Redefining the modern camera phone

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of OPPO’s recent flagship smartphones. Between the Find X’s unique design aesthetic, powerful cameras, and massive batteries, these phones have regularly offered something a little different to your household’s flagship names without compromising on the core smartphone experience. But one thing missing from OPPO’s global lineup in recent years has been its Ultra flagship models, which, for various reasons, have been consigned to China. That all changes this year, with the OPPO Find X9 Ultra, and I’ve had one in my hands for the past three weeks.

With a powerhouse Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, 7050mAh silicon-carbon battery, 100W fast charging, 50W wireless charging, IP68/IP69 rating, four rear cameras, five years of OS updates, and six years of security patches, OPPO is holding nothing back.

The question is, is the Find X9 Ultra worth the €1,699 that OPPO is charging in Europe?

You only need to look at the OPPO Find X9 Ultra to know its target audience — this is, first and foremost, a powerhouse camera phone. While the aesthetic is built to accommodate the huge camera housing, the textured back looks great and adds much-needed grip. Right out of the box, this feels like a premium handset.

OPPO has packed the phone with four rear cameras, with high-quality versatility being the aim of the game, from ultrawide out to 10x optical zoom. But don’t focus solely on megapixels; all of these cameras boast large image sensors, wide apertures, and a selection of the imaging industry’s latest hardware tricks.

You’ll struggle to find a more well-equipped camera phone on the market, and this setup makes the latest iPhone and Galaxy camera specs look positively second-rate. But how do the photographs actually hold up? You can find the full-res samples of the pictures taken for this review in this Google Drive folder.

As you’d expect from any modern flagship smartphone camera system, high dynamic range performance, fine detail capture, and white balance are excellent. While Hasselblad’s color tuning can sometimes boost saturation in certain scenes (typically with vivid reds and oranges), the overall aesthetic leans more toward understated realism than artificial pop and punch. I prefer this look, as it’s easier to edit extra color in than to take it out, and there’s still enough vibrancy when you want it.

Color science is consistent across all four lenses, though I’ve noticed shifts in contrast and saturation at the extremes. The ultrawide can push greens and blues a bit too far, while the 10x zoom occasionally trends darker than the other lenses, likely due to its smaller sensor. Maintaining uniformity across multiple cameras in a single phone is always tricky — especially here, where the OPPO Find X9 Ultra combines four sensors from three different manufacturers. Given that, the overall consistency between shots is impressive.

The camera’s use of large sensors and wide lenses means that these same strengths transfer to low-light shots. Colors hold up very well, though fine details can take on a slightly oversharpened look from OPPO’s robust post-processing. On that note, the HDR effect can be a bit strong at night with bright lights, leading to bloom and overly heavy contrast. The ultrawide and the 10x zoom are the weakest in low light, but that’s a common complaint.

Unfortunately, the ultrawide is the weakest camera overall and not just in low light. It can’t quite match the main camera’s quality. Details aren’t as robust, the HDR effect is sometimes too strong, and there’s noticeable distortion at the lens edges and chromatic aberration around highlights. The results still pass inspection at full frame, but the faults are easy to notice when you crop in.

The OPPO Find X9 Ultra’s ultrawide lens is by no means bad to shoot with. If it’s any consolation, I doubt you’ll be reaching for the ultrawide very often, given that the main lens is already 22mm wide and performs that much better.

Returning to the good stuff, the double zoom lens capabilities are the real reasons to buy this camera phone. Whether you’re shooting at 3x, 6x, 10x, or beyond, this camera package has you covered, even in low light.

Colors are exceptional, as is the level of detail from both the phone’s zoom lenses. But the best thing about this setup is simply how much fun you can have with composition. Instead of the main lens, I couldn’t help but spend most of my time shooting with the 70mm telephoto. The combination of a huge 1/1.28-inch image sensor and an f/2.2 aperture doesn’t just produce technically great pictures; it also delivers wonderful background compression and natural bokeh for serious depth, even at a distance.

The 10x lens might be smaller at just 1/2.75 and with a narrower f/3.5 aperture, but its long 230mm focal length ensures plenty of compression. Its 50MP can also crop into to produce acceptable shots at 20x, but at 30x and beyond, softness and lack of light start severely degrading the quality. Even OPPO’s AI diffusion tech can only modestly improve the look of really long-distance shots. If I have one complaint about OPPO’s 10x lens, it’s that it’s not amazing in low light. Shutter speed times creep up, meaning you have to hold the camera still, but any small movements are exaggerated by the long-range zoom.​

The 3x lens’s 70mm focal length is on the upper end of the ideal portrait focal length range, but you can’t argue with the results here either. Even the 230mm 10x has its place for shooting very distant subjects.

The 3x and even 10x lenses’ soft-touch color, dynamic range, and contrast continue to ensure that subjects are always well exposed, not overly saturated, and flush with natural-looking detail. Once again, the large sensors and wide aperture produce a natural soft bokeh that is perfect for portraits without the artifacts of software-based edge detection. That feature still exists, along with filters and retouch options, but, in all honesty, I don’t think you ever need to touch the phone’s portrait mode.

Take a look at the fine detail in the eyes, hair, and skin textures in the image and crop above. There’s a night-and-day comparison that makes all the difference when it comes to digitally framing or printing your portraits.

A similar level of quality is available from the Ultra’s selfie camera. Dynamic range, exposure, and color balance remain exceptional, even in tough outdoor lighting conditions.

I have notes on the selfie camera, however. The field of view is far too wide by default. I ended up hitting the 1x crop just to get the framing right, but the resulting face shapes are still too narrow. Furthermore, skin tones are worse here, with oversaturation and blotchiness that I didn’t observe on the rear cameras. It’s still good, but not as good.

And what about video? Well, those 200 megapixels across the camera array come in very handy here, too. 8K 30fps recording is available from 1x right out to 10x. Need higher frames? 4K 120fps is available across the same lenses, with 4K 60fps supported on the ultrawide too. Those bountiful pixels also let you crop in for Ultra Steady stabilization, which works very well at removing shakes.

In terms of quality, dynamic range is great, as are colors and detail preservation. OPPO also supports software bokeh down to f/1.4 at 4K 30fps, which looks sumptuous, but fast-moving subjects can suffer from edge detection glitches. My biggest gripe with the video setup is the transition between lenses, which is exacerbated by the sheer distance between them. The phone does its best to smoothly transition the view between lenses as you zoom in, but there’s an inevitable pop when the cameras switch over. In lieu of an option to lock recording to a specific lens (a manual video mode would help close the gap on the photography features), you’re best off sticking to pressing the preset zoom points, as OPPO handles smooth transitions for you.

I had high expectations coming into the OPPO Find X9 Ultra review, and the phone has met them and perhaps even exceeded them. Smartphones have long offered good image quality across a huge range of environments, but there’s always been a somewhat intangible quality difference with high-end mirrorless cameras — often a result of detail processing and lack of natural depth. The Find X9 Ultra joins a select few other modern Android flagship phones that offer exceptional quality, which finally closes the remaining gaps in the dedicated camera market. Along with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and vivo X300 Ultra, the OPPO Find X9 Ultra has just leapfrogged the best cameras from Apple, Google, and Samsung.

Power and battery life galore

As you would expect for a smartphone packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, performance is top-notch. The chip already claims the title in our CPU performance benchmarks for 2026, and the Find X9 Ultra comes out on top under prolonged graphical workloads. While the 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy might have a short-term lead, OPPO’s ability to withstand an abusive 48°C (118°F) environment gives it the lead for good portions of 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme Stress Test.

However, this leads to an overly warm handset that can become uncomfortable to hold during longer sessions, resulting in significantly variable performance after about 10 minutes. While real games (mostly) don’t stress phones this much, the heat could cause discomfort for long, demanding play sessions, such as classic 3D game emulation. Furthermore, there’s not much performance gain to be had over the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 in the OPPO Find X9 Pro. In fact, the Pro model runs cooler and leads in ray-tracing performance in my testing. So I wouldn’t say performance is the only reason to upgrade to the Ultra, and that extra heat might even be a turn-off for gamers.

Speaking of the X9 Pro, the Find X9 Ultra also has a smaller battery at 7,050 mAh, compared to 7,500 mAh in its cheaper sibling, but it’s still a relatively large cell for 2026 flagship phones. Although the Pro lasts longer, the Ultra still delivers very promising results compared to other flagships in its price tier.

Out of the five phones I picked for comparison, only the OnePlus 15 scores some wins over the OPPO, but only in video-heavy workloads like recording and playback. Otherwise, it’s a clean sweep for the Find X9 Ultra, which offers around 20% better average battery life across our tests than the Galaxy S26 Ultra and far outlasting the Pixel 10 Pro XL in our key camera capture and web browsing tests. It’s no surprise that the bigger batteries win out here.

The bottom line: the OPPO Find X9 Ultra has the performance and battery life to easily take you through a full day, and quite probably two, before you even think about reaching for the charger.

As brilliant as the OPPO Find X9 Ultra is in many regards, it doesn’t get everything right.

For starters, the brand undermines all the unique identity that’s gone into the phone’s hardware by cloning Apple’s Liquid Glass theme from iOS 26. Why OPPO believes this is a good move is anyone’s guess, and it feels like little more than a gimmick given the X9 Pro didn’t launch with this same look. I thought ColorOS had a decent aesthetic in recent years, so this feels like a step backward for fans of the series. It’s not gaudy enough to ruin the experience (ColorOS remains superbly usable at its core), but if you’re hoping for something more customizable or a more traditional Android look, the Find X9 Ultra’s switch to a glass theme might feel a little insipid. Likewise, I can do without the rather large number of pre-installed apps on a phone with such a steep price tag.

The hardware setup isn’t quite perfect either. OPPO’s SuperVOOC has a reputation for fast charging, but more recent implementations haven’t been quite as fast as the very speediest competitors. 56 minutes to full is still very respectable for a phone with such a huge battery, but just a few minutes on the plug won’t net you as much charge as rival devices.  In fact, the Find X9 Ultra even finds itself eclipsed by the newly minted 60W-capable Galaxy S26 Ultra.

After 30 minutes on the plug, Samsung’s latest flagship will reach 85%, while the OPPO will be on a far more modest 64%. Even accounting for that bigger battery, it’s still notably slower than the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and OnePlus 15 in that same time period, owing to faster temperature build-up and more aggressive power throttling. Much like last year’s model, the peak 64W I could draw from an 80W SuperVOOC plug is sustained for only a minute before throttling back to a still respectable average of 33W across the entire cycle.

What I find more disappointing about the Find X9 Ultra is that it still requires proprietary charging to hit its best speeds. Plugging into a more universal USB PD PPS plug drops power to just 42W, causing a minor hit to short-term charge times. That’s still very good by general phone-charging standards, but it’s not living up to the tagline’s charging credentials.

Meanwhile, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra can hit about 70W over that same USB PD PPS protocol. Samsung’s latest 60W capability is based on the same, more universal specification. The days of fastest charging requiring proprietary protocols are over; OPPO should get with that program.

The OPPO Find X9 Ultra redefines the Ultra flagship, particularly in the camera department. If it’s not the very best camera phone that money can buy, it’s definitely in the top three, thanks to its cutting-edge camera hardware, a powerful app, and a familiar assortment of software smarts. I might not love every aspect of the redesigned UI or overabundance of pre-installed apps, but the exquisite design, multi-day battery life, and top-tier performance make this more than just a great camera phone — it’s a premium all-around flagship too.

Along with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (€1499 at Xiaomi) and vivo X300 Ultra (€1999 at Amazon), Chinese camera phones are really leveling up the mobile photography experience. These are undoubtedly OPPO’s closest rivals, as both have doubled down on large, next-gen 200MP camera arrays with impressive long-range zoom capabilities. They also offer similarly powerful processing hardware, super-fast charging, and large batteries that can keep you going for two days of solid use.

Either would be a suitable alternative, but one problem they all share is getting your hands on them. Priced at £1,449 in the UK and around €1,699 in Europe (~$2,000), this is an unbelievably expensive piece of technology. There’s no official launch for US customers, who face potentially even steeper import costs and 5G band compatibility issues if they want to dabble in OPPO’s latest Ultra. If you still want the bulk of OPPO’s latest flagship experience but need to save a little money, grab the OPPO Find X9 Pro ($1515 at Amazon). It’s only really missing the 10x zoom capability, and its MediaTek processor is every bit as good as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon.

Outside of that, it’s hard to recommend the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL ($1199 at Amazon) or the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra ($1299.99 at Samsung) as direct alternatives. Not because these Android flagship staples are bad phones; they’re still leading the industry in AI capabilities, offer long-term updates, and perform just as well as even more pricy models — for a regular buyer, they’re the safer, and arguably better, pick. However, they’re built for a slightly different consumer; they balance specs, software familiarity, broader ecosystems, and price into great if not particularly exciting flagship phones. They simply can’t afford to throw anything and everything at the wall and hope it sticks.

The OPPO Find X9 Ultra, by contrast, is a no-holds-barred camera showcase built for the discerning photographer. If that’s you, then you won’t regret spending the money on one. This is one of the best phones I’ve ever used.