The Oppo A53 smartphone has passed through China's Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center, or TENAA, which approves devices for sale in China.

Rumors have been doing the rounds that the Chinese smartphone maker will launch the A53, probably a variant of the A53m, and the A33m in the next few weeks. The handsets have now been cleared by TENAA, which suggests that they will be launched sooner than later.

Oppo has not revealed any details of the A53 but according to TENAA (translated) the handset is expected to sport a 5.5-inch IPS screen with a display resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels. Under the hood of the A53 will be an octa-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz and 2 GB of RAM.

The upcoming Oppo smartphone will have 16 GB of on-board storage with the option to expand the memory to up to 128 GB with a microSD card. The Oppo A53 is estimated to be equipped with 13MP rear-facing and 5MP front-facing camera.

The smartphone is rumored to support 4G LTE and will be available in two color options: silver and gold.

The Oppo A53 is believed to be 8.03mm, or 0.31 inch, thick and is expected to weigh 5.82 ounces, or 165 grams.

Battery capacity and operating system (OS) of the handset is not known. The Oppo R7 Lite that was launched in September this year came running on Android 5.1 Lollipop. Google has launched Android 6.0 Marshmallow and some smartphones have also been launched with the new OS. Smartphone customers will hope that the Oppo A53 comes running on the latest Android OS.

Price of the Oppo A53 is not known at the moment; however, the leaked specs of the handset suggest that it is a mid-range device and should not have a high price tag.

Undoubtedly, the device will be officially launched in China. Interested customers of Oppo smartphones in regions where the company's handsets are not officially launched may check e-retailers such as Amazon and OppoMart, who also do international deliveries. The A53 may also be available in select countries via OppoStyle.com.