Oppo Reno 3 specifications confirmed – could it make 5G affordable?

Oppo has announced several specifications of its upcoming Reno 3, and we like what we’ve seen so far – including that it could be one of the first actually affordable 5G phones .

On Twitter, Brian Shen (Oppo’s Vice President and President of Global Marketing) revealed an image of the Oppo Reno 3 Pro 5G, and claimed that at 7.7mm, it might be the “thinnest dual-mode 5G phone in it’s [sic] price segment”. It compares similarly to the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G (7.9mm), and it’s significantly thinner than the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G (8.8mm).

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Shen followed up his earlier tweet by announcing that the phone will have a 4025mAh battery, despite its svelte form factor. With the demands of 5G we expect you’ll need that healthy dose of juice, so it’s encouraging to see that the phone manages to combine a manageable size, a large battery, and 5G all in one.

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But can Oppo go one better and also make sure that this is an affordable 5G phone? The brand is well-known for delivering good performance on a reasonable budget, and it’s for this reason that we’ve been impressed by previous models such as the Oppo Reno 2 and the Oppo Reno 2Z. Both devices offer flagship-rivalling specs on mid-range budgets, and it would be a coup for Oppo if they could pull off the same trick with 5G phones which until now have been prohibitively expensive.

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Now that Qualcomm has announced its new range of chips, including the Snapdragon 865 and the Snapdragon 765, both of which will come running 5G, we expect the market to expand significantly this year, offering consumers far more choice. Xiaomi alone has promised to release ten or more 5G-enabled smartphones over the course of the year, including the Xiaomi Mi 10. More and more, this looks like the right year to make the switch to 5G.

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