Oppo Find X9 Pro review: clever camera clip-on makes this a top phone for photography | Stuff

Introduction

Oppo has been on a roll for phone photography lately. Its flagships have appeared on many a best phones list, thanks to an ongoing partnership with lens expert Hasselblad and sensors that put most rivals to shame. The Find X8 Ultra was my personal pick for top smartphone snapper from the last handset generation, but its China-only status dented any worldwide appeal; the Find X9 Pro might change that.

Arriving in Europe a month ahead of Oppo’s usual schedule, this top-tier model does things a little differently from the outgoing Oppo Find X8 Pro – but a zoom lens with a colossal pixel count and a clever colour calibration sensor promise even more impactful images. Oh, and don’t forget the novel bolt-on Hasselblad lens attachment for extreme magnification.

All-new flagship MediaTek silicon and one of the biggest batteries ever fitted to a flagship phone should also turn some heads, but have resulted in a £1099/€1299 price (roughly $1450, though no US launch is planned). That puts the Find X9 Pro up against heavy hitters like the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Then there’s the small matter of the OnePlus 15, which is due imminently and expected to be a very close match on hardware. Has the Oppo done enough here to earn the top spot?

Design & build: hip to be square

After a year or so of phones from Chinese brands looking largely the same, the Find X9 Pro is a breath of fresh air. The giant, central circular camera bump of the old phone is gone, with a more distinctive offset squircle taking its place. There’s way more space to hold the phone as a result, and meant I never accidentally obscured one of the lenses.

The 2.5D curves of the Find X8 Pro have been ditched for more conventional flat glass, which is set into a similarly flattened central frame. That was also true of the Find X8 Ultra, though that never saw a launch outside of Oppo’s home soil. At 8.3mm thick there’s enough to grip on to, and while it tips the scales more than the outgoing phone, I wouldn’t call it a heavyweight.

Silk White and Titanium Charcoal are the only two colour choices, which is a little conservative in the face of the Cosmic Orange iPhone 17 Pro Max. I like how the matte glass and satin aluminium frame are all but impervious to fingerprints, though. This is also a seriously tough handset, being both IP68 and IP69 rated.

It’s great to see Oppo bring back the pressure-sensitive Quick button, acting as a shutter button, zoom dial and shortcut for waking the camera app. I still think it sits too far up the side of the phone to reach naturally, though, and being left-handed I’d also trigger it accidentally when turning the phone for landscape shooting. Functionality hasn’t changed, so Apple still leads the way by letting you change camera modes and swap between lenses as well as zoom magnification.

The customisable Snap Key at the top left takes the place of the old phone’s alert slider, which itself felt inherited from sister brand OnePlus. Functionality is largely the same as the Find X8 Ultra: it defaults to Mind Space, a hub that uses AI to summarise screenshots (taken with a single press of the key) and voice notes (recorded with a long press). You can also set it to toggle between ring, vibrate or silent modes, activate Do Not Disturb, turn on the flashlight, record a voice note, take a screenshot, open the translate app, or wake the camera.

China refuses to let the the IR blaster die, so you’ll find one built into the phone’s top edge. It’s handy if you’ve got any gadgets that can’t be controlled over Bluetooth or through an app.

I also can’t fault the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which is placed comfortably far enough from the bottom edge that I never worried about the phone toppling out of my grasp when reaching for it. It’s rapid to unlock, even with wet hands. Facial recognition is more basic, only unlocking the phone and not authenticating banking apps.

Screen & sound: clear vision

Ultra-skinny symmetrical bezels let the Oppo Find X9 Pro’s 6.78in screen fill almost the entire front face of the phone, and using flat glass means light reflections are now a non-issue – though the outgoing phone’s subtle 2.5D curves already did rather well on this front.

It does the usual flagship thing of defaulting to a lower resolution than the panel can handle in the name of power efficiency, but even then everything looks wonderfully crisp and detailed. That’s important, as font sizes seemed pretty small when I first took the phone out of its box. The 1-120Hz LTPO refresh rate is as smooth and responsive as I’d expect from a top-tier phone, reacting instantly to swipes and scrolls.

I can’t fault the rich, lively colours, which stick to the right side of lifelike in the default screen mode. You can dial things up or down with Natural and Vivid presets, adjust things manually with a comprehensive colour wheel in the Settings menus, or use Adaptive tone to tweak colour temperature on the fly based on your surroundings. Either way you’re getting OLED’s exceptional contrast, and black levels that make dark movie scenes look truly impactful.

Oppo’s brightness claims are a bit more true to life this year: rather than quote a figure for a tiny portion of the screen when showing HDR content, it says to expect a full-screen 1800 nits. That’s still up there with the best flagship phones, as is the peak 3600 nits when outdoors. Suffice to say visibility is excellent, even when the sun is shining brightest. I also appreciated the Find X9 Pro being able to dip as low as 1 nit now, for more comfortable night time scrolling. Eye comfort in general is a big deal here, with high frequency PWM dimming and a vehicle motion mode meant to reduce motion sickness – though not being a sufferer, I can’t say how effective it is.

Audio is largely unchanged from last year’s model, with another down-firing main speaker and ear piece tweeter. Volume is as good as ever and the mid-range is perfectly clean for a phone. There’s a smaller amount of bass, but enough that songs don’t sound entirely hollow. It gets the job done for videos and podcasts when headphones aren’t available, but I’d still reach for a pair to listen to music.

Cameras: ready for my close-up

The Find X9 Pro’s square camera island doesn’t just look dramatically different from it’s predecessor’s circular bump – it has one fewer lens inside. Oppo has ditched the dual zoom sensor setup for a single telephoto snapper, but it’s a biggun: the 1/5.6in sensor is bigger than either of the Find X8 Pro’s zooms, and at 200MP has four times the pixel count. 3x zoom, a f/2.1 aperture that’s impressively wide for a phone telephoto, and a 10cm focus distance for macro zoom snaps make it the clear front runner here.

Not that the other cameras let the side down. The lead lens uses a 50MP Sony-supplied LYT-828 sensor, which might be a little smaller than the 1in behemoths found on photography-focused flagships like the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, but has more dynamic range by tripling each exposure in software. The f/1.5 aperture lens lets in 35% more light than the last-gen phone, too. Finally, both the rear ultrawide and front-facing selfie camera get 50MP sensors with autofocus.

The Hasselblad-tuned colour sensor makes a return, helping to balance photos shot in tricky lighting conditions very convincingly. There’s a lot more work going on behind the scenes to remove image noise and preserve details, too. You can see this in action, as the processing kicks in a second after you first open the image from the gallery app; the difference can be quite stark at times, showing just how much heavy lifting it being done by software.

For the most part, that results in some gorgeous looking shots regardless of which lens you use. There’s a great consistency between all three rear snappers, with well-judged exposure, ample dynamic range and colours that are almost always true-to-life in the standard camera mode. The handful of Hasselblad-approved filters can add a more film-like look, which I’m a big fan of.

The main lens does a great job of preserving fine details, with overall clarity up there with the best mainstream cameraphones. I had to manually activate the action mode to have any hope of capturing crisp shots of fidgety subjects in low light, but it otherwise handled darkness as well as its main rivals.

There’s a decent amount of natural bokeh for close-ups, but switching to the zoom lens gives macro snaps some truly dreamy depth blur. It’s far better than the ultrawide, which isn’t on the same level for sharpness – though it doesn’t disappoint for capturing expansive architecture or landscape shots.

The telephoto lens really is a highlight at its native 3x zoom, with superb definition, colour balance and exposure handling. It’s a treat for portraits, with or without the dedicated mode that lets you adjust the level of background blur. Dimly lit scenes aren’t a problem either, with colours that are true-to-life and next to no image noise.

Crank things to 6x and the sensor starts to crop in, at which point smoothing becomes a little more aggressive; pinch into your snaps and distant objects appear overly smoothed out. This gets worse as you cross into purely digital magnification, with text taking on an almost AI-generated look. If you plan on living at the extreme end of the zoom range, it’s a much better idea to invest in the optional Hasselblad lens extender.

This isn’t the first phone to get a bolt-on lens accessory, but Oppo has put some real thought into how it fixes onto the Find X9 Pro. First you pop the handset into a slim, carbon fibre-effect case (complete with handy Qi-compatible magnets), then slide a small metal bracket over the rear camera island until it clips into place. The lens itself – a reassuringly weighty black metal cylinder just shorter than the phone is tall – then twists into position.

The camera app doesn’t recognise you have the extender installed, so you have to manually swap shooting modes in order to use it – but given the bracket blocks off the other lenses, you’re unlikely to forget. Once enabled, you’re getting 10x optical zoom, 50x digital magnification for video, and up to 200x digital zoom for stills shooting. Onscreen toggles let you quickly jump between 10x, 20x and 40x.

The gallery below compares the phone at 1x with the extender, showing its magnification range and clarity in a low-light setting.

I tested it across a range of different settings and lighting conditions, came away impressed by the stunning images it captured. Most smartphones would struggle to accurately capture a musician on stage from halfway across a dimly lit concert hall, but here I got detailed, well-defined shots that weren’t thrown off by the moody coloured spotlights. While the image processing was working overtime to achieve it, I could even make out the setlist and musical score.

Arguably more impressive are the depth of field effects present in everyday snaps shot at 10x. People and objects are captured beautifully, and shy street photographers will appreciate being able to get shots from further away. The phone+lens extender combo became my go-to for a recent trip, seeing more use than the phone on its lonesome.

A Pixel 10 Pro XL’s Pro Res Zoom just can’t compete, nor can anything from the Samsung or Apple stables with software alone. For something that slips into a pocket, I’d call it a must-buy for Find X9 Pro owners looking to elevate their long distance photos or filming – even when it’ll add another hundred or so to the cost of the phone (prices and regional availability were still TBC at the time of writing). The phone can handle 4K 60fps Dolby Vision recording across every camera, while the main and telephoto can do 4K/120fps, and there’s LOG recording for serious filmmakers.

Software experience: the color of AI

There’s more to Oppo’s new ColorOS 16 skin than a fresh coat of paint, but that’s exactly what you’ll notice first. It has a few fancy transparency effects ‘inspired’ by iOS 26, a lot more options for customising the lock screen, and even more AI-enhanced apps – because no flagship phone is complete without ’em, apparently.

Animations feel especially smooth now, thanks to a new rendering engine that sees UI elements float on- and off-screen as you swipe and scroll. That includes the widget shelf, which sits separately from Android’s normal homescreen widget selection, and the live alerts that pop up around the punch-hole selfie camera, just like Apple’s Dynamic Island (only with very limited app support).

Like a lot of phones made by Chinese brands, the Find X9 Pro isn’t short on preinstalled apps. A lot of them feel superfluous when Western audiences also get Google’s defaults as standard. I never once used Oppo’s web browser or file manager. At least the voice recorder and notes app benefit from some AI integration: the former can transcribe conversations in real-time, label different speakers, and generate summaries for each clip.

Oppo is also talking a big game about connectivity, streamlining its Mac screen sharing software with a shared clipboard and direct access to your phone’s camera roll over a USB connection, no QR code or internet connection required. Apple Watch Connect is even bolder, promising to let you pair Apple’s wearable for notifications – as long as you set it up with an iPhone first. That’s a niche arrangement if you ask me, and not being an Apple Watch owner I’ve been unable to test how well it works. Whether Apple will find a way to nix the connection also remains to be seen.

It’s all based on Android 16, with Oppo committing to five years of new software versions and six of security patches. That’s not quite class-leading, with Google, Samsung and Honor flagships owed seven of each. Something to think about if you’re after a phone to see beyond the next half-decade.

Performance & battery life: super size me

Oppo picked sides in the MediaTek/Qualcomm battle a while back, and can now be relied on to be one of the first out the gate with new Dimensity silicon. The Find X9 Pro duly delivers with a Dimensity 9500+ chipset, paired with either 12 or 16GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of on-board storage. My review unit was a 16GB/512GB variant.

Synthetic tests prove this phone is as rapid as you’d expect. While some benchmarks refused to run because I was running pre-release software, the numbers I did get largely outpaced phones with Qualcomm’s older Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset – if only by a small amount. I’ve yet to review any phones using the newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, but a reference handset I tried at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit suggest it has the edge in both 2D and 3D.

Does that matter in daily use, though? Not based on my experience. The Find X9 Pro feels wonderfully responsive, with apps opening in a split-second and multitasking never being an issue. The most demanding games in my Play Store library ran at mostly smooth frame rates, and would default to the highest possible graphics settings. I did think Destiny: rising showed a few small hitches and stutters, though. Maybe the final retail firmware will smooth those out. The phone was quick to heat up under load, but not to the point performance tanked to a noticeable degree in games.

Efficiency is the other side of the coin, and here the Find X9 Pro puts in a stellar performance. It helps, of course, that Oppo has squeezed a simply colossal 7500mAh battery inside – that’s 50% more capacity than a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, in a phone no bigger or heavier. I’ve regularly managed to get through entire days working from home without dipping below 50% charge, meaning this can be a true two-day phone.

Even on travel days spent largely on 5G, with YouTube videos, music streaming over Bluetooth and regular use of the cameras, I was never worried about running completely dry. That makes this my new top pick for a long-lasting flagship phone.

Charging speeds aren’t the outright fastest I’ve seen, but 80W and 50W wireless top-ups are still better than anything Samsung, Google or Apple currently offers. Even better, it’ll still do 55W on a third party USB PD charger, so you don’t need to buy Oppo’s own-brand adapter to refuel from empty in about an hour.

The only thing missing is Qi2. Oppo does have a bunch of official cases with magnets built in, including the one that ships as part of the Hasselblad Extender Lens kit, which is the best sort of compromise.

Oppo Find X9 Pro verdict

The Find X9 Pro is one of the longest-lasting flagships around right now, with plentiful performance and styling that’s suitably high-end – but once again it’s Oppo’s camera setup that will earn this phone the most fans. While rivals aren’t fully left in the shade when it comes to pixel count or sensor size, the impactful image processing can make even mundane snaps stand out.

It’s not perfect: low-light shots of moving subjects can be tricky and extreme zooms show signs of generative AI smoothing. But once the extender lens is bolted on, this is up there with the best phones for telephoto photography. Accessory pricing and availability are still up in the air right now, but even without it I’d still reach for this ahead of a Galaxy S25 Ultra or Pixel 10 Pro XL.

Now that OnePlus has parted ways with Hasselblad – and the imminent OnePlus 15’s camera hardware isn’t quite so high-end (assuming the global version is a match for the one announced for China) – I think the Find X9 Pro will be an easier pick for serious shutterbugs.

Oppo Find X9 Pro technical specifications