Battery, “Gaming”. In quotes because the G85 isn’t exactly that.
This took too long (probably). That’s because we like playing games on this phone. It’s our little experiment to see how well the MediaTek Helio G85 has been since its release back in 2019. The thing is four years old now and is now considered to be a budget chipset. Even the G90T which is more powerful, is considered obsolete but for some reason, the G85 is standing strong.
Of course, this won’t be a gaming test without looking at some benchmarks, right? Check out the scores below!
The AnTuTu score for the phone is pretty standard, a score ranging around 200-250K is just appropriate for this type of chip. That was its score before when it was newly released too. The G90T fared much higher. The one on the Redmi Note 8 Pro, for instance, scored around 400K. No surprises here.
We have tested this chipset before in other phones, such as the Wiko T50 and the Redmi Note 9 so we’re in a familiar territory. When we test performance, virtual RAM is turned off so we can measure accurately on how well the phone performs. We also don’t see a significant increase in performance with it on anyway.
As for the casual experience itself. The UI felt choppy to us. Although, when we ran it using the CPU test, the chip did not throttle (but to be fair, we ran the test inside a Starbucks which has a cool environment). The phone also has a decent amount of RAM, at 6GB. So, either the UI is unoptimized or we just got really used to higher refresh rates that 60Hz feels so choppy to us now when in reality, it isn’t and that’s just how it is. Not every game we tested ran smooth either.
The more demanding ones like Genshin Impact had some difficulty running the phone smoothly and we we’re getting constant frame drops, stabilizing around 14-15fps. Yes, it runs on low graphics and anti-aliasing is off. The phone also heated up rapidly in our first 30 minutes of play.
We also tested its counterpart, through the vast reaches of space. Honkai: Star Rail. This game ran slightly better because there are fewer resources used. However, the device still warmed up fast and we took intervals before playing the next game. At least an hour. There is still obvious stuttering but that’s probably because we were recording while playing. But that shouldn’t be an excuse. That just means the phone can’t multitask very well, especially if two apps are demanding, despite the large 6GB RAM inside.
Whenever a new game pops up, we test it on our review units as well. One of these is Metal Slug Awakening. Surprisingly, this game ran smoothly on its default settings. We expected a lot worse but this is the game we certainly had the most fun playing with.
For Mobile Legends, ULTRA is available. We find it strange how inconsistent MoonTon is with this. The Honor 90 and the OnePlus Nord 3 which uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 and MediaTek Dimensity 9000 respectively, are more powerful but neither have Ultra as a graphic setting, not even after the phone updated. Only the devs can tell when this option would be coming to these chipsets.
Anyway, the game defaulted to Medium graphics with HD Mode and HFR Mode turned off. We activated HFR (High Frame Rate) Mode since that’s what we are used to. By the time of this writing, the game got a sweet new UI but the gameplay remains the same. However, the game booted up with such low frames that it felt like the game froze. Not a comfortable experience.
As for the game itself, it ran okay. We experienced a level of stuttering especially during the teamfights (even early game where nothing much is happening). Also, the device heat up fast, not as intense as with Genshin Impact but it is definitely felt. The phone can run ML but don’t expect anything mindblowing.
BATTERY:
The Oppo A58 4G utilizes a 5000mAh battery with 33W SuperVOOC fast charging. According to the review guide, the phone should charge from flat to full in 75 minutes, or around 1 hour and 15 minutes. Our testing also showed similar results so at least that part is accurate.
Just like with our other review units, we attempted to use PCMark. The keyword being attempted because the phone, for some reason, fails to run the app properly, constantly crashing at the middle of the test. So instead, we went inside the battery settings to see how long we’ve used it since opening the app and since the last charge. With this, we were able to find out how long the phone could theoretically last before dying out as the app did stop at around 20% (from 100%). According to the statistics above, the phone can last at about 12-13 hours which is pretty standard for a 5000mAh battery. The phone also charged at around 1 hour and 10 minutes. Not slow but also didn’t feel fast to us.
The Long-awaited Part 3 is finally finished! We can conclude the review in the next chapter! See ya soon, techies!