Moto E5 Plus' black, blue, grey and gold colours.
Verdict
Oppo A3s has several advantages over Moto E5 Plus, but the lack of fast charging and fingerprint scanner could convince buyers to spend the extra Rs 1,000 for Moto smartphone. But offering dual cameras, notched display and a premium design at Rs 10,990 makes Oppo A3s a sound choice.
