Oppo Find X Review

A decade ago, phone companies like Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung came out with most unique smartphone designs, pushing boundaries of innovation to perfect mobile experience. Fast forward to today and every smartphone company is pushing to the bottleneck race of having a full screen design. Oppo, being a very surprising candidate to that race, seems to be winning right now with their brand-new flagship, Oppo Find X. Phone pushes limits like never before and comes with a unique solution for all screen display. It's not the first phone to be doing this, as Vivo NEX S does somewhat similar to what Oppo has done so let's find out what makes Oppo Find X so special and whether it has potential to be the best smartphone of 2018, beating tech giants like Apple and Samsung.

Oppo Find X is all about full-screen display, in fact, its 6.4-inch display takes up to 93.8 percent of front of the phone. To achieve maximum screen to body ratio, there's no notch and Oppo had to carry out some interesting design decisions. While Vivo NEX S caught my attention with its little tiny popup selfie camera, Oppo has taken a wildly different approach. Rather than have a single small camera that pops up out of frame, Oppo Find X has a pop-up that spans entirely on top of phone and doesn't just hold a front facing camera. When closed, this mechanism also hides dual camera system at back. Small curved window on rear of phone would make you think that cameras were hiding in shadows, but in-reality camera mechanism is much more unique. When you launch an app that is using camera, Oppo Find X will lift shaded window to reveal cameras beneath. It's a quite pleasing motion that's both smooth and relatively quick.

At front, Oppo Find X looks similar to designs coming from Samsung in recent years. Sides of glass subtly curve towards metal edges, which are shiny and polished to match glass on back. Although, unlike Samsung, there's virtually no bezel at all on top edge of 6.4-inch screen, although bottom chin is slightly thicker, similar to OnePlus 6. There's no fingerprint scanner anywhere on this device as it primarily relies on 3D facial recognition.

At back, keeping up with modern design trends, glass finish is very eye-catching. It uses a multi-layer process and both Glacier Blue and Bordeaux Red models adapt and change under different lighting conditions, with color on the outside bleeding into dark glass in middle. At top is where you'll find curved module which pops up and down to reveal camera. It's a very clever design as when its down, it completely blends in with back of this phone, making it look more like a designed pattern and very eye catching. There's Oppo branding in middle with some Find X branding at bottom and rest of back is kept clean, and rightly so as it looks absolutely gorgeous with that color shifting glass finish.

A lot of people might think that moving parts on a smartphone is a bad move. However, Oppo claims that camera module can be raised and lowered over 300 thousand times, which is equivalent to about five years of average use. It doesn't wobble around, and it doesn't poke out so far that you'll worry about it snapping off. However, there is a gap between it and phone's body when extended, that could let dirt and liquids accumulate over time, and of course its existence means that this phone is not water resistant.

Also, there's no 3.5 mm headphone jack anywhere to be seen, but interestingly, there's a SIM tray embedded alongside USB Type-C port and speaker grille on bottom edge of phone. At right side of phone is where you'll find power button and volume keys with left side kept clean.

Personally, this is the most beautiful phone Oppo has ever made, and quite frankly, maybe the most beautiful I've ever seen as well. It just oozes fineness and looks incredibly beautiful, yet so perfect even with moving parts.

Besides camera module, display is definitely the most striking aspect of Oppo Find X. Face of phone is almost completely display, clocking a screen-to-body ratio of 93.8 percent which is highest I've ever seen on a phone. Phone has a 6.42 inch AMOLED Full HD display with a resolution of 1080 x 2340p, aspect ratio of 19.5:9 and pixel density of 401 ppi. Display is curved as well, so if you've used a recent Samsung phone you'll know how that feels. Unfortunately, this can lead to some awkward handling especially while taking photos.

It's a really big display and with no bezels, it looks incredibly beautiful. As well as being big and immersive, it's built on an OLED panel which means vivid colors and lots of contrast. Colors are accurate and detail is sharp from a distance, but quality starts to drop when you hold phone a few centimeters away from your eyes. However, as display covers front of device completely, watching videos and playing games is way more fun and indulging than on other devices. Media consumption increases with quality of display and Oppo Find X certainly delivers an immersive viewing experience.

Overall, it's not the sharpest display available, nor one holding most pixels, but it's plenty sharp and with a size over 6.4 inch, completely covering front of phone, it certainly is a treat to look at.

Oppo is competing with top phones in market this time around and they're not messing around with Oppo Find X as it features some serious hardware specs. Phone is powered by Qualcomm's latest and most powerful processor, Snapdragon 845 and Adreno 630 GPU, coupled with massive 8 GB of RAM and a whopping 256 GB of on-board storage. There's no Micro SD card slot but at 256 GB, I don't think anyone should have storage problems.

During my test, I noticed no stutters or lags while using different apps and playing some demanding games. Phone was certainly more responsive and faster in operation than any other Oppo phone I've ever used. However, when it comes to benchmarks, things got me a bit surprised. On Geekbench 4 Oppo Find X got a single-core score of 2,391. In comparison, OnePlus 6 scored 2,454, while Samsung Galaxy S9 scored 2,144. Oppo Find X achieved a multi-core score of 6,216, while OnePlus 6 scored 8,967, and Samsung Galaxy S9 scored 8,116. That's a huge difference, even when Samsung's flagships use less RAM, so I'm assuming this might be due to poor software optimization by Oppo, something they are notorious for.

There's no 3.5 mm headphone jack this time around, but Oppo does includes a dongle in box. You get a regular mono speaker at bottom which should be loud enough for most people.

In summary, it's top of the line specs with decent performance, but falls behind competitors due to inefficient software.

Oppo Find X comes with a huge 3,730mAh battery which performs really well. Oppo doesn't meter screen-on time in its ColorOS skin, but I got a solid day and a half with this phone before needing to charge it. I used social media applications during my battery test with some video playback and some games so I'm guessing even an avid user will definitely have no problem using this phone for an entire day on a single charge.

Oppo finally moved on from microUSB to USB Type-C and they have their own version of fast charge now, which they are calling VOOC fast charging. According to Oppo, 15 minutes of charging from included adapter will give you around 2 hours of power so a full charge shouldn't take more than an hour and a few minutes.

Sadly, there's no wireless charging support on this phone, even though it's a glass back phone, but with a huge battery, one of the best fast charging technologies and great battery timings, there's not much you can complain about Oppo Find X's battery department.

While pop-up mechanism that reveals rear cameras is certainly a spectacle, I would expect camera sensors themselves to be very capable as well. Well, they are and it is not just about hardware, they are enhanced with artificial intelligence. There is a dual camera setup of a 16 MP sensor and a 20 MP sensor, both having f/2.0 aperture. Main sensor supports Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF).

Cameras perform quite decently. I found they tended to overexpose images more often than not, but dynamic range was pretty darn solid. When you shoot though, AI kicks in and starts recognizing objects and scenes within photo and then adapts settings to enhance picture. It's very similar in theory to what we've seen from Huawei P20, Huawei Honor 10 and LG G7 ThinQ.

During my camera test, I compared Oppo Find X with Samsung Galaxy S9 and I was surprised to see that Oppo's latest flagship performed fairly well. OIS worked pretty well on Oppo Find X even while shooting video while I was walking. When things came to photography, however, Samsung Galaxy S9's results look much more natural with accurate colors. Photos from Oppo were sharp and pretty good, but they were often times overexposed and colors were more towards brighter side of color gamut. In low light photography, Samsung Galaxy S9 was the clear winner. Oppo took some good shots, with good enough details but it was no match against Samsung's adaptive aperture technology and the fact that Oppo Find X has a single f/2.0 plays a major role in letting it down under lowlight photography. Oppo included a portrait mode in this device, and it performed quite a bit better than I expected. Despite live view's slowness, processing did a good job of separating subject from background. It still suffers from over-exposure issues of general camera, though.

Oppo Find X is capable of shooting videos up to 4K at 30 fps. At 1080p, you can shoot videos at an impressive 240 fps. You also get a slow-motion mode which shoots videos in 720p till 480 fps. I was actually impressed with how much Oppo has improved their stabilization in videos. At 4K, however, you don't get to use OIS but that shouldn't be a great problem as most phones don't offer OIS at 4K.

On front, there's a massive 25MP front facing camera which performed very well. Selfies seemed to have nice skin tones, but could have been a bit sharper in my opinion. You can shoot videos upto 1080p but there's no stabilization available like on most phones.

Biggest issue I encountered with camera was how long it took to actually launch. Though its mechanism opens up pretty immediately when you launch camera app, live view didn't appear for three or four seconds. Oppo definitely needs to fix this, because it made catching fleeting moments hard. Camera module also got dirty very easily. Just keeping phone in my pocket normally collected quite a bit of dirt and lint, and left me wishing I kept a cloth with me to clean it out every now and then

Overall, it's a camera experience which starts of pretty exciting, with pop up module and then performs fairly well, but it's definitely not one which is going to leave you in awe like one from Google Pixel 2 or Huawei P20 Pro.

Oppo Find X ships with Oppo's own ColorOS based on Android 8.1 Oreo, and if you don't know what ColorOS is, it's just an Android mockup of iOS. There isn't an app drawer, and all your apps will be spread across your home screens as you download them. You can still make folders and such, but I prefer to hide most of my apps to get as stock an experience as possible. I'm glad to see it updated to latest Android Oreo version, because Oppo R15 Pro was still stuck on Android 8.0. While ColorOS on Oppo R15 Pro felt slow and laggy, it really flies on this device. This is more than likely due to Snapdragon 845, but it's still nice to use an Oppo phone that doesn't feel like I'm making huge performance compromises.

There was an entire suite of apps installed on this phone out of the box. Oppo has announced this phone is coming to U.S. and some other markets, which will probably come with Google Play store pre-installed. I had to download Google Play store from Oppo app store, but you likely won't have that issue.

One key feature missing on this phone, and deliberately so, is a fingerprint sensor, and that's because this phone promises to have facial recognition capabilities that rivals Apple's own FaceID. When its mechanism slides up, it's not just revealing a front facing camera. There's a collection of various depth and IR sensors which, combined, can scan and create a complete 3D model of a user's face. It can recognize and scan 15000 different data points that include depth as well as visual data, making it secure enough to authenticate payments and purchases as well as unlocking the phone.

As if that wasn't enough, you can have some fun with it too. Oppo introduces Omoji and they are exactly what you think they'd be from name. It's essentially Apple's Animoji, in Oppo flavor. You can create your own custom 3D emoji character, or use a preset animal or character and animate them using facial expressions just like Apple and Samsung's emoji creations. Oppo Find X's sensors also combine to help create artificial 3D lighting effects when taking portrait selfies with the 25-megapixel front facing camera. It's something I've seen before, so I'm not entirely surprised to see it incorporated here.

I'm really not a fan of this software, but it's not terrible. I'd still use a custom launcher like Nova to make experience more manageable, but for Oppo fans who're used to ColorOS, this is a better version which will definitely make them feel great.

Oppo Find X is coming to multiple markets, including China, Europe, and even USA. It will be available in two colors: Bordeaux Red and Glacier Blue. They've only stated about launch in Europe so far, where it will cost 999 Euros ($1,157) and be available in August. They're also launching a special Lamborghini edition of this device, with 512GB of storage and Super VOOC fast charging. This phone will have a smaller 3,400 mAh battery, but will be able to charge from 0 to 100 percent in 35 minutes.

I personally like that Oppo is pushing itself firmly into premium flagship category with a device that has all the features you'd expect from a truly high-end phone. Screen-to-body ratio comes closer to a truly edge-to-edge bezel free phone than any phone I've seen so far. While I have some concerns about mechanism, it seems to work well, and it's enabled Oppo to add in some advanced facial recognition hardware that other Android manufacturers haven't managed yet.

It needs some software updates to fix sub-par palm rejection and laggy camera, but 3D face unlock and enormous screen impressed me quite a bit. This feels like a second-generation product in its first iteration, and I'm happy to see Oppo pushing boundaries of smartphone design. I'm also eager to see what Google and Samsung announce for rest of 2018, but Oppo and Vivo are making other manufacturers seem pretty outdated. Are motorized camera assemblies key to a notch-free future? I'm not so sure, as there are new compromises to make with Oppo Find X, such as a lack of water resistance and a motorized system that is more susceptible to damage. But it's certainly an interesting approach, and Oppo Find X shows it can be executed in a surprisingly functional way.

At €999 it's not going to be sold by the bucket load, but with its collection of innovative and intriguing features, high performance hardware and stunning design, I can't think of a better way to announce itself as Oppo's best phone yet. It's a phone people should talk about, even if they don't end up buying it.