OPPO A3 arrives in China with a notch, tall display, and no fingerprint sensor in sight

As far as smartphone announcements go, Oppo has been on fire in recent months. The Chinese company does not look ready to slow down the pace, however, as it quietly announced the mid-range A3 for its home market.

Looking solely at the front, you might mistake the A3 for the F7, R15, and R15 Pro before it. That is thanks to the presence of the controversial notch, which allows for a 6.2-inch Full HD+ (2,280 x 1,080) resolution display with an ultra-side 19:9 aspect ratio.

Unlike OPPO’s other recent phones, the A3 does not feature a fingerprint sensor. This is a strange move on OPPO’s part, seeing how other phones with lower price points offer fingerprint sensors.

Instead, the A3 relies on facial recognition to get into the device. OPPO said the feature uses 128 points of reference to unlock the phone in as little as 0.08 seconds. Keep in mind that given the lack of dedicated hardware, OPPO’s implementation of facial recognition is not as secure.

Around back is a single 16MP camera with f/1.8 aperture and a diamond pattern that makes the A3 stand out from your standard glass and metal slabs. The camera around fronts weighs in at 8MP with an f/2.2 aperture. The AI assistant allows for smart scene detection, automatic beautification of selfies, and other features.

Under the hood, MediaTek’s octa-core Helio P60 processor and 4GB of RAM power the A3. The phone includes a generous 128GB of storage, which you can expand through the microSD card slot. Unfortunately, the A3 sports the dated Micro-USB connector, another weird decision seeing the increasing prevalence of USB Type-C.

Finally, the A3 runs ColorOS 5.0, an iOS-inspired software skin based on Android 8.1 Oreo.

The A3 is only available in China as of this writing, though region availability could change in time. For now, the phone is available for 2,099 yuan (around $330) in black, silver, pink, and red.