The Oppo Reno Ace has the potential to change your smartphone life, because the battery takes only 30 minutes to fully charge. This is less than half the amount of time it takes even the fastest phones around to charge up, and it’s due to Oppo’s 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 technology inside the power brick and battery. The battery inside the Reno Ace isn’t pathetically small to facilitate this charge time either, it has a 4,000mAh capacity, equal to or larger than many other phones out today.
There’s no question this is the Reno Ace’s standout feature, but the rest of the phone is attractive too. The design shifts away from the more adventurous Reno 10x Zoom phone, going with a centrally set, vertical camera array on the back that’s not flush to the surface here. Rather than adopt the shark-fin pop-up camera from the 10x Zoom, the Reno Ace has a notch at the top of the screen for the selfie camera.
It’s not all bad news about the screen, as the 6.5-inch AMOLED panel has a 90Hz refresh rate, which is rapidly becoming a must-have feature on high-end phones, as the smoothness it adds to scrolling and mobile games is noticeable. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus processor powers the phone, which comes in three configurations — 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB, and a top-of-the-range model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage space.
There are four camera lenses on the back of the phone. The main lens has 48-megapixels and an f/1.7 aperture, and it’s joined by an 8-megapixel ultra-wide lens, a 13-megapixel long-focus lens, and a 2-megapixel monochrome lens that will be used for portrait shots. The camera’s features include a 5x hybrid zoom, a new night mode, and slow-motion video recording. Other phone features include stereo speakers, a dry ice cooling system, and an in-display fingerprint sensor. The phone has Oppo’s Color OS 6.1 interface installed over Android 9 Pie.
Oppo has two colors for the Reno Ace, psychedelic purple and starry night, plus it has a special edition (seen above) based on the popular Mobile Suit Gundam anime series, which comes complete with a custom paint job, a special case, and matching accessories. Currently, the Reno Ace has only been announced for China, where it starts at the equivalent of $420, and the Gundam model at about $500.
Oppo does sell its smartphones internationally and may decide to give the Ace a wider release in the future.