Gadgetory

Today we're going to be durability testing the Oppo Reno. This is the smartphone with the triangular motorized pop up camera in the top. If you remember, Oppo's the same company that made the Oppo Find X...the one that kind of snapped and broke during my durability test. Let's hope that Oppo has built a better motorized camera phone this time around. Today's video has been sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends. Raid has sponsored a few of my durability tests now, and the game has been downloaded by over 10 million people in the last 3 months. It has crazy graphics, strategic game play, huge boss fights, and over 400 champions to collect and customize. You can really see the detail they've put into the characters and there's always something new to be doing inside the game. Now, I'm not much of a gamer, but I can appreciate that Shadow Legends is free to play, and has almost a perfect score with over 200,000 ratings in the Play Store. You can collect all the champions, follow an intricate story line, and battle against other players live. I'll put a link down in the video description where you can download the game for free and get an additional 50,000 silver to upgrade your stuff and get a free champion. Huge thanks to Raid Shadow Legends for sponsoring this video. Now it's time to see if this Oppo Redo with the motorized camera is built better than the last one. Let's get started. [Intro] The Oppo Reno. Phones have been super interesting this year. Motorized cameras, while just slightly impractical, are very intriguing. And we've never seen a camera pop up at an angle like this one does. Inside the box we get our first look at the Ocean Green version, which is very much blue in my opinion. It's got a shimmery frosted glass look to it, but yeah, definitely more blue than green. Also, in the box we have a case for the phone. I'm always a fan of manufacturers including free protection. Nice work, Oppo. The case has a slot cut out at the top for the camera. Speaking of which, the camera might look like a massive SIM card tray when it's closed, but the whole thing is a motorized triangular pop up camera....like a slice of pizza that rotates out each time you want to take a picture. It's got that pivot point on the left side so only one end extends up out of the phone. Oppo says this thing is rated for over 200,000 protrusions, so even if you used it 60x a day, it would still last you about 9 years. The acute pizza also needs to be raised up if you want to use the flash for the rear camera, since the flash is located on the backside of the slice. There is a slight jiggle to the triangle, which means there's no water resistance for this Oppo Reno. But overall, it feels very solid. I'm impressed. We'll come back to the camera in just a second. Let's scratch test the screen. On my standardized durability test, I have a set of Mohs picks that tell what hardness level the screen in. Level 3 is plastic. Level 6 is glass, and level 8 is sapphire. To my surprise, the Oppo Reno started scratching at a level 3. They very effectively hid a high quality screen protector on the front. No complaints here...I like protection. After removing that screen protector and continuing the scratch test, we get the results we come to expect from Gorilla Glass 6 – scratches at a level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7. Now one fear people might have with motorized cameras is what happens if the phone slips from your hand while you're taking a picture and the camera is in the open position? Well Oppo is following in the footsteps of One Plus and the Zenfone with an automatic retract feature. As soon as the Reno feels itself falling, it retracts the pizza back into the phone at normal speed. Each extension and retraction of the camera takes about 0.8 seconds. It's kind of slow, but I still think it deserves a thumbs up. The sides of this blue phone that identifies as green are made from metal...along with the massive SIM card tray looking top...also made from metal. The hole at the top is probably just a microphone hole, but we'll have to check it out from the inside during the teardown just to be sure. The actual SIM card tray on the side of the phone is made from metal, along with both volume buttons. Sim card tray holds 2 SIMs. This normal Reno does not have the expandable memory card tray. Oppo does make a few versions of this phone, and I'll get to that in a second. The bottom of the phone has a USB-C port and a headphone jack. The edge of the phone is different though with a slightly concave curve along both the top and bottom ends. Interesting. So like I said, Oppo makes two versions of the Reno which I found out a couple minutes ago. They sell the base version, which you see here, for about $600. They sell another Oppo Reno which comes with a third camera on the back and a 10x hybrid zoom periscope lens, like the one we saw inside of the Huawei P30 Pro. That version of the Reno costs an additional two hundred dollars and comes without a headphone jack, since you know, that's what's happening with all the flagships these days. I thought I was buying the cooler 10x zoom Reno, but alas, this one is not it. At least the camera's still motorized though. The 48 megapixel rear camera lens is flush with the back glass panel and is it's own separate unit which is good for durability. Same thing with the secondary 5 megapixel depth sensor. The Reno series also has this weird niblet looking bump thing on the back. It's called an O-Dot and is supposedly made from ceramic. Ceramic should be a scratch resistant level 8 on the Mohs scale of hardness. This little bulge is supposed to keep the camera lens from rubbing up against anything when the phone is set down on a flat surface like a table or counter. Pretty unique and it does indeed look like it's made from ceramic. It's nice to see a premium material making a presence here on the Reno, even if it's just a little dot. The Oppo Reno has an optical under screen fingerprint scanner, and like every other under screen fingerprint scanner we've tested, it does function when some super heavy deeper grooves, level 7 scratches, are applied. It'll be an embarrassing day for any phone we come across that can't handle scratches over the under screen fingerprint scanner. Next comes the flame test, which is important for many still yet undiscovered reasons. The 6.4 inch Oppo Reno display lasted 30 seconds under my direct heat from the flame. The AMOLED pixels turned a slight tinge of white and never quite recovered, but it's pretty hard to notice this blemish when the screen is turned on. One last analysis of the pop up camera before we start the bend test, reveals that the back side with the flash is made from plastic. But the front side that houses the 16 megapixel front camera is thankfully covered with glass, this means it won't be scratching itself up as it slides in and out of the phone 200,000 times. Each side of the raised camera, including the hypotenuse, is made from metal. Pythagoras would be proud. Holding the camera open while hitting the retract button does cause some weird noises. [Buzzing sounds] I can feel the motor trying to pull the camera from my grip. There's no warning messages, but it definitely still has some guts behind it. Even after that abuse the camera is still going up and down just fine. One last jiggly-wiggly for the road. It's good to know that the camera is secure and can't be pulled out of the phone in the wrong direction. When fully retracted, it takes a struggle with a razor blade to get it to come out of the phone. The Oppo Reno pivoting pizza camera is very solid. Now for the bend test. The same test which obliterated the last Oppo phone that came across my desk. The Oppo Find X died. This time around when bent from the front, we get a dangerous amount of rear glass panel separation. This shows just how little water resistance the phone has. The adhesive on the back glass panel is pretty weak. In normal situations, of course, it'll hold the glass panel on just fine. But the adhesive definitely can't be trusted to keep liquid out. When bent from the front, the Reno does have some flex, but no catastrophic damage or kinks in the frame. The more inexpensive of the 2 Oppo Renos survived this durability test, which gives me full confidence that the more expensive version with the 10x hybrid zoom camera would also survive since they both have the same structure. Not too shabby. Which type of motorized camera do you think is coolest? The normal pop up, the pizza, the flip up, or do you like when the entire phone shifts up? You've seen them all. Let me know down in the comments. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Come hang out with me on Twitter and Instagram. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.