Oppo's 'Ultimate Camera Phone' Is Impressive, but You Can't Buy It
Oppo's Find X7 Ultra has two periscope-style telephoto cameras, which beats Samsung (and pretty much everyone else) to the punch.
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Oppo's new Find X7 Ultra is the first Ultra phone in its premium Find X series. The phone, unveiled today, is the pinnacle of what Oppo has to offer on a smartphone in 2024.
The Find X7 Ultra has a sharp and bright 6.8-inch display (2,560x1,440 pixels, 1,600 nits) and runs on the latest Qualcomm processor (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3). It's powered by a 5,000-mAh battery complemented by 100-watt wired ultrafast charging and 50-watt wireless charging.
This phone is truly all about its five cameras, and Oppo's leaned into that with the phone's imposing camera bump. Four of the cameras are on the back, of which two are periscope-style telephoto cameras backed by large Sony sensors and improved computational photography chops. The Galaxy S23 Ultra, which boasts Samsung's most advanced camera module, has a single telephoto lens, but it's capable of further zoom with 10x.
Oppo says those cameras bridge the "zoom gap between optical focal lengths like never before on a smartphone" because it has an equivalent focal length of 14 to 135 mm. The remaining two cameras are a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 50-megapixel main camera. Oppo is also playing up its Hypertone Image Engine, which it says rectifies typical issues that can arise from computational photography such as oversharpening and overexposure among others.
Oppo sent me a Find X7 Ultra phone in blue to test ahead of today's launch. I only managed to spend 45 minutes or so testing it out, and I spent most of that time taking pictures. During that limited testing time, I appreciated the versatility of the camera setup as well as the zoom continuity that it offers.
The phone allows you to set your own master photo style and tune the camera to take images in that style, although I wasn't able to try that myself. Basically, you can customize images by setting parameters like contrast, sharpness and saturation and saving those settings to profiles.
The Find X7 Ultra comes in three different colors.
I also appreciated the Find X7 Pro's screen and slick design. The Find X7 Ultra evolves the design language of the Find X6 Pro and comes in black, brown and dark blue, the latter of which have a two-tone design. New to the X series is an alert slider, a hardware switch popularized by OnePlus (a subsidiary of Oppo) on its phones that makes it easy to toggle between ring, silent and vibrate modes.
However, Oppo has reserved the Find X7 Ultra for a release in its native China only. The company says there are no current plans for an international launch. Pricing information wasn't available either at the time of writing, but I'd expect it to be in the range of the Galaxy S23 Ultra's price.
Find X7 Ultra's rear cameras
The Find X7 Ultra is perhaps the only commercially available phone to offer two periscope-style telephoto lenses. The dual lens configuration includes a 65mm portrait focal length with 3x optical zoom and a 135mm close-up focal length with 6x optical zoom and 120x digital zoom. The main 50-megapixel wide camera uses Sony's LYT-900, a one-inch type sensor that promises to be more power efficient than its predecessor and capture lots of details. The 50-megapixel ultrawide camera is a Sony LYT-600 sensor, which Oppo says is ideal for either macro photography or capturing expansive scenes, no matter the time of day.
Together with the main and ultrawide camera, it made for a delightful versatile setup. I brought the phone to an ATP tennis tournament in Hong Kong. It was easy to get shots of the entire stadium and then get close-ups of the tennis players way down on the courts thanks to all that zoom power (up to 120x).
You can scroll through the article to see the cameras in action and find the specs chart below that
Taken on default settings with ultrawide camera on the Find X7 Ultra.
This photo (and the following shots of Russian tennis player Andrey Rublev) were taken using zoom.
Rublev in motion. The phone managed to capture a crisp shot while zooming in despite the moving subject.
Rublev gives victory remarks after defeating Finland's Emil Ruusuvuori at an Bank of China Hong Kong Tennis Open. I could barely see his face with my naked eye and relied on the phone's digital zoom to capture this shot. You can still see the the hairs covering his arm and leg.
Portrait mode example. This was taken indoors with sunlight pouring in through large windows. I'm impressed with the detail on this photo, particularly Rocky's fur, as well as the subtle bokeh effect in the background. Rocky's fur coat has a warmer color tone in real life, however: This picture makes it look significantly cooler.
Night mode example.
Shot at night with 6x optical zoom.
Find X7 Ultra key specs
Display: 6.8-inch AMOLED, 2,560x1,440 pixels, 1,600 nits peak brightness
Battery: 5,000 mAh (100W wired, 50W wireless charging)
Processor: Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
Rear Camera: 50-megapixel quad camera setup
RAM/Storage: Up to 16GB + 512GB