Oppo A83: Can the budget-friendly phone give tough competition to Xiaomi Redmi Note 5?

Oppo has managed to be in the top five smartphone vendors in India. After Oppo F5, the Chinese smartphone maker has released A83 with a price tag of Rs 12,999. 

Oppo A83 will take on Redmi Note 5 as both the smartphones share almost similar configurations and price range.

The A83 design looks like a premium smartphone with thin bezels. With the matte finish, A83 feels handier and gives a better grip. And because of the slim design, it is lighter and weighs 143g. On the other hand, Redmi Note 5 comes with a metal finish and weighs 180g.

Redmi Note 5 also comes with fewer bezels and offers a fingerprint scanner on the back. Oppo A83 doesn't offer any biometric unlocking feature. By removing the fingerprint scanner, Oppo has integrated the face unlocking feature in A83.

The face unlocking feature is fast but seems to be ineffective in low light conditions. As far as security is concerned, the face recognition feature is not secure enough, compared to the fingerprint scanner, as the A83 doesn't use the 3D face-mapping feature which is used on Apple iPhone X. Security wise, Redmi Note 5 is much secure than Oppo A83.

The Oppo phone sports a 5.7-inch display with a resolution of 1,450x720p and pixel density of 282ppi (pixel per inch). Comparatively, Redmi offers a bigger 6-inch screen with a resolution of 2,160x1,080p and pixel density of 403ppi. With the better screen resolution, videos and games look sharper on Redmi Note 5.

When it comes to hardware, A83 comes with MediaTek's 16nm Helio P23 chipset paired with 3GB RAM, whereas Redmi Note 5 uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor with 4GB RAM.

The Oppo smartphone comes with onboard storage of 32GB, which can be expandable up to 256GB via microSD. Redmi Note 5 offers 64GB of internal storage which is much better than Oppo's offer.

A83 uses MediaTek processor and works smoothly to handle apps like Facebook and WhatsApp and games like Shadow Fight and Need for Speed without overheating or lagging issues.

Oppo A83 comes with a custom UI called Color OS, runs on Android 7.1 Nougat and packs a 3,180mAh battery which is said to give a battery life of one day in single charge. Meanwhile, Redmi Note 5 comes with MIUI 9 and runs on Android 7.1 Nougat.

As far as cameras are concerned, A83 houses a 13-megapixel camera while on the Redmi smartphone comes with a 12-megapixel camera on the rear.

Both the smartphones are some way better than each other and run on an equally capable chipset. It's tough to say which one is better among the two. We have listed the differences and now, its up to the buyers' to chose among the two.