Oppo Reno4 Z 5G Review

Oppo just announced the first three of the Reno5 family, and it’s likely going to be a large family. How do we know? Well, there are a total of eight Reno4s in our database, and it’s one of them that we’ll be presenting to you today – the Reno4 Z 5G.

The most affordable of the 5G-enabled 4th-gen Renos, the Z 5G retails for €300 – that’s less than half the Reno4 Pro 5G’s official asking price and roughly two-thirds of the Reno4 5G’s price tag.

The Reno4 Z 5G is powered by a Mediatek Dimensity 800 chipset instead of the Snapdragon 765Gs in the other two. Still, it’s not really grounds for concern – a close relative to that SoC, the 800U we got to see recently, performed admirably. Another moderately polarizing bit could be the 6.57-inch LCD. The OLED lovers might scoff at the choice of panel technology, but this one does come with a 120Hz refresh rate. Which brings us to the next point – a 4,000mAh battery with a 120Hz LCD? Sounds a little troubling, but we’ll see about that.

Three proper cameras and three sort-of cameras made their way to the Reno4 Z 5G. There’s a 48MP primary unit on the back, joined by an 8MP ultra-wide, and then you get a 2MP macro module and a 2MP unit for depth sensing. Another one of those is keeping company to the 16MP selfie camera in a pill-shaped cutout in the display’s top left corner.

Oppo Reno4 Z 5G specs at a glance:

Body: 163.8×75.5×8.1mm, 184g; plastic frame, plastic back.

Display: 6.57″ LTPS IPS LCD, 120Hz, 1080x2400px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 401ppi.

Chipset: MediaTek MT6873V Dimensity 800 5G (7 nm): Octa-core (4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A76 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55); Mali-G57 MC4.

Memory: 128GB 8GB RAM; UFS 2.1.

OS/Software: Android 10, ColorOS 7.2.

Rear camera: Wide (main): 48 MP, f/1.7, 26mm, 1/2.0″, 0.8µm, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 8 MP, f/2.2, 119˚, 1/4.0″, 1.12µm; Depth: 2x 2 MP, f/2.4.

Front camera: Wide (main): 16 MP, f/2.0, 26mm, 1/3.06″, 1.0µm; Depth: 2 MP, f/2.4.

Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps, gyro-EIS; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.

Battery: 4000mAh; Fast charging 18W.

5G support: SA/NSA bands 1,3,5,7,8,20,28,38,40,41,77,78.

Misc: Fingerprint reader (side-mounted); NFC; 3.5mm jack.

Oppo Reno4 Z 5G unboxing

For the 4 Z 5G, Oppo chose the usual Reno presentation – a teal sleeve holds the white cardboard box. The contents are fairly standard, too, though the 18W adapter is a bit on the lower end of the power spectrum – it’s certainly no 65W SuperVOOC 2.0. If you can put a positive spin on that, it would be that the USB-A-to-C cable isn’t proprietary, unlike on the higher-wattage systems.

Also included is a set of earbuds with a 3.5mm plug – the Reno4 Z 5G is nicely old-school in this respect, unlike the other 2 5G-capable Reno4s. You’ll find one more useful accessory in the bundle is a protective case, a transparent silicone one.

Exynos 2100 Is Samsung’s Most Important Chip

 Just as we are entering the final stretch of the year, the much-anticipated announcement of the Exynos 2100 reported to be coming by mid-December still hasn’t happened. Possibly because Samsung has been busy doing its best impression of Pixar – still in the service of its chipmaking business, mind you.

But even though we’re still waiting for an official launch, some recent developments pretty much confirmed one key suspicion regarding the Exynos 2100. Namely, Samsung’s next flagship system-on-a-chip is shaping up to be its most important silicon in over half a decade, at a minimum.

This significance of the Exynos 2100 is perhaps best described as Samsung finally resigning to the path of least resistance on the chip architecture front. Or Samsung SLI, to be more specific, as that is the chaebol’s division in charge of the Exynos SoC design.

Numerous recent reports and some key benchmark sightings have already all but confirmed that the Exynos 2100 will ditch Samsung’s Mongoose custom cores in favor of standardized solutions from Arm. This would eliminate numerous issues plaguing flagship Exynos chips which persisted across five whole product generations, at this point.

First introduced in 2015, the Mongoose custom cores once had the potential to become the next big thing in the mobile industry. Things did not pan out, unfortunately, as this in-house specification ended up being more trouble than it’s worth fairly quickly. Samsung persisted with its architecture nonetheless, presumably because it poured countless resources into developing it. And yet the results were more often than not inferior to a contemporary white-label solution from Arm.

The issue undoubtedly culminated this year with the Exynos 990. Touted as the best-ever chip from Samsung SLI, the design proved to be less than ideal in practice. Largely due to not-so-good efficiency and the chip’s tendency to overheat, which would result in aggressive throttling as the kernel would scramble to protect the silicon from literally melting inside one’s smartphone. That is typical SoC behavior, mind you, but processors tend to be much better at keeping their temperatures below critical levels while outputting peak performance for way longer than the Exynos 990 is able to do so.

Things have gotten so bad that the Exynos 990 wasn’t even an outright upgrade over the 2019 Exynos 9820, depending on which specific synthetic test you’re looking at. With many of those issues rooted in the Mongoose architecture, Qualcomm has gotten quite comfortable with its mobile chip leadership.

And that’s without even accounting for its patent trolling concerning 4G technologies that essentially prevented Samsung from using its own chips inside smartphones sold stateside. As it was cheaper to license out Qualcomm solutions, have them shipped to factories in the Far East, assemble select smartphones, and then reimport the tech back into the U.S. than try to import devices using Exynos chips made across the street from them, so to speak. It still is, in fact.

But things are looking up, and not just because all the signs are now suggesting the Exynos 2100 will be a serious chip. Namely, Qualcomm’s 5G patent portfolio is nowhere near the level required for the company to keep up its licensing charade indefinitely. Meaning the U.S. might really see another Exynos-powered Galaxy flagship in the near future and that device might not actually be an embarrassment compared to whatever Qualcomm will have in store that year.

Though given the aforementioned licensing issues called Qualcomm’s IP royalty pricing, such a theoretical smartphone would almost certainly be limited to 5G connectivity. And 5G networks are nowhere near widespread enough for this scenario to be a possibility in the next few years. That still leaves Qualcomm with more long-term concerns than what it had a decade ago when Samsung started making SoCs.

No matter the potential, it would still be premature to expect the Exynos Galaxy S21 models to outperform their Snapdragon 888 counterparts. Though that is exactly what some industry insiders have been predicting as of late, so it’s hard not to get even just a little bit excited about Samsung’s 2021 flagships. Starting with the said Galaxy S21 range, which is scheduled to debut less than a month from now, so here’s to hoping we’ll soon find out the Exynos 2100 is a beast worthy of the “flagship” label.

Motorola Capri With 5,000mAh Battery

 Motorola revamped its smartphone business this year with an unexpected return to the flagship segment. Earlier this year, the company unveiled the Motorola Edge and Edge+ as a premium mid-range and flagship featuring 5G connectivity, AMOLED displays, and other premium specifications. The company, then, moved on with the release of multiple mid-range smartphones like the Moto G9 series, Moto E7 series, and most recently its first 5G-enabled Moto G smartphones. 

Now, reports indicate that Motorola is working on a new flagship smartphone coming with the Snapdragon 865. Meanwhile, the company seems to be working on two mid-range smartphones. The devices are codenamed Motorola Capri and Capri Plus. Today, a Motorola smartphone with model Number XT-2172 passed by FCC certification.

The XT-2127 model number reportedly belongs to the vanilla Motorola Capri. This obviously is just a codename and not the actual marketing name of the device which is currently unknown. According to FCC listing, the handset supports dual-Band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth, although the exact version is unspecified. It is an LTE-only smartphone and has NFC technology which is becoming a standard among Motorola mid-range smartphones. Furthermore, the handset has a battery with model number JK50. This has been recently spotted on TUV certification with a total capacity of 5,000mAh. The phone has a 10W of charging speed.

According to recent reports, Motorola Capri isn’t really an exciting device for the lovers of hardware. For instance, the device is rumored to come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 chipset. It flaunts an LCD panel with 1,600 x 720 pixels of HD+ resolution. We assume that the phone will come paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of Internal Storage. It’s unclear right now if more storage / RAM variants will appear at launch. After all, there’s no point in having 6GB of RAM in a device with the Snapdragon 460 SoC.

Moving around to the back, the phone may feature a Quad-Camera setup including a 48MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultrawide lens, and two 2MP cameras for depth and macro shots. In the front, the device may come with a waterdrop notch 8MP shooter. Worth noting that right now this is just based on rumors.  We think that this camera setup is quite generous for a device with the entry-level Snapdragon 460 chipset. So digest this with a pinch or two of salt.

The Motorola Capri Plus will have slightly upgrade specs ad we expect at least a Snapdragon 6xx series chipset giving power to it. The new handsets are executed for the first quarter of 2021. So we expect more news to pop out in the coming weeks.