Oppo Reno 14 Diwali Edition review: Colourful tricks and flair beyond festivities

The Reno 14 Diwali Edition has a base black finish, with mandala artwork, which can glow into a shade of gold when surface temperature changes

Let me get straight to the point of why you should ideally spend ₹39,999 for the OPPO Reno14 5G Diwali Edition, instead of ₹37,999 for the standard Reno14 5G. There’s something called the GlowShift Technology, which the company says is the first of its kind heat-sensitive colour-changing technology in a phone sold in India. Basically, the Reno 14 Diwali Edition has a base black finish, with mandala artwork that’s rather pleasing to the eye.

Use heat from the sun, or gently spill warm water to witness colour take a golden hue. (Vishal Mathur / HT Photo)

Mind you, at this point, this artwork is melding nicely into the black (it’s closer to very dark grey actually) canvas. That’s where the potential for magic happens — raise the temperature of this panel (beyond 29 degrees) and you’ll see a nice transition taking place. Pour warm water (not boiling, mind you) that takes this beyond 35 degrees on the scale, and the gold glow begins to emerge.

I see the potential for excitement-driven damage to a Reno 14 Diwali Edition, which is why a few things to keep in mind. Use the heat from the sun, or gently spill warm water (the brand says above 35 degrees is when you see the full gold effect) to witness these changes in colour. I would absolutely not recommend dunking this phone in hot water or using an instrument such as a candle or a lighter to get to the desired effect. And certainly no attempts to unnaturally heat the phone. All said and done, this colour-changing trick of the Reno 14 Diwali Edition is refreshing, visually alluring, and most certainly will be a talking point at a time when phones have become a conveyor belt of sameness. Full marks to OPPO for delivering this as well as they have done.

Apart from this one element, the Reno 14 Diwali Edition is for everything else exactly the same as the Reno 14 that’s already on sale. The intention of a special edition phone to go with the festive season is appreciated, and one that certainly catches the attention of potential buyers. The MediaTek Dimensity 8350 chip is one of the reasons why the Reno 14 Diwali Edition stands on solid ground as far as building performance and experience is concerned. One could argue a case for 12GB memory as an option, which the standard Reno 14 does have. Performance-wise, there are very few complaints with how the Reno 14 Diwali Edition holds up in the face of daily usage, and the vapor chamber-based cooling system does well to keep things cool too in the face of multitasking or even gaming for that matter.

Which brings me to the point of where the 8GB memory can potentially hit a virtual ceiling. You’ll be surprised at how well some of the more complex games play on the Reno 14 Diwali Edition (some credit for the AI frame stabilisation algorithm too), despite what one may feel is a limited spec. It isn’t, in the truest sense. And that performance is held quite well too, with the cooling architecture doing its job. The thing here is, the core performance of the MediaTek will be put into comparison by potential buyers against the OnePlus Nord 5, which has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, and the latter has a slight raw performance advantage. Still, it’s more than good enough as a premium-esque mid-range Android phone, and certainly more than what most users would need before they max out the specs.

The optimisation where OPPO and the MediaTek chip choice shine is with the 6000mAh battery life — it is easy to get close to 7 hours of on-screen time through a day and a bit more on a single charge, and that’s with 5G connected, and usage including navigation and extensive camera usage. Once you spend a few days with this phone, the background optimisations do figure more prominently, and you may still notice an uptick in this on-screen usage time figure. The 80-watt fast charging is par for course, and a convenience you’ll miss if you were to switch to a phone with slower peak charge speeds.

There is a 50-megapixel wide main camera and a 50-megapixel telephoto with a very, very useful 3.5x optical zoom, and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide sensor. Photos in 1x, photos with optional zoom and, in particular, portraits with 3.5x mostly come out brilliantly. There is a liveliness to these photos, with appreciably well-balanced yet separated colours, and the image processing does a great job with refining details and reproducing them in the final photos.

There is considerable AI involved in the image processing pipeline, but at no point do the details and results seem overblown by the artificial nature of it all. There’s utility, such as the voice enhancer in video recordings, which works particularly for vacation videos in windy locales. Not a huge fan of the flash usage for low light photos, and that doesn’t change even with AI trying to find some usefulness here.

ColorOS 15 has, as you’d expect in this era, a thick AI layer. That includes Google Gemini integration including Circle to Search as well as Gemini Live, along with useful add-ons such as call translation, call summary and audio recording transcriptions. I’m yet to genuinely find utility from AI Mind Space, which seems to be the virtual version of what a notepad or notebook would be if humanity still believed in writing this down on a piece of paper with a pen. The idea of pinning a little bit of everything in an app simply doesn’t appeal because it’ll spiral into uncontrolled clutter soon enough. This doesn’t specifically note OPPO’s efforts, but the broader Android ecosystem in general.

The OPPO Reno 14 as an upgrade to its predecessor is a definitive step forward. The Reno 14 Diwali Edition, a rather nice touch, adds a unique flavour to the portfolio. This is an extension of the choice that was already available, albeit I’d hope OPPO adds the high-spec storage and memory variant to the special edition envelope as well. Without doubt, worth considering purely for the visual uniqueness this brings to the front, on the back of fairly extensive water and dust resistance ratings. Would it be a lot to say I’m not exactly a fan of the preloaded apps that seem to figure prominently in ColorOS 15’s scheme of things? Not everyone may see it that way.