After weeks with the new OPPO Reno12 5G, we’re ready to share our full review of the latest Portrait Expert phone of the brand.
During our testing, we noticed that OPPO packed the Reno12 5G with a lot of features, but this phone now offers even more generative AI capabilities. These built-in AI features on the new OPPO Reno12 5G can help users be more creative and efficient for productivity tasks.
So, let’s jump into the review of the OPPO Reno12 5G, to showcase its AI features and other impressive upgrades.
Design
The new OPPO Reno12 5G has improvements in both weight and thickness compared to its previous model. It now measures at 7.6mm thin, down from a 7.99mm, and much lighter at 177 grams, taking off almost 5 grams from its predecessor.
The phone’s durability is enhanced by fitting it a sturdy alloy framework that can resist bends and dents from accidental drops. Then a sponge bionic cushioning feature that absorbs impact and protects the internal components of the phone. Plus, you also get an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance.
The OPPO Reno12 5G review unit we received comes in Sunset Pink, a shade sure to appeal to most trendsetters. But upon closer inspection, the glass back panel reveals a beautiful gradient color design and when you tilt it at different angles, you’ll see a warm orange cloudy sunset going down the bottom coming to life.
The frosted matte finish also enhances the phone’s stylish appeal and looks premium. This stunning effect is achieved through OPPO’s pioneering graphic liquid crystal process, applied to the phone’s durable polycarbonate back panel.
In the top-left corner, an attractive vertical rear camera module with a slight protrusion graces the back panel. The camera module features curved corners encircled by a watch-like silver border that houses the three camera lenses, LED flash unit, and a printed “AI Camera System” label.
The right side edge you’ll find the power button and the volume rocker which are both thin and nice to click at.
The left side edge is completely clean.
Speaker grille, microphone, and an IR blaster is placed on the top edge.
The bottom edge of the device houses a microphone, USB-C port, SIM card tray, and the speaker grille.
I was also impressed with the included clear protective case which isn’t your regular phone case. OPPO designed it with a stylish ribbed texture that will also complement the phone’s design. The sides when your fingers rest has a patterned texture to improve your grip.
The front has a 3D dual curved display with a new Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on top for added protection from scratches and drops up to 1 meter.
It has thin bezels measuring just 1.56mm along the sides of the screen however the top and bottom bezels are slightly raised. The front camera is housed in a tiny centered punch-hole cutout.
Display
Specs of the OPPO Reno12 5G’s display is quite impressive. It gets a 6.7-inch FHD+ screen with resolution of 1080 x 2412 pixels, pixel density of 394PPI, 240Hz touch sampling rate, and maximum refresh rate of up to 120hz.
With the 20:9 aspect ratio the screen is wide providing more screen real estate that’s beneficial for vertical viewing content. Whether you’re scrolling through social media feeds, reading ebooks, or watching videos, you’ll be able to view more content on the screen need for scrolling.
With HDR10 and HDR10+ support, you get better picture quality and good color improvements on video streaming platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube and more.
Peak brightness on the OPPO Reno12 5G gets a significant leap at 1500 nits compared to its last model, the Reno11 5G, offering at 950 nits only. When used Indoors, the display is already bright and clear and even outdoors under direct sunlight, the screen remains reasonably viewable.
Some phones become unusable when there are water droplets on the screen, the Reno 12 5G boasts a new Splash Touch feature. This innovative technology lets you tap and swipe through your phone even when you have wet hands or the display is wet.
The Reno 12 5G prioritizes your visual health during long screen time usage. It’s packed with eye protection features like a Dark Mode, Eye Comfort, and less flicker with 2160Hz PWM Dimming. A new additional eye care protection the Bedtime mode automatically adjust the screen color to warmer tones after sunset so users can enjoy a good rest and sleep.
With all these eye care features built in the Reno12 5G, it helps reduce eye fatigue and potential damage to your eyesight.
Performance
Checking the internal chipsets of the OPPO Reno 12 5G, it is equipped with its own customized chip a MediaTek 7300-Energy octa core processor for use in its Reno 12 series 5G models. The MediaTek 7300-Energy is built with an advanced 4nm process with with four high performance A78 cores and four efficiency A55 cores at maximum clock speeds of 2.5GHz. It is paired with an Arm Mail-G615 for its GPU
With the new processor, OPPO claims it has significant improvements in power consumption reduced by up to 30% for the CPU while 46% for the GPU, and energy efficiency at 30%.
The internal storage offers a generous 256GB capacity and paired with a 12GB of RAM. If you want even more memory especially for multitasking, the RAM expansion feature lets you virtually boost your RAM by 4GB, 8GB, or even 12GB. This can bring your total memory or RAM to a whopping 24GB.
Sharing our benchmark scores on the OPPO Reno 12 5G.
- GeekBench 6 CPU: 518 Single Core / 1998 Multi-Core
- GeekBench 6 GPU: 2376
- CPDT: 602.30 MB/s Write, 673.58 G B/s Read
- 3DMark: 3154 (18.89 fps)
- PCMark: 10175 Work 3.0 Performance Score
As for connectivity, its supports Bluetooth 5.4, dual sim with provison for 5G network, Wi-Fi 6 and an IR Blaster for the phone to be used as a remote control for your smart devices.
Aside from these, OPPO has integrated some new additional connectivity technologies into this phone like the AI LinkBoost, BeaconLink, and 360-degrees NFC.
To address poor connections and weak coverage areas in elevators, underground passages, or crowded environments, the OPPO Reno12 5G offers the AI LinkBoost technology. This advanced solution combines AI with a 360-degree Surround Antenna system comprised of nine individual antennas placed on the phone. It also the first phone to obtain a high network performance certification from TÜV Rheinland demonstrating its effectiveness.
OPPO introduces another innovation first appearing on the Reno12 5G is BeaconLink. You can now make calls up to 200 meters to another phone without cellular network signal or even in airport mode. It’s like a walkie talkie experience but exclusive only to the Reno 12 series 5G and probably on their succeeding models.
Just this month, GCash announced its rollout on the Tap To Pay feature within the app, using the NFC technology. Good thing the OPPO Reno12 5G comes with a convenient 360-degree NFC feature. So, you don’t need to directly aligned the phone where the NFC reader is. Simply hold the phone near the reader in any direction to use it as an all-in-one access card for cashless and contactless transactions.
Camera and Photo Samples
Coming to the camera, the OPPO Reno12 5G has a triple camera setup comprising of a 50MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.8, autofocus and OIS support for stable shots and video footages. Then you got an 8MP ultra-wide camera with a field of view of 112 degrees, aperture of f/2.2, and the third lens is a 2MP macro lens with an aperture of f/2.4.
You can capture photos up to 10x zoom on the rear camera with default zoom switch dial at 0.6x, 1x, and 2x.
If we check on the previous model, it had a 32MP telephoto camera but the brand opted for a 2MP macro lens instead.
The front camera has a 32MP lens with an aperture of f/2.0, field of view at 90 degrees, and it now has an autofocus for clear facial details. You can switch between three zoom options at 0.8x, 1x, and 2x.
On the camera app, you get four shooting modes ready to use with Pro, Video, Photo and Portrait. Clicking the more options will reveal 9 more shooting modes which includes the Night mode for low light situations.
The phone offers video recording in 4K, 1080p, and 720p resolutions. While both 4K and 720p are capped at 30 frames per second, you can choose between 30fps or a smoother 60fps for the 1080p resolution.
Here are some sample photos.
0.6x Photo mode / Indoor / Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode / Indoor / Sunny Weather
0.6x Photo mode / Indoor / Ambient Lighting
1x Photo mode / Indoor / Sunny Weather
2x Photo mode / Indoor / Ambient Lighting
1x Photo mode / Indoor / Ambient Lighting
0.6x Photo mode / Outdoor / Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode / Indoor / Ambient Lighting
1x Night mode / Outdoor / Low Lighting
0.8x Selfie / Indoor / Ambient Lighting
Another standout features of the new OPPO Reno 12 5G is its integrated generative AI features on the camera. With Gen AI paired on the Reno 12 5G’s camera, it opens the doors to a world of fun and creative possibilities capturing stunning and unique shots that will take your social media posts to the next level.
The Gen AI features offered on the Reno 12 5G are, AI Eraser 2.0, AI Clear Face, AI Best Face, and AI Studio.
Have you ever loved a photo, only to find an unwanted person in the background, or an object you wish you could have it remove? The upgraded AI Eraser 2.0 on the OPPO Reno 12 5G can now solve these problems.
You have three options for selecting the portion you want to remove – smart lasso, paint over, and remove people. When you choose “remove people,” the AI will automatically scan the whole image to identify a person or people and remove them instantly. The process is fast however you need to be online to use this feature.
The AI Studio turns your photos into a stylized digital avatar of your liking in various settings, environments and looks. You can make your avatar in both male or female and up to a maximum of two people is available.
You can have your portrait turn into styles with templates ranging from school, professional, futuristic, playful, wedding, travel, featured western, workwear, or a cute cartoon. Just login to your MyOPPO app to unlock your free 5000 diamonds and for every single Gen AI you make it’s worth 10 diamonds. To make these avatars, OPPO need its cloud-based AI to generate the look, so you need to be online and takes a bit of time.
There are two more additional Gen AI features on the Reno12 5G available in the coming weeks thru a software upgrade. There’s the AI Best Face which can fix closed-eye issues in group photos. The AI Clear Face edits the photo you took to enhance facial details (face contours, hair, and eyebrows) of up to 10 people.
Software
Software on the OPPO Reno12 5G runs with ColorOS 14.1 based on Android 14 out of the box. The ColorOS 14 has integrated an advanced chipsets called the OPPO Trinity Engine to allocate necessary internal resources to provide enhance performance, smooth user experience, and long battery life on the phone.
It also comes with various options for customization and personalization you can change or edit from wallpapers, themes, font, icons, color palette, fingerprint animation, and even an edge lighting which helps you check important notifications and calls when your phone is on silent.
There’s some quite a number of pre-installed apps aside from Google tools and OPPO’s own proprietary apps. You have Booking.com, Facebook, Fineasy, Lazada, LinkedIn, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, WPS office, and even some games. If you don’t like some of the apps they can be easily uninstalled.
It comes with a Game Space sidebar that optimizes game performance with some extra functions like block calls, screen recording, network optimization, and more.
There’s still some handy AI features added to the software to be your everyday assistant for work or school with the AI Toolbox. The AI Toolbox is placed on the smart sidebar found on the top right corner with a long tab. The AI Toolbox has three AI capabilities that you can access with the AI Summary for summarising long articles, AI Writer to help you write sentences or captions, and AI Speak for reading news articles or website online.
Embedded in the Recording app is yet another helpful tool with AI Recording Summary. If you’re too tired to write and hear a particular meeting you just recorded, let the AI Recording Summary do it for you. It summarizes up to five hours of your recordings to get the important parts and to do list then saving it under the Notes app.
A new gestures is offered on the new OPPO Reno12 5G with Air Scroll and Air Call Control. This feature let’s you pick calls, reject calls, or flick pages as you hold your hand at 20-40cm away from the front camera without touching the screen. Supported apps for the Air Scroll includes Facebook, TikTok and YouTube only.
It’s responsive, and you’ll be amazed by how smoothly the pages scroll as you move your hand up or down away from the display. However, scrolling for extended periods can make your hands tire out.
Battery
The Reno12 5G is powered with a battery capacity of 5,000 mAh and supports an 80W SUPERVOOC fast charging for an easy quick charge.
With the included 80W SUPERVOOC charger, the battery reaches 56% in just 30 minutes. A full charge from 0 to 100% takes only 1 hour and 4 minutes.
I wanted to see how the battery life of the OPPO Reno12 5G perform. So, last July 13 OPPO had its official launch event for the OPPO Reno Series 5G in SM Sta. Rosa, Laguna. I took the phone with a full charge when I left home at 6:30 am going to our pick up point. Throughout the day, I actively used the phone taking photos and videos to document the activites and launch event. Did some postings on social media, making video calls on messenger, and browsing the internet. Upon returning to the hotel in the evening, I was impressed to see that the battery still had around 28% remaining. So, the OPPO Reno12 5G can comfortably last a full day with moderate use. However, if you plan on doing more tasks like watching videos or play hours of games, you might need to recharge it before the afternoon.
In the battery settings, there are other additional features you can activate like the Power Saving mode, Smart Charging, Smart Rapid Charging, Charging Limit, High Performance Mode, and Sleep Standby Optimization.
There’s no wireless charging but it can charge other compatible devices thru its reverse charging feature.
Conclusion
The OPPO Reno 12 5G stands out as a well-rounded mid-ranger phone that boasts a stunning design, a vibrant display, powerful flagship chipsets, and a reliable battery life with fast charging. Where the OPPO Reno12 5G truly shines is in its innovative AI features, the first of their kind in the Reno series model. These extensive array of AI features enable the users to improve work productivity and unleash creative magic for social media.
The display itself on this phone is outstanding, delivering sharp details, rich color reproduction, and excellent contrast that’s perfect for immersive video and gaming experiences. And for those who wants ultra-smooth scrolling, the 120Hz refresh rate makes browsing the web and social media apps a delight.
The built-in chipset delivers smooth performance, ensuring apps running in the background won’t slow things down. And for mobile gamers they will like the OPPO Reno12 5G as the phone tackles even demanding titles like Genshin Impact, Mobile Legends, and PUBG without lag or hiccups.
Graphic settings on PUBG, Mobile Legends, CODM, and Genshin Impact
On the camera department, the main and wide-angle cameras produce excellent image quality during well-lit conditions or outdoor where the sun is bright. It was able to provide the photos and videos with crisp and vivid images. However, shooting on low-light situations especially with the ultra-wide lens will have softer results with some noise. While the macro lens is a nice touch, I would prefer for OPPO to return the telephoto lens on its next Reno series models. Overall, despite these limitations, the OPPO Reno 12 5G delivers a capable camera system.
The Reno12 5G boasts impressive battery life that can easily last a full day even with moderate to heavy use. And if you ever immediately run out of battery, the 80W SUPERVOOC fast charging feature can revive your phone immediately.
The OPPO Reno12 5G is a remarkable mid-range phone! Users will surely love the appealing design, immersive display, smooth performance, and enjoy the built-in innovative AI features that set it apart from the other phone in the market.
Pricing and Availability
The OPPO Reno12 5G is priced at PHP 24,999 and the OPPO Reno12 Pro 5G at PHP 34,999. It will be available on OPPO’s brand stores nationwide and its official online e-commerce partners on Lazada, Shopee and TikTok Shop.
You can also add an OPPO Protection Plan’s OPPO Care, it offers one-time free screen replacement for accidental impact, crash, or collision damage within the first 12 months, and extending the warranty by another 12 months for performance issues from factory defects, excluding screen damage. For a more extensive coverage, the OPPO Care+ Plan includes Accidental & Liquid Damage Protection, offering full repair service for accidents within 12 months, with free repairs up to 85% of the phone’s SRP.
The OPPO Reno12 Series 5G will also be available in installment plans via Home Credit of 6/9/12/15/18 months at 0% interest and Credit Card payment options available in 6 or 12-month installments at 0% interest.
You can also purchase via your preferred operators on Globe and Smart plans.
Full Specifications – OPPO Reno12 5G
- Price: OPPO Reno12 5G PHP 24,999, OPPO Reno12 Pro 5G PHP 34,999
- Colors: Astro Silver, Sunset Pink, Matte Brown
- Dimensions: 161.4 x 74.1 x 7.6mm
- Weight: 177g
- IP Rating: IP65
- Display: 6.7-inch 3D Curved Screen
- Aspect Ratio: 20:9
- Resolution: 2412 × 1080
- Pixel Density: 394 PPI
- Refresh Rate: 60/90/120Hz dynamic
- Brightness: 600 nits/1200 nits
- Video Technology: HDR10 / HDR10+
- CPU: MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Energy For Reno TSMC 4nm
- Maximum Frequency: 2.5 GHz
- GPU: Arm Mail-G615
- Storage: 256GB
- RAM: 12GB
- OS: ColorOS 14.1 based on Android 14
- Glass Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 7i
- Biometrics: In-display Fingerprint Sensing, Face Unlock
- Front Camera: 32MP, GC32E, 1/3.1-inch sensor, 21mm ƒ/2.0 lens, CDAF + PDAF
- Rear Camera (Main): 50MP Main camera, f/1.8; FOV 79degrees; 5P lens; AF; OIS supported
- Rear Camera (Ultra-wide): 8MP f/2.2, FOV 112-degrees, 5P lens
- Rear Camera (Macro): 2MP, f/2.4, FOV 89-degrees, 3P lens
- Battery: 5,000 mAh (typical)
- Energy density: 733 Wh/L (typical)
- Fast Charging Technology: 80W SUPERVOOC
- Connectivity: Dual SIM, Max to 1TB microSD, 360 degrees NFC, Bluetooth 5.4, IR Blaster, 5G Supported, HSR Mode and Elevator Mode, SLA Polymorphic Network Acceleration, Wi-Fi 6
