OPPO’s latest phone, the A93 started selling in Kenya and having used it for a while now, there’s no doubt that it’s a good phone. However, like every other gadget in the market, it does not live in isolation and you might want to compare it to other phones within the same price bracket.

While we have enjoyed our time with the A93, and acknowledging that the OPPO brand has come a long way to outgrow its “Apple-esque” persona, competition in the smartphone market has also grown since the last time we did such a comparison and as the title suggests, this time around, the choice between one phone or the other is getting harder.

The Specifications Comparison

	OPPO A93	Huawei Y9a	realme 6
Display	6.43" 1080P Super AMOLED	6.63" 1080p IPS LCD	6.5" 1080p IPS LCD (90Hz)
Software	Android 10	Android 10 without Google Services	Android 10
Processor	MediaTek Helio P95 (Octa-core)	MediaTek Helio G80 (Octa-core)	MediaTek Helio G90T (Octa-core)
RAM	8GB	6GB	8GB
Internal Storage	128GB	128GB	128GB
Main Camera	Quad 48MP + 8MP + 2MP + 2MP	Quad 64MP + 8MP + 2MP + 2MP	Quad 64MP + 8MP + 2MP + 2MP
Selfie Camera	Dual 16MP + 2MP	Pop-Up 16MP	16MP
Battery	4000mAh	4200mAh	4300mAh
Price	KES 30,500	KES 29,500	KES 28,000

The REAL Competition

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OPPO is facing tough competition from an unlikely brand, realme. A rather new entrant into the Kenyan market, the realme6 is a phone that we absolutely loved during our review and continue to love even today. It’s a great all-round phone with a stellar camera, a 90Hz refresh rate display that’s bound to excite anyone who knows what that means and the cameras aren’t shabby either.

The icing on the cake is that it’s also cheaper with faster charging, bigger battery and slightly more power. The downside? It has an inferior LCD display, the software isn’t as rich with features as what you get on the OPPO and lastly, OPPO being a more established brand gives more confidence to buyers who aren’t willing to try out a seemingly “new” brand with the name realme.

Huawei’s Better Cameras

As with most Huawei smartphones, the camera is their biggest selling point, especially now that the company has settled in on surviving without Google Services. First, let’s address the elephant in the room. The Huawei Y9a doesn’t come with Google Services, something that the company will try to convince you isn’t a big deal since you can install apps from their app gallery, third-party app stores or even use web version of your favourite apps such as Uber just to get them working on your new Huawei Phone.

While to some people., these hacks might not be a big deal, our experience shows that majority of users are finding it a challenge to have to jump through hoops just to get their phones working as good as any other Android phone out there.

If, and only if, you can look past this huge challenge, that’s when Huawei Y9a’s slightly better cameras will mean anything to you. Even the selfie camera, which is a motorized pop-up camera might seem cool but we have people who don’t fancy such with fears of it breaking just after a short while of usage.

Anyway, the bottomline is that the Huawei Y9a is a good competitor to the OPPO A93 but it comes with one big bargage that you should be very well aware of.

OPPO’s Software Tricks

The OPPO A93 is a better phone when it comes to the display compared to all others on our list since it has a Super AMOLED panel and despite lacking 90Hz refresh rate, this isn’t really a big deal. Then there’s the rich software features and camera tricks that you can’t get anywhere else.

The OPPO A93’s software is so good that if you’re charging your phone overnight, it goes into a special low-power mode that charges your phone slowly until when you wake up to find it at 100% without the phone feeling hot. If you choose not to charge overnight and leave the phone on your bedside, it also goes into a power-saving mode that ensures you don’t loose charge overnight a you sleep.

Conclusion

It’s easy to dismiss the Huawei from the competition but we can’t just do that because there are people who like it that Huawei is now free from Google’s spying eyes, so if such kind of “freedom” is what you fancy then you won’t need me to tell you to go for the Huawei.

However, for the rest of us, the competition is really between the other two, OPPO A93 and the realme6. Yes, there are other phones in the market that range within this price bracket, the Infinix Zero 8 and the TECNO Camon 16 Premier but we refrain from recommending those brands until they sort out their messy software that insists on serving ads to users who paid full price for a phone.

All phones at this price point have pretty much the same specifications with each brand trying out different additions to lure customers.

The bottomline is this, if you fancy a software tricks that make the overall experience of using your phone that much better, then look nowhere else than the OPPO A93. If having a higher refresh rate display is your thing, then the realme6 is the phone for you but if you’re the rare kind that likes to romanticize struggles, then you know where to go.