An Upgrade and a Half | Oppo A58 4G Review! [PART 1]

Oh boy, another Oppo in our hands.

Oppo once again sent us another device for review. Remember last year when we reviewed the Oppo A57 and we mentioned how it took decent pictures even without the need of pixel binning? Well, the A58 has that feature as it sports a 50MP primary camera and now a punch hole display. These two alone are already definite upgrades to the latter.

But really, how does the entire phone fair, and how much of an upgrade is it really from the A57? Short answer… not a lot, but it’s noticeable where Oppo prioritized its upgrades.

SPECS:

• 6.72″ FullHD+ LTPS LCD (2400x1080px), 680nits peak brightness, 60Hz refresh rate, 680nits peak brightness, 180Hz touch sampling rate
• MediaTek Helio G85 (12nm)
• CAMERAS:
  • 50MP (Primary), f/1.8
  • 2MP (Depth), f/2.4
  • FRONT: 8MP, f/2.0
• ColorOS 13.1 based on Android 13
• 5000mAh, 33W Fast Charging
• USB-C, 3.5mm jack, Dual Nano-SIM Card Slot, Virtual RAM (up to 6GB), MicroSD Card Slot
• 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6/6e, Bluetooth 5.3 LE
• Glowing Black, Dazzling Green
• PRICE:
  • 6/128: PHP 9,999

UNBOXING:

The Oppo A58 comes with the A-series box. There’s nothing of note to be seen inside. What you see is what you get. Namely, a 33W brick and cable, paper work, a clear case, the phone itself, and a SIM Ejector Tool. The unit we have came with a Glowing Black colour (How many black phones have reviewed again?) and comes with 6GB RAM and 128GB ROM. We explained our thoughts with the design in our At a Glance series.

INTERFACE:

The phone boots with ColorOS 13.1 based on Android 13. It’s your usual affair. We’ve seen the OS about three times now. Twice from Oppo, and once from OnePlus. The phone comes with suggested apps from Oppo’s own App Store called “App Market” which serves as bloat. TikTok, Shopee, Lazada, Netflix, and Facebook are also pre-installed. The phone comes with pre-installed apps, most of which can be thankfully uninstalled.

The app drawer is enabled by default, unlike our Reno 10 Pro Plus unit. Also, you will not see any China-only apps here which means the unit we received is calibrated for use in the Philippines.

At this point, we pretty much know the corners of ColorOS. The skin is easy to get by and easy to learn. It’s also pretty organized. You can add extra functionality on the control panel by tapping the gear icon on the top right.

DISPLAY:

The phone uses a 6.72″ LTPS LCD screen with sadly only 60Hz refresh rate. Coming from a phone with 120Hz refresh rate like the OnePlus Nord 3, the scrolling on the A58 feels slow and choppy when in reality, it isn’t. This is why 90Hz should become the industry standard especially phones priced higher than PHP 7,999.

Aside from that complaint, the phone is indeed very bright. It’s one of the things Oppo is promoting this phone with. We were skeptical at first but once we did use it, for almost two weeks now, the phone has a bright display, even when outdoors. Even at low brightness volumes, the phone feels like it has max brightness. That’s how bright it is.

However, because it’s an IPS LCD screen, it suffers from the usual problems this type of screen has. For instance, the weaker colour reproduction versus AMOLED, and the screen having washed out colours when used directly under the sun. It loses that very bright screen rather quickly. However, thanks to the high max brightness, at least you can still tell what’s being displayed.

The resolution is higher here versus the Oppo A57 at FullHD+. This means there is less pixelation when looking up close and text looks sharper, cleaner, and has a higher contrast. It still couldn’t match OLEDs though but that’s asking for way too much.

Short for a first-parter no? It’s a budget phone so there’s not a lot to say about it. The cameras are up next. Stay tuned!