Oppo Find X
A BEZEL-FREE BEAUTY WITH A POP-UP BURDEN.
THE NOTCHLESS AMOLED display and counterpart pop-up camera array are the features that define the Find X, for better and for worse. The sleek aesthetic that this allows for is at the forefront of Oppo’s marketing, and for good reason – it looks stellar. While the camera mechanism and trim styling marry up to make a noteworthy design, this does arguably steal the limelight from some of the handset’s other strengths.
The processing, graphical, and battery power of the Find X comfortably compete with, and often outdo, phones in a significantly-higher price range, such as the Galaxy Note 9. In fact, if Oppo had opted to drop the screen/camera gimmick for a slight price cut, this would still be a potent contender for the best-value Android phone on the market.
While we generally applaud innovation in the smartphone realm, we also have our misgivings about this phone’s ‘star’ feature and, unfortunately, it’s a device that’s also held back by software grievances and missing hardware features that are all but standard in other Android flagships at this point.
The AMOLED display is vivid and bright, and with its stupendous 6.4-inch size, is ideal for watching media on the move. Its 1,080 x 2,340 resolution is certainly decent but can occasionally lack clarity when compared to rivals like the HTC U12+, which boasts a 1,440 x 2,880 resolution over 6-inches.
Notably missing, however, is any sign of storage expansion options such as a microSD card slot – and there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack for that matter, either. Another victim of the pop-up camera is any promise of water resistance – something we’ve come to expect in most modern handsets, let alone premium flagships.
In our PCMark Work tests, the Find X scored 8 hours 4 minutes, which beats out the Galaxy S9 at 7 hours 44 minutes, and the HTC U12+ at 6 hours 24 minutes, and doesn’t look shabby next to the 4,000mAh battery-touting Galaxy Note 9, which scored 8 hours 56 minutes.
The Oppo also features a camera mode that lets you create a kind of 3D-modelled death mask (or, as Oppo calls it, a ‘Custom 3D Beautified Look’) that apparently uses AI to apply ‘delicacy’, ‘loli’ or ‘model’ tweaks to the structure of your face in photos.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t play nicely with beards.
Gimmicks aside, the front-facing camera is really quite powerful. As for the primary dual-lens snapper, the images are definitely up to scratch with many other Android handsets, but they suffer a little more when in low-light conditions than most other 2018 flagships.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is still the chipset to beat for Android handsets, and alongside 8GB of RAM, this is a top-shelf combo. In our history of benchmarking using PCMark Work, the Find X has the top score with 9,971, with the nearest competition more than 1,000 points lower. This makes for a handset that is beyond capable when it comes to everyday tasks and will excel at more computeheavy tasks as well.
The Oppo Find X is a beautiful handset with innovative features, powerful performance and a futuristic design, but its star gimmick ultimately detracts from an otherwise top-notch flagship experience. OPPO FIND X $1099 www.oppo.com/au CRITICAL SPECS Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Octo-core; 8GB of RAM; 128GB storage; 3730mAh battery; 6.42 inch AMOLED display; Dual rear camera: Pop-up 16MP, 20MP; Pop-up 25MP front camera; 156.7 mm x 74.2 mm x 9.4mm; 186 grams; Android 8.1