I tested this year’s two best camera phones to crown a winner

When it comes to taking great pictures on a smartphone, there are plenty of brilliant choices right now. The latest Galaxy S26 series, Google Pixel, or Apple iPhone are the go-to brands not just for great all-around flagships. They are also considered to be among the most consistent camera phones, often with good reason.

But having used them all at various points over the years, I’ve recently fallen in love with the superior camera setups in the OPPO Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. These are two of the most expensive smartphones on the market right now, and you can’t even buy them officially in the US. Still, if you’re after the best of the best, these two offer photography packages that are a cut above everyone else.

But which is truly the best? I took them out for a spin side by side for a closer look.

OPPO vs Xiaomi: Modern titans of photography

While I’m enamored with both these flagships, they have two rather different camera setups. The selfie cameras are pretty similar, and though OPPO’s ultrawide sensor seems significantly larger, Xiaomi’s main camera sensor is the biggest of the bunch. In fact, Xiaomi’s 50 megapixel main camera should capture a bit more light (and presumably have lower noise) than OPPO’s 200 megapixel main sensor — though OPPO’s sensor is probably already large enough.

Another significant difference between the two is found in the zoom department. Both flagships have gone with large 200 megapixel sensors for huge amounts of detail at mid-range, but that’s where the similarities end. OPPO’s telephoto sensor is larger and has a fixed 70mm focal length at 3x, which is capable of taking high-res snaps at 6x as well. For a longer range, it has another 50MP sensor with a 230mm focal length to take snaps at 10x.

Xiaomi takes a different approach, introducing a variable focal length lens that moves between 70-100mm for a 3.2x to 4.3x true optical zoom. The trade-off is that the sensor is slightly smaller and the aperture is narrower, which should result in less light entering the sensor. Xiaomi also doesn’t have a fourth camera for longer range, instead relying on cropping data from that large sensor.

But that’s enough hardware, let’s get into the photos.

Shooting with the main camera

Flagship smartphones have shipped with brilliant main cameras for years now. Quality is essentially a solved problem when you have 200 megapixels packed into a 1/1.3-inch or larger sensor. As much as Xiaomi’s 1-inch sensor is right at the top of what you can fit into a smartphone form factor, I sadly can’t say it makes much difference to image quality. Instead, you’ll find a more meaningful difference in the general presentation — color, white balance, and post-processing.

Broadly speaking, the two phones nail color and white balance as well as any other phone I’ve ever tested (which is too many to count). Where they differ is that OPPO’s Hasselblad color science favors marginally warmer tones and added color punch, which is very evident in the blues and reds of the first image above. Xiaomi’s Leica Authentic setting is more neutral and muted. However, Xiaomi’s phone also leans more heavily on contrast, with deeper shadows and an occasional tendency to underexpose.

Speaking of, both phones still offer top-notch HDR capabilities, enabling robust exposure in scenes with both bright highlights and dark shadows. Both phones balance out exposure very well. There’s no obvious highlight clipping, while shadows are elevated without looking washed out. The two handsets manage this without introducing much in the way of noticeable shadow noise, highlighting the power of modern hardware and software HDR techniques, but there are key differences in their presentation.

OPPO’s HDR effect is stronger, resulting in deeper sky colors and fewer bright elements bunched up at the top of the exposure curve. See the first image. However, it also pushes up shadows to brighter levels, exposing more detail but also reducing realistic contrast. The second image shows this very well, with less deep shadowing on both the distant trees and the close-up brickwork. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s HDR effect is not as strong, resulting in a more realistic level of contrast that enhances the aesthetic and mood. However, the phone’s HDR setup doesn’t tamp down highlights as much, leading to slightly brighter skies and highlights that come dangerously close to clipping.

Finally, a 100% crop in broad daylight reveals another key difference between these phones’ processing chains. The Find X9 Ultra is undoubtedly sharper, with a far heavier pass that helps distant details pop but also makes the image look slightly messier and introduces a lot of highlight shimmering, making the image look somewhat brighter. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra looks more natural and soft, producing details that hold up nicer on close inspection in exchange for a very small amount of noise. If we’re sticking with the mirrorless comparison, Xiaomi’s image processing is closer to the ideal.

Even just a few pictures are enough to set up themes that will recur throughout this shootout — particularly when it comes to color vibrancy and post-processing. While it varies by camera mode a little, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is generally softer on details and lighter on color saturation, while the OPPO Find X9 Ultra is more eager to add extra sharpening and color to help make scenes stand out. Already then, the purists might be leaning Xiaomi’s way, but it’s worth seeing what the bigger hardware differences mean for capture capabilities and versatility before drawing too many conclusions.

Ultrawide

Again, the ultrawide camera produces images that are similar enough in terms of color saturation, white balance, and overall tone. Despite OPPO’s much larger sensor, you really have to get into the minutiae to tell them apart (at least aside from very low-light situations, where OPPO benefits from lower noise), but there are differences here.

Somewhat like the main camera, OPPO’s ultrawide tends to look brighter, and that effect is definitely dialed up even more on the ultrawide. While it’s still careful to avoid clipping, the outdoor shot below is undoubtedly that bit more brightly exposed than the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Xiaomi’s handset also has a slightly wider field of view, allowing you to fit marginally more into the shot. The difference isn’t huge, but this is arguably what you want when the main cameras are already wide enough for most situations — especially if you can avoid significant distortion.

As with the main camera, this exposure difference is most pronounced in more demanding HDR shots with lots of bright and dark areas to contend with, such as the woodland shot above. OPPO’s HDR implementation is very impressive, especially when paired with a large sensor. Together, they provide very strong detail capture and effective noise reduction in the tree shadows. You can make out the individual lines of the bark, so it certainly earns major points on the scientific side of camera analysis. However, realism and deep shadows are important, and OPPO’s algorithm is too aggressive, robbing what should be dynamic pictures of depth and contrast.

Even though the Xiaomi 17 Ultra has a wider field of view, its ultrawide images come out cleaner too. I spotted several instances of chromatic aberration (purple and red halos) along the edges of my snaps from the OPPO Find X9 Ultra that aren’t present on rival pictures from the Xiaomi.  You can spot these around the tree branches in our HDR woodland shot, but also along the chimney, pipework, and windows of our first building snap, too. Perhaps these can be fixed with a software update that applies additional post-processing, but there’s clearly a lens issue here. Likewise, OPPO’s ultrawide pictures have more noticeable smudged corners. The issue is present on Xiaomi’s ultrawide too, but it’s less noticeable.

Ultrawide cameras might not be my favorite lenses, but I slightly prefer shooting with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra over the others. Its gentler HDR implementation and lack of lens distortion make it produce more pleasing results, even if OPPO’s setup has a slight technical edge in light capture. This one is a surprising win for Xiaomi.

Massive telephoto cameras

Wide lenses are nice, but the real draw with both these phones is the large 200-megapixel telephoto cameras. Large sensors paired with wide apertures produce sumptuous natural bokeh, and while the OPPO’s bigger sensor might produce fractionally more depth, both offer exceptional quality for a mobile 70mm zoom. It probably comes as no surprise that these are my two favorite lenses to shoot with, both for tighter framing, natural depth, and sublime levels of detail at range. Technically, Xiaomi’s variable lens lets you zoom out to 100mm without losing optical quality, but the transition from 3.2x to 4.3x is so slight that it’s not really a standout feature of the phone.

Much like the main lenses, OPPO carries a typically brighter exposure, slightly warmer tones, and more saturated colors over to its telephoto lens. Thankfully, OPPO’s scene detection seems to scale these boosts depending on the scene, reserving additional vibrancy for colorful scenes such as a bed of flowers, while leaving buildings, vehicles, landscapes, and other scenes with more subdued color tones. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s Authentic color profile remains more reserved in all situations, and, again, you’ll find greater shadow depth and subtler HDR. My preference switches between the subject, which just goes to show how subjective color science can be.

Portraits made for quite an interesting comparison, as Xiaomi’s typically higher-contrast look is swapped out here for a flatter appearance on human subjects to even out exposure. While this does help preserve natural tones and details, it can look washed out in bright light. OPPO’s strong HDR effect avoided clipping my white t-shirt here while still preserving greater depth in my facial features. Both are good, but I think OPPO’s vibrancy is a little more true to life here and makes for a nicer portrait overall. Besides that, both score extremely high for bokeh edge accuracy, owing to natural depth and less reliance on software blur (though both phones add even more software bokeh on top, which I would typically tone down).

There are differences in terms of fine detail, too. Crop in closely on the two, and you’ll find marginally cleaner details on the Find X9 Ultra. Xiaomi’s telephoto seems to rely on multi-frame upscaling or another sharpening technique that produces noticeable halos around edges, such as text on the labels of these flowers. While Xiaomi’s main camera had the more natural details of the two, the roles are somewhat reversed with the 3x telephoto, and OPPO’s phone doesn’t seem to apply quite as much oversharpening. Thankfully, both are reasonably clean overall, so this really is a case of quibbling over the finest of fine details.

A closer look at an indoor portrait reveals this minor difference more clearly. There’s an additional definition in my eyebrows in the OPPO snap, while Xiaomi’s is a little noisier and smudged. Xiaomi’s reliance on a little bit more sharpening here accentuates wrinkles and blemishes (I’m not that old, yet!) that are a little less flattering. Though it’s hard to argue with its skin tone, which is spot on.

OPPO’s warmer hue here might not be 100% accurate for my skin tone, but it is probably the more flattering portrait of the two. Again, Xiaomi’s portrait looks comparatively washed out, lacking the added eye sparkle that really makes portraits stand out. Though this might be beneficial if you wanted to edit the photo yourself later.

Super long range

With a dedicated 10x camera, the OPPO Find X9 Ultra’s hardware package should pull ahead at long range. However, Xiaomi’s 3.2-4.3x variable zoom has a neat trick: it can shoot “lossless” quality images at 6.2-8.6x by cropping from the 200MP sensor. This results in plenty of detail that’s a very good match for what you can capture with the OPPO’s 10x when used for macro, longer range portraits, and even some more distant scenes.

Case in point, OPPO’s small sensor still requires some highlight sharpening, which can result in rougher-looking details and aggressive specular highlights, particularly in busy scenes with lots of grass or trees. Xiaomi’s softer approach to processing in most scenes means you can grab somewhat soft-looking distance shots at around 10x that hold up very well against the Find X9 Ultra’s dedicated long-range camera. There’s a little more grain in Xiaomi’s shot of these deer, and the zoom struggles with low light at range, but aside from that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to say its picture is notably inferior. Though obviously, the 10x zoom does let you get a little closer than 8.6x, and the real 200mm focal length adds some natural background bokeh that Xiaomi’s Ultra can’t replicate at this range.

At longer distances, however, the OPPO Find X9 Ultra’s dedicated 10x camera pulls away, partly because its large 50MP resolution can also be used to crop in for compelling detail and color capture even at 20x. There’s a little softness in places, but it avoids the oversharpening and noise present in Xiaomi’s shot at 20x and beyond. Again, OPPO’s dedicated hardware lends itself to natural-looking depth and background compression, providing a richer, more mirrorless-esque feel to its long-range shots, which you won’t find on flagship phones that upscale their 5x cameras for longer distances.

Even at 30x, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra doesn’t look bad at full frame and holds up particularly well in color (often an issue due to low light) and dynamic range. However, the reason it looks passable is only because AI upscaling has kicked in, and a crop in reveals countless hallucinations and reinvented details that certainly don’t hold up well on close inspection. Check the hedgerows and treetops, for example. OPPO’s shot may be soft, but at least the details are natural — though the phone does have an AI toggle for zoom past 60x.

As you’d expect, the OPPO Find X9 Ultra’s dedicated 10x camera gives it an advantage at long range, providing added shooting flexibility. However, that advantage is not always clear-cut, as the lens can struggle with longer exposure times in low light. Xiaomi’s single zoom camera is surprisingly competitive, especially for shots taken around the 10x mark.

This is a tough shootout to call because, despite both offering top-class image quality, each phone has something a little bit different to offer. From a hardware and flexibility perspective, OPPO has the upper hand, but if you want maximum realism in your shots, Xiaomi’s lighter-touch processing comes out ahead.

The OPPO Find X9 Ultra offers serious versatility and arguably the better ready-to-post photos without resorting to editing. While not everyone will like the handset’s marginally deeper color saturation and added sharpness, it’s far from overly aggressive, and the extra vibrance brings portraits to life in a way that makes Xiaomi’s look dull by comparison. Its larger 3x telephoto lens and wider aperture make it a slightly cleaner shooter at medium distances, and at longer ranges, the 10x periscope camera offers a significant advantage over Xiaomi’s variable zoom lens. Arguably, the phone’s only major weakness is its overly strong HDR effect and distortion on the ultrawide lens, but these are livable complaints.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a little less flexible overall, and while the variable-aperture zoom helps cover both short and long distances, two dedicated cameras are still the more powerful solution to this problem. That said, the Xiaomi tends to perform ever so marginally better than the OPPO across the areas that it covers well. Xiaomi’s more consistent shadow depth, reserved color saturation, natural details, and lack of ultrawide distortion make it an incredibly consistent camera kit across ultrawide, main, and 3x telephoto. It might not quite match the Find X9 Ultra at the longest ranges, but it’s incredible everywhere else. However, given the phone’s tendency toward flatter colors and occasional underexposure, you might find yourself reaching for the edit button a bit more than you’d like.

Although both these phones set out to redefine smartphone photography, my conclusion is that they end up catering to slightly different markets. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra leans closer to a mirrorless experience, with flexible optics and a safer color palette that encourages you to experiment both before and after pressing the shutter. The OPPO Find X9 Ultra offers similarly superb quality, but its sheer versatility, image cleanup, and tasteful color science make it closer to a point-and-shoot ethos — hit the shutter and your snap is ready to go.

It might be a cop out, but I like both camera setups for slightly different reasons.