What a golden age we're living in.

 

Who would have guessed, even 18 months ago you'd be able to purchase a phone for $2799?

 

Truly eye-watering. I've bought cars for less than that.

 

Presumably, unless you're one of the brainwashed Apple acolytes, like most normal people, you think nearly three-thousand bucks for one little phone is bordering on criminal.

 

But what's available at the other end of the scale? Some clunky old brick? Not these days...

 

 

There are some things you just don't expect from a sub-$400 phone.

 

You won't get a big display. You won't get much on-board storage. The camera will be average. The processor will be slow. The O.S. will be out of date. Battery life will be terrible. Oh... and it'll look cheap too.

 

The OPPO AX5 turns most of those preconceptions on their heads.

 

As you can see from the picture, I've been sent the Diamond Pink version (not sure it's my colour, but I could be wrong) The AX5 is also available in Diamond Blue - both have unique back covers with individual cut-glass sections that catch the light from different angles; a cool effect I haven't seen on any phone before, let alone one in this price bracket. The metal edge is coloured to match the back cover which is another eye-catching premium feature.

 

The screen is a very respectable 6.2inches, although the device itself still fits easily in one hand as there are no physical home or navigation buttons on the front so it's basically all screen. This impressive screen-to-body ratio is further enhanced with the use of a notch around the top speaker and front-facing camera. Don't worry, if you're not into notches, you can blank out the whole notification bar to disguise it (unlike some other notchy phones that seem happy to cut out the left side of your display when you're gaming in landscape mode) 

 

There are other surprisingly large and respectable numbers built into the AX5 - like 64GB of on-board storage - which can be added to with a microSD in the hybrid dual-sim+SD tray. That's right, dual sim and memory expansion on a $399 phone.

 

3GB isn't a massive number, but when you're talking processing power on a phone, it's not too shabby. While the AX5 isn't lightning fast, it's certainly smooth to operate. As I've remarked when reviewing other OPPO devices, I'm no fan of the stripped-down Color O.S. home-screen. I need a nice, tidy app drawer and preferably the ability to rotate from portrait to landscape - all easily fixed with a third-party launcher of course. What I am a fan of is a lack of pre-installed bloatware, which is certainly what you get (or don't get) with the AX5. I still find it weird OPPO doesn't have a native email app though, instead relying on the standard Gmail app.

 

Every time I try a new OPPO phone, Color O.S. gets a little more user-friendly, but I did struggle to access some settings I wanted to change - particularly in terms of keeping apps running in the background.

 

That brings me to battery life which, quite frankly, is astounding. OPPO has packed a whopping 4230mAh battery into the AX5 and it simply never runs out. I can't emphasise this enough; if battery life is your major bugbear with your current phone, throw it away and get one of these. I've been using this phone for a while and most days I struggle to go below 70% by the time I go to bed. That includes streaming and bluetooth connectivity with my earbuds and smart watch. There is a "however" here though... As I just mentioned, the AX5 seems to have a particularly aggressive hunt-and-kill policy when it comes to background apps. No matter how hard I tried, there were some apps I couldn't persuade the phone to receive push notifications from (like my home security system) even though other messages like emails and Instagram posts arrived with no problems. This seems to be an issue with less well-known apps so maybe it's something OPPO will address with software updates over time.

 

Weirdly, the thing I was least impressed with was camera performance. That's not to say the pictures I've taken with the AX5 have all been fails, it's just that I'm used to OPPO making it all about the camera and the photo quality is usually the feature that outshines everything else on the phone. At least it's a dual-lens configuration for the rear-facing camera so you can still achieve some nice mixed-focus portrait effects and the 8MP selfie cam is pretty much up to OPPO's usual high standards. However, shots taken from long distance or in low light were pretty average, even for a photographic know-nothing like me.

 

On the other hand, the selfie-cam does facial recognition very well, opening straight to your home screen pretty much as soon as you take the device out of you pocket and glance at it. That's right; facial recognition - yet another premium feature for only $399.

 

Don't misunderstand me, the AX5 is not in the same league as the $1000+ (or even $2000+) superphones out there, it certainly has its limitations. No wireless charging, no IP water-resistance rating, no NFC for contactless payments. But added-extras like those are definitely nice-to-haves rather than must-haves.

 

Other than my slight camera disappointment, the AX5 is a solid performer especially in terms of battery life where I think it'd probably beat just about any phone in any price range.

 

It looks good too... although maybe the blue one would've been a slightly better match for my wardrobe.

 

 

Click here for more information on the OPPO AX5