South Africa is flooding with budget-friendly mobile devices, and for good reason. Flagships are too expensive, and good tech has become increasingly affordable. That’s true of the Oppo A16s which is now available in South Africa for R4,000.
PrOppo quality
It comes with fairly standard specs for a smartphone in this price class, including a 5,000mAh battery, a triple camera (that we’ll get into just now), 4GB RAM, 64GB storage and microSD support for up to 256GB. While there’s nothing particularly revolutionary here, we do know Oppo produces quality products at a good price.
The rear camera is fitted with three lenses — something’s that has become standard on budget devices — and includes a 13MP main sensor, a 2MP macro sensor and a 2MP depth sensor.
It also features something we… haven’t really encountered on other devices. Detailed in a press release, an immediate translate feature allows the A16s to “… effortlessly switch text in internet browsing between English, Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa and Afrikaans to really provide an authentic SA experience, thanks to Google Translate.” We reckon that’s just a Google functionality, however.
This means you get the full Google suite here. While Chinese, Oppo hasn’t suffered the same fate as Huawei and may still ship devices with the full suite, including Google Maps, Search, Drive and Photos.
The 6,5 inch Oppo A16s comes in two colours: Pearl Blue and Crystal Black. Both are available at certain retailers for R4,000 and are currently available on contract for R230 a month according to the press release, however, we couldn’t find the deal on any mobile networks at the time of writing.