Oppo Reno10 review

Design

As mentioned, the international Reno10 looks slightly different from the Chinese model and is actually more similar to the international Reno10 Pro. The design is pretty subdued yet distinct enough to stand out. Of course, when we talk about the design on a current-day "slab" phone, we are generally referring to the camera island.

Even though it's always evident in the photos, the camera island sticks out quite a bit. Enough so for the phone to wobble on a flat surface. For the most part, the camera island is colored the same as the phone's body, but it doesn't exactly flow naturally into the phone's back panel. The camera island looks "bolted-on". A rather steep chamfer surrounds the whole island, which ties the design together nicely.

The back panel is nicely sloped on both sides. The curvature is comfortable to hold without any sharp edges. The surface on our Ice Blue review unit has a very, very subtle sandstone finish to it. It does not gather a lot of visible grime and grease.

The Reno10 Pro can be had in either Silvery Grey or Ice Blue. We have the latter one in for review, and we like the noticeable color shift when light hits the surface at certain angles. It's far from the flashiest finish around, but if you really want a stealthy phone, you should probably go for the gray version instead.

The Reno10 uses a pretty standard three-piece construction. The rear and front sides both slope neatly into the thin middle frame. The frame is silver and has a glossy finish. Unfortunately, that means that it gathers a lot of smudges too.

The curvature of the front side of the Reno10 is symmetrical to the one on the back. The display bezels are average in thickness and the same goes for the selfie camera punch hole.

The Reno10 Pro is a pretty thin device, measuring 162.4 x 74.2 x 8 mm. It is not particularly heavy either, weighing in at 185 grams. It is pretty well-balanced weight-wise.

Build quality

The Reno10 is a "glass sandwich" phone. Its back panel is made of glass, but Oppo does not divulge exactly what kind. The front is using Asahi Glass AGC DT-Star2 sheet for protection.

The middle frame on the Reno10 is made of plastic. Even so, it feels very sturdy. In fact, the same goes for the entire phone. There is no noticeable flex or hollowness to the chassis. It is well put together.

Unfortunately, the Reno10 lacks any official ingress protection rating. That's definitely something that can be found in the same price bracket.

Controls

The Reno10 has a pretty standard control scheme. The exception is perhaps the IR blaster on the top side of the device, which is not something you see too often these days.

The secondary microphone is alongside it, as are the holes for the speaker, all mounted on a sizeable plastic insert. We aren't quite sure why it is there since the surrounding frame is also plastic.

The volume rocker and power button are on the right side. Both buttons are quite thin but still easy enough to find by touch alone. Unfortunately, they don't have the best tactile feedback.

The left side of the frame is entirely bereft of control elements.

The bottom of the Reno10 is a bit busier. The dual Nano-SIM tray is here. The tray can either house two Nano-SIM cards simultaneously or one SIM card and a microSD. The hybrid slot is not the best solution, but it's still better than the Reno10 Pro, which lacks storage expansion support altogether.

Another thing the regular Reno10 has that is oddly missing from the Pro variant is a stereo speaker setup. It is a hybrid one with the earpiece serving as the second speaker, but it is better than nothing. The bottom-firing speaker is clearly visible on the bottom side of the phone.

The Reno10 uses an under-display optical fingerprint reader. It is quite fast and accurate, so we have no complaints.

In case you were wondering, there is no notification LED.

Connectivity

The Reno10 has 5G support on both of its SIM slots. That includes both SA and NSA Sub-6. The MediaTek 7050 also supports dual-band GNSS (GPS, BeiDou, Glonass, Galileo, QZSS, NavIC). There is 2x2 dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (ax) for local connectivity alongside Bluetooth 5.3 with LE and aptX HD support.

There is NFC on board and an IR blaster, but no FM radio nor a 3.5mm audio jack. The Type-C port is backed up by a simple USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical maximum data rate of 480 Mbps. The USB port has OTG/Host capabilities but nothing fancy beyond that, like video output.

In terms of sensors, the Reno10 has a TDK icm4n607 accelerometer and gyroscope combo, an OPLUS Fusion Light Sensor, a SensorTek stk32600 hardware proximity sensor and a memsic mmc5603 magnetometer and compass combo. The only sensor missing is a barometer.