The OPPO Reno 10x Zoom Review: Bezeless Zoom
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 18, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Oppo
- Snapdragon 855
- Oppo Reno 10x Zoom
GPU Performance
Device gaming performance, or better said, SoC GPU performance, is dictated by a trifecta of characteristics: First of all, the actual GPU microarchitecture and how performant and efficient it is, in this case the Adreno 640 of the Snapdragon 855 should fare very well. Secondly, the device vendor needs to employ a good physical design of the phone, able to dissipate heat away from the SoC to the body of the phone, enabling the GPU to operate at higher frequencies without throttling. Lastly, it’s a question of how the vendor actually tunes the software and the throttling levels of the phone, choosing target limit skin or silicon temperatures.
As a prelude to the test results, I’ll outright say that the Oppo Reno 10x behaves near identical to the OnePlus 7 Pro which we tested earlier this summer, meaning it has nearly no thermal throttling at all on the GPU.
Whilst the OnePlus 7 Pro was able to maintain peak performance metrics for long durations, at a cost of quite high device body temperatures, the Oppo’s long-term performance came with the gigantic caveat that it hit device thermal limits and shut down the tests.
I’ve become increasingly wary of this behaviour as I’ve encountered it in the past with several devices, Huawei in the past ended up in this situation by disabling their thermal throttling mechanisms when detecting benchmark applications, essentially cheating the behaviour and score. I’ve also encountered it early on last year on the Galaxy S9+, although Samsung claimed this was a bug and the behaviour disappeared with subsequent firmware updates.
The problem for me is that I can’t accurately determine if this is just a lack of oversight and software optimisations on the part of Oppo, or rather something that’s more malicious. I’m using benchmark suites with altered application IDs in order to avoid the more common benchmark detection by vendors, but that’s not to say they haven’t found more sophisticated ways to detect the tests.
Whatever the reason might be, the scores for the Reno 10x come with a big asterisk – being that they might not accurately depict the real performance of the device, and if they indeed are valid, then the device might simply shut down the app on you at some point if you overstress it too much or are in a very hot environment.
The one test where we don’t see any issues is in the 3DMark Physics test, here the phone and CPU do actually throttle correctly. The Reno 10x’s result isn’t too fantastic here in terms of performance compared to other devices, but we have to keep in mind that the device allowed itself to reach much higher temperatures than other phones, and that might be the reason as to why the CPU is throttling more.
In the GPU-centric workloads, we see that things are quite straightforward for the Reno 10x. It just doesn’t throttle, and the phone is able to maintain the best peak and sustained performances of any other Snapdragon 855 device. Again, this come at a cost of very high device temperatures and the risk that it’ll simply overheat and close your app if you do end up overstressing it in a real scenario.
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Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Forgot to edit that subtitle.DanNeely - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Page1: "The display is an AMOLED panel featuring a 2340 x 1080 resolution and comes at a rather large diameter of 6.6”. " diameter should be diagonal.DanNeely - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
"Oppo alleviates this concern by including a small raised nub below the cameras, causing the phone to never actually be flush against any surfaces and thus vastly reducing possible scratches of the back glass near the cameras."Does this mean that if you set it down on the table and try to use it you're going to have a wobbly bad time?
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
It wobbles if you press the top of the screen, the bottom 2/3rds are stable.trivik12 - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Since almost all flagship phones have night mode, can we do a shoot out and provide us strength and weakness plus overall winner. I guess best time would be when Pixel 4 is released.flyingpants265 - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
-Needs front stereo speakers which allows you to hear youtube videos, movies, emulator games, camera videos, etc in full volume.-And wireless charging which is extremely useful, no port wear, start charging faster/with one hand, magnetic charging mount in the car.. Still use it all the time on my Nexus 5. Wireless charging pad cost me $3.00 on ebay.
-The missing 3.5 headphone jack is not really ideal..
melgross - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
I’m not convinced that a pop up camera is a good idea, particularly if all that mechanics and electronic is there to just eliminate a hole in the screen.Notice that there’s no water and dust rating. That’s because it’s almost impossible to keep water and dust out of the slot. I can see grit from wind picking it up, being deposited inside that slot, eventually scratching the lenses and eventually causing the module to grind to a halt. Moisture too. It will remain in the slot for some time, causing problems.
eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
Thanks Andrei! Agree with you and others here that the pop up camera is a gimmick that adds complexity and weight, not to mention anything that moves is another thing that can break. Too bad Oppo didn't put the extra weight and complexity to make a really good periscope style optical zoom camera - if done correctly, they can be spectacular.@Andrei: Lastly, one question and request: what about the call quality of this and other phones? Please add a sentence or two on this to your reviews, good call quality is a non-negotiable for me and probably many others.
I do use my smartphone as my main phone, and had to bench/retire my Xiaomi Mi Max 3 phone due to really horrible call quality (on both sides, got many complaints over poor voice quality). I loved many aspects of that phone, especially the big screen and battery, but it was basically useless as a daily driver. Now back to an older LG phone, not as good otherwise, but I can make and receive clear phonecalls.
PreacherEddie - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
I believe the top of page 2 comes from a previous review and you need to edit it for the Oppo.edsib1 - Wednesday, September 18, 2019 - link
I have no idea how your Oppo10x zooms scores so low in benchmarks. My UK version scores very high in all benchmark scores. Antutu score of 370k, geekbench 4score 3514/11314 . Pcmark work2 performance score is 10564