The Reno8 Pro runs on the latest and greatest Oppo has to offer - Color OS 12.1 on top of Android 12. That's great to see since there are still occasionally new Oppo phones that come out with Android 11 out of the box. BBK is using Color OS for all its current Oppo's and Realme's, so if you've used any recent Oppo or Realme phone, you will feel right at home here.
The Oppo Reno7 Lite 5G supports an Always-on display. You can schedule it, make it appear only for a few seconds, or leave it on/off all the time. As per usual, Color OS has a ton of customizations when it comes to the AOD.
Edge lighting is also supported - the edges of the display will flash with colors upon new notifications. This can work with or without the AOD screen.
You unlock the screen via the under-display fingerprint scanner. The reader is easy to set up, incredibly fast (as these go), and with great accuracy.
You can set up face unlock, too, but it's less secure.
The ColorOS launcher is indeed quite clean and simple to use - apps and widgets go to your homescreens, and there is a leftmost page with an integrated system-wide search. There is an app drawer, but you can get rid of it if it's not your cup of tea.
The notification area with expandable toggles is familiar, too. We didn't manage to spot any major visual changes between Color OS 12 and 12.1.
The task switcher is also a familiar affair. From here, you can close or lock apps and initiate split-screen multi-tasking or a floating window (one at a time).
Task Switcher with floating windows and split screen
The Icon pull-down gesture is still here, and it makes it way easier to operate with one hand on an overcrowded home screen with plenty of app icons. Just swipe down alongside the edge of the display to bring down the icons close to your thumb and select an app to launch. The gesture is consistent and useful.
Most of the UI elements on Color OS can be customized. We are talking about deep customization of app icons, accent colors, quick toggles and their shape, font, and fingerprint reader animation.
The Special features tabs hold the familiar Smart Sidebar and Flexible windows functions. They are both tailored toward better multitasking. The sidebar offers quick access to some of your favorite apps when turned on.
The system allows you to adjust the position of the sidebar, which is crucial because it might interfere with the back gesture if you are using the standard Android gestures. Anyway, tapping and holding on an app icon enters split-screen mode while a single tap opens up the app in a floating window or, as Realme likes to call it, "Flexible window". The supported apps can be opened in small, draggable and size-adjustable windows.
Special features, Smart Sidebar and Flexible windows
The Quick launch function has been around on OnePlus' OxygenOS-powered phones for a while now, and it's nice to see it making its way to other brands under the BBK Electronics umbrella. Once enabled, you can set up to three apps that can launch as soon as the display is unlocked. Tap and hold on the fingerprint reader from a locked screen to open up the Quick launch menu.
Quick launch from the lock screen
The Reno8 Pro has a few interesting gestures, called Air gestures and powered by the selfie camera. You can answer a call by flicking your wrist, and generally, the same motion can also be used to remotely scroll interfaces and pages up and down. There is also a nifty play/pause palm gesture for videos that works well on YouTube.
Color OS 12.1 is chock full of its own proprietary apps, often alongside alternatives from Google in the international version of phones. You get first-party apps like Photos, Phone Manager, My Files, Music, and Games (game launcher with various settings).
Photos • Phone Manager • My Files • Music • Games • Game overlay
Last but not least, it is worth noting that our unit came with no China-related apps or ads as one would expect from an international model.
The Reno8 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8100-MAX chipset - fairly uncommon silicon which we have only seen inside the OnePlus 10R thus far. Information about the MAX variant of the chip is a bit scarce online, but we did manage to get to the gist of things eventually.
In almost every major hardware aspect, the Dimensity 8100-MAX is identical to its Dimensity 8100 sibling. That includes a 4x Cortex-A78@2.85 GHz and 4x Cortex-A55@2.0GHz CPU setup, a Mali-G610 MC6 GPU, a MediaTek Imagiq 780 ISP and a MediaTek APU 580 AI processing unit, plus an LPDDR5 memory controller all packaged on a 5nm TSMC node. That's just a hair more powerful than the Dimensity 8000 and generally positioned to be competitive with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 and 888+.
What about that MAX part, then? Well, back in 2021, MediaTek announced the Dimensity 5G Open Resource Architecture program, which basically allows manufacturers to custom tune and order Dimensity chips with alterations to certain bits, including things like connectivity and features and all the way up to CPU and GPU. Not many such custom chips have been created, but the Dimensity 8100-MAX is one of them with Oppo, or rather its parent BBK corporation altering the capabilities of the onboard MediaTek APU 580 in particular. These alterations promise better overall AI performance, better and more stable game framerates and improvements to low-light video recording. That's what the OnePlus 10R got out of the custom chip, and that's exactly what the Reno8 Pro is getting from it as well.
Without further ado, let's dive into some benchmark numbers to put the Dimensity 8100-MAX into perspective starting with CPU runs and GeekBench.
Higher is better
Higher is better
A few noteworthy observations can be made from these results: the Dimensity 8100-MAX seems to be falling a bit short compared to its Dimensity 8100 sibling on average, which is a bit interesting. It is also, as taunted, a decent competitor to the Snapdragon 888, but mostly when it comes to multi-core or rather all-core loads where the four by four CPU arrangement with decently high clocks seems to be excelling. In single-core loads the Dimensity 8100-MAX seems closer in points to a Snapdragon 870 5G instead.
In any case, it's a chip that holds its own well. This fact is also evidenced by the AnTuTu scores of the Reno8 Pro.
Higher is better
AnTuTu is a much more compound benchmark which incorporates GPU runs and takes into account memory as well. We can see that the Reno8 Pro performs about as well as a flagship from 2021 overall. Not too shabby at all and about what we expected.
Moving on to GFXBench and some more dedicated GPU tests, we start to see a bigger device between the Dimensity 8100-MAX and chips like the Dimensity 1200 and Snapdragon 870. While the latter generally come close to the Dimensity 8100-MAX in CPU tasks, they get generally outpaced by it in the GPU department.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Moving further down the difficulty stack with more OpenGL ES testing we can see a very similar overall picture. The Reno8 Pro is generally holding its own well against its competitors.
Higher is better
Higher is better
It should be noted that the Reno8 Pro failed to run GFXBench at a higher refresh rate which effectively limited the on-screen runs to 60Hz and hence 60fps. Not that you should be using on-screen test to compare across devices with different native resolution, though. Just as a reminder.
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Higher is better
Finally, we have 3D Mark and its Wild Life test since the Reno8 Pro proved two powerful for the Slingshot Extreme runs and maxed those out. We get a much cleaner and neater performance stack overall from this test suit.
Higher is better
The Reno8 Pro handles heat pretty well. Like any closed-off passively-cooled system heat buildup is inevitable over time. The main thing to consider is how gradually the phone drops down its performance to accommodate the extra heat. The Reno8 Pro does that quite well. There are no sudden or jarring drops in performance, which is what typically causes stutters in games.
All things considered, we are very pleased with how the Oppo Reno8 Pro and its Dimensity 8100-MAX chipset perform. While the hardware can't quite rub shoulders with this year's latest and greatest, it easily matches flagship performance from a generation ago with advanced chipset features like ISP capabilities and connectivity to match. As far as the "MAX" notation on the chipset goes, it denotes some extra custom capabilities apparently added to the NPU for improvements to general AI performance, game stability and low-light video.
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