In the latest (September, 2016) issue of ‘Choice’ in Checkout there was an interesting review of the Motorola Moto G4 Plus smartphone priced at $399. Tony Ibrahim concluded that this phone ‘is the closest customers can get to buying an inexpensive smartphone based on the same recipe that popularised the Nexus brand…a relic from a time when it was possible to buy cheaper flagships’.
Recently I have used an Oppo smartphone (European) purchased through JB HiFi for $390.
I would be interested in any responses from the ‘Choice’ community about the value of this phone. My perception is that it represents exceptional value in its price range but is not found in ‘Choice’ reviews. Not being a technical person, this exclusion may be for a good reason.
My daughter bought the Oppo N1 mini for $249 and couldn’t be happier (I usually use www.getprice.com.au to compare prices) - great camera front and back, easy to use and way better specked than other phones in the price range. From what I hear, Oppo keeps their prices low to establish itself in the new market.
Your last sentence makes a very telling point. I purchased an Oppo 7S and at JB Hifi the sales person made the same point: a European firm trying to get into the Australian market. The phone has proved to be excellent value with nice features.
A bit off topic here but regarding Oppo I’m into high end Hi fi gear . Oppo’s Bluray /SACD players blow the opposition away for sound and build quality at a much lower price point . I would certainly buy one of their phones .
What is the Oppo signal strength like compared with other phones when far away from a tower? IMO this is the most important feature for a phone!
I bought a Motorola based on a Choice review showing it had the best reception, and in practice it was way better than any i-thing that friends had when tested here at home, far from any towers. Based on that, I bought the Moto G2 when it came time to replace the original (over 12 months after dropping into a slightly saline fish tank!), and it certainly performs better for reception than my wife’s Samsung.
IMO is the critical element as you say: I have had poor reception in Brisbane at times but have not been in doubtful areas since purchasing Oppo but your comments about Moto G2 are positive.
My wife has an Oppo R7 Plus and I have a Motorola Moto G4 Plus. Both of them are superb phones, giving you close-enough to the latest Apple/Samsung offerings. The only thing you will miss is complying with the intense marketing campaigns by those other companies.
Major difference between Oppo R7 Plus and Motorola Moto G4 Plus is; Oppo have a customised version of Android (like many manufacturers) based on Android V5, Moto G4 Plus is more plain Android based on V6. Apart from that there are minor differences in screen size (6" vs 5.5"), included storage (32Gb vs 16GB) and fingerprint scanner (on back vs on front). Neither have NFC communications, but you won’t need that for a few years when the apps and market acceptance appears.
I have an Oppo R7 - apart from the small size of the keyboard and the clumsy double sim card tray, it’s been an excellent phone/camera - OPPO Electronics Corp is a Chinese electronics manufacturer based in Dongguan,… and owned by the Chinese Company BBK Electronics Corp.
i bought an OPPO-R7 from Dick Smith when they were introduced to the Australian market 2(?) years ago. It cost about $450 and performs as well other phones twice the price. My only complaints are that it always seems to running out of memory (16GB) although I have everything I can, stored on the 32GB SD card. The other complaint is that I cannot get the music to play in order . . only “shuffle”. That said, the phone support is good and the email support hopeless. Oh, and there’s no dedicated manual, only an “all models” one. It is said to be the 3rd largest selling phone in the world. I suppose if it was really big in Chine that would be possible.
JohnN
It generally performs well compared with phones twice the price[I paid $390 for an R7 at JB HiFi this year] but the points about the music, memory and manuals…mmmmm!
Ive tested many Oppo phones and can say most of them are good. I do think they age poorly, however, because they’re laden with such a heavy Android overlay. They also take forever to receive new Android updates.
It’s close, but I’d probably end up with the Motorola. Esp after the Google store put the G4 Play for sale at $279
i recently “bought” (via a Telstra plan) an HTC-A9 phone. 3GB ROM and 32GB RAM. So far so good. A lot more features than the OPPO-R7, and smaller and lighter. Two excellent features are Dolby Sound when playing music through headphones, and the ability to add up to 128GB micro-SD card which can be integrated with the phone memory. So with my 64GB SD card I now have a phone with 96GB of RAM. Pretty cool:-)
