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The Oppo A16s is a cheap phone, not full of excitement and precious little charm. For better or worse, it’s a very cheap and generally harmless tool that achieves basic skill levels. But if possible, it seems advisable to pay a little more for the next phone.
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The Oppo A16s is an extremely affordable phone that even undercuts the Poco and Redmi brigade currently occupying the £200 sector.
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It offers budget-friendly specs and impeccable design for just £159 RRP. At the time of writing, a few months after its UK release, Oppo has further reduced that price to just £139.
As a result, the Oppo A16s is currently a direct rival to the Moto G22 and Nokia G21. You can find cheaper phones than these, but the severity of the cuts required to get to that price point means you probably won’t want to.
The Oppo A16s is about as generic a smartphone design as you’re likely to find. Its dimensions of 163.8 x 75.6 x 8.4 mm are far from compact, but it fits easily in the hand.
It’s a bit heavy at 190g, especially considering that the body is made of cheap plastic. But that’s in line with budget phones with large 5,000mAh batteries, and it’s only 5 grams heavier than the Moto G22.
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The glossy plastic back of the phone is an extreme fingerprint magnet, especially in the crystal black color of my model. Maybe the lighter pearl blue tone gives more relief from oiliness.
Unsurprisingly, the A16s don’t come with an IP rating, so you’ll want to keep them away from water and dusty environments.
You get a fast and reliable fingerprint sensor behind the flat power button on the right edge. It’s easy to find thanks to the tactile indentation and the fact that the volume buttons are on the opposite edge.
The bottom edge of the phone has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a speakerphone. The latter will be nice and loud, though not enough for anything other than short video clips and general phone functions.
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The front of the phone similarly confirms that you are dealing with a cheap device. The bezels are chunky, especially the elongated chin of the phone. Meanwhile, the notch of the display has the old-fashioned teardrop design, that is, it protrudes from the upper front panel.
As for that display, it’s a 6.52-inch IPS LCD, which means it lacks the vibrancy of OLED panel technology that starts to appear around the £200 mark. It’s not a particularly good LCD either, with a generally washed-out palette that makes video content look a bit flat.
The screen sharpness of the Oppo A16s with a resolution of 720 x 1600 (HD+) also lags behind. This is evident in everything from home screen icons to Netflix streams, and especially in web content. In general, what Oppo is doing with the A16s is unclear.
Of course, we said pretty much the same thing about the Moto G22 recently, but that phone at least has a 90Hz refresh rate compared to the standard 60Hz of the A16s. However, in the context of such limited components and performance, Oppo’s choice was probably the right one.
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A peak brightness of 480 nits is perfectly acceptable, but if you wander outside in sunny weather, you’ll squint.
The Oppo A16s has a so-called triple camera system, which actually means a 13-megapixel wide camera and two 2-megapixel assistants. The latter two handle depth and macro duties, meaning no ultra-wide or telephoto lenses.
The main sensor can capture fairly reasonable shots in optimal lighting, although such shots lack the depth and balance of even better £200 phones. Details are acceptable and colors are fairly natural, but the phone struggles to balance extremes in high dynamic range (HDR) scenarios.
The camera system really struggles as soon as the light drops. This is where the noise really starts to filter in. Of course, this is not a unique weakness among budget phones. Literally every phone under £300 has the same flaw to one degree or another.
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One recent example that comes to mind is the Moto G22, though of course it has a (rather mediocre) ultra-wide sensor to help alleviate the limited shooting potential. There is no such flexibility here.
Meanwhile, since Oppo didn’t throw any extra pixels at its only useful sensor, even the 2x digital zoom cutouts don’t look too good here.
You get an 8-megapixel front-facing camera that takes fairly balanced shots with acceptable skin tones. However, again, you don’t want to put it in extreme – or even not particularly extreme – HDR scenarios.
The Oppo A16s runs on MediaTek’s Helio G35 chip with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. You might have already seen this setting on Nokia G20.
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It was an underwhelming chip in that phone – and of course the Oppo A16s doesn’t feel like a fast phone in the slightest. Moving between home screens, pulling up menus, and jumping between multiple apps is a bit cumbersome.
Crucially, it’s never so bad as to be a pronounced stutter. I’m glad Oppo didn’t try to cram in a higher refresh rate screen, because that probably would have made things worse. At least there is some consistency in the performance of the Oppo A16s, even if it is “constantly slow”
Of course, Geekbench 5 average scores of 166 single-core and 971 multi-core didn’t set the world on fire. Equally surprising is that it’s pretty much the same as the Moto G22.
Just like that phone, the Oppo A16s didn’t even pass the 3DMark Wild Life test, while the Moto G22 scored 460 on the Slingshot Extreme test.
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If you’re wondering if 5G is coming as part of such a low-end package in the smartphone market, it’s not. You should lift your war chest closer to 200 pounds if that’s your priority.
ColorOS 11 here runs on top of Android 11, which isn’t the latest software available. This is about middle of the road when it comes to Android skins, with a relatively light feel without too many annoying intrusions.
There’s no app bar (by default) or Google Feed on the left side of the home screen, but at least that emphasizes the simplicity of what’s on offer. This is clearly a phone for smartphone beginners and you’re unlikely to get too lost here.
While certainly not free of bloatware, ColorOS 11 is far from the worst when it comes to bundled third-party apps, although I think we could have done without the pre-installed Booking.com and LinkedIn. Oppo’s own apps are also mostly hidden in the Devices folder.
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Coupled with a 5,000mAh battery and a low pixel count 60Hz display, you better believe the Oppo A16s will last well between charges. It would be a total shock if it wasn’t.
All credit, though: it’s a real two-day event, even if you’re a bit of a media hound. This is also supported by the fact that one hour of Netflix streaming reduced the total charge by only 4%, while one hour of music streaming did not even reduce the indicator by one percent.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to run the usual TR benchmark test, which involves running the 3DMark Wild Life stress test three times in a row (for a total of one hour), as the MediaTek Helio G35 simply wasn’t up to the task.
Oppo supplied a rather modest 10W charger, which takes a long time to start working again. I was able to charge from 0 to 100% in just under 3 hours, while reaching 50% took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
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You want a battery that lasts. With a large 5000 mAh battery and a completely undemanding 720p display, the Oppo A16s really sucks.
You want to watch a lot of videos With an LCD screen and only 720p resolution, the Oppo A16s isn’t the phone you want if you want to watch a lot of Netflix content on the go.
It seems harsh to criticize the Oppo A16s because they are absolutely inspiring considering they are so cheap. Especially when household budgets are tighter than ever.
However, even as a value proposition, the Oppo A16s is somewhat lacking. With poor performance, a complete lack of features, a plastic design and a standard camera, it’s a phone you can’t really be happy with.
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On the plus side, battery life is excellent and the side-mounted fingerprint sensor is nice and reliable. Did we mention it’s incredibly cheap?
If you can really only spend £150 or less on a phone, the Oppo A16s will do the job. But if you somehow find a way to spend a little more, you’ll get a lot