[OPPO Reno 10x Zoom Guides, News, & Discussion] squallho1:
Having used Reno 10X China Version (PCCM00) for almost 6 months now, I must say overall it's a great device, but with some flaws in OS design that needs to be tweaked in order to make it usable. Few days ago, I was lucky enough to buy a used Reno 10X Global Version (CPH1919, my phone is a Taiwan version CPH1919TW to be more precise, but it shares the same rom as global version CPH1919EX) at reasonable price. Since it’s not often to own both China and Global version, I would like to share my comments on PCCM00 VS CPH1919. Since the main difference is the implementation of ColorOS, I think below applies to any Oppo / Realme phone comparing their China / Global version as well.

The PCCM00 has been upgraded to Android 10 beta, but I had used Android 9 for enough time before the upgrade.

Hardware:

Both shares the exact same hardware, no notable difference in size/weight nor screen/camera quality.

Preloaded software:

PCCM00 comes with a lot of bloatware, some of which is not removable without using ADB. It has Google framework, you can easily install Google Play APK and other Google services. (Making them usable is another story, see below). There’s no Google App and thus no Google Assistant, you get Breeno which is useless for non-Mandarin speakers or users outside China.

CPH1919 comes with all Google services preloaded as system app, you can also press power button for 0.5s to activate Google Assistant. There are still some bloatware, but most of them can be uninstalled directly.

Notification icon on status bar

PCCM00 has no option for displaying notification icon on status bar until very recent A44 firmware or Android 10 (ColorOS 7) beta. CPH1919 on the other hand, has this feature from day 1.

Application / Power management

The biggest downside for PCCM00 is its application / power management. Its application management is way too aggressive that by default, no application is allowed to be running in background, except for some common Chinese apps like WeChat. As a result, no application will be showing any notification or push message, or receiving any updates. To fix this, you must select custom power management, set each app to allow running in background, plus setting each app to allow auto-start. However, you are only allowed to set a maximum of 5 Apps auto-start, setting Gmail and Google App already takes you 2 (If you don’t set this, Google Assistant will be reset every time you run, as the system expects the Google App to be always running in the background), and you need to be very careful on the 3 quotas left. Even you have set all of the above for your IM / e-mail / news APP, the system will still sometimes not sending any update all of a sudden (it’s always too late when you discovered it), and you need to restart your phone to get it working again. The ColorOS 7 Beta seems to be a little bit better with more Apps included in the auto-start white list as default (like Facebook and WhatsApp), so you have more freedom on your own choice of 5 auto-start apps.

CPH1919, on the other hand, behaves much like a regular functioning phone. I get notification from all my apps without changing any settings in power management, yet I don’t see any big difference in battery life between the two phones.

Conclusion

I’m very surprised when receiving the CPH1919, that the phone is just so much better out of the box. This also shows Oppo software developers actually know how to properly configure a phone (at least for their Global Rom department). Giving that it’s still impossible to flash the global ROM on a PCCM00 (you can unlock bootloader, flash TWRP and Root, but there’s no 3rd party ROM available, and you can’t flash global ROM on it. The two phone’s partition size are different, see other posts for discussion), I would strongly advice anyone who is interested in buying an Oppo / Realme phone, to stay away from China version. You probably have to pay more for global version, but it’s definitely worth it.

(please forgive me for the screen showing Chinese UI, I was just too lazy to swtich them to English, but you can still see all important info)