Oppo's latest flagship, the Find X2 Pro, has one of the most impressive spec sheets of the year so far. It's clear the popular manufacturer is going after that gap in the market left by Huawei since its lack of Google Play has rendered it unpopular in western markets. 

Along with a powerful fast charging battery and epic display, Oppo has also equipped it with a highly capable and versatile camera system which puts it right alongside the likes of Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Huawei P30 Pro. But how does it compare? 

Watch the video below, and let us know which you think takes the better shots overall. 

The Camera specs

  • Oppo: 48MP f/1.7 primary, 13MP periscope zoom, 48MP ultrawide
  • Samsung: 108MP f/1.8 primary, 48MP periscope zoom, 12MP ultrawide
  • Huawei: 40MP f/1.6, 8MP periscope zoom, 20MP ultrawide

A big reason for why we wanted to run these cameras side-by-side is because they all feature very similar setups. While pixel count might differ between all the sensors, it's the function of the camera we find more interesting. Specifically: there's a regular (wide) camera alongside an ultra-wide and a periscope zoom. 

This latter camera is something we've seen on an increasing number of flagship phones this past 12 months. Essentially, the glass elements within the lens makeup are laid horizontal within the body of the phone, with a 90-degree prism directing the light towards the sensor and through the lens elements. 

This means you can get previously impossible levels of 'optical zoom'. But these phones take it a step further, and then combine that natural zoom offered by camera makeup with high pixel count sensors, optical stabilisation and machine learning to keep photos looking passable at really high zoom levels. 

Zoom Zoom

The first thing that's worth saying is that all of these cameras are generally very good in daylight. You can see in the images above there are subtle differences in terms of how the cameras processed the colour, but generally detail is good and none of the three seemed to struggle with highlights or shadows all that much. 

Samsung's is noticeably more vivid and perhaps over saturated compared to the Oppo and Huawei in the wide shot, but when zoomed in using the zoom capabilities, Oppo seems to get darker and warmer than the other two. 

It's when you get closer to object that issues start to crop up, particularly with Samsung's, which seems to kick in a very shallow depth of field when it's up close. It - along with the Huawei - had a hard time capturing the red flower in the images above, blurring out a lot of the detail within the flower itself. You also get an interesting look into how each camera automatically adjusts the white balance to either make the image cooler or warm and saturated. 

Interestingly when using some pretty extreme zoomed in focal lengths, each again tends to process differently. Samsung and Huawei tend to saturate colours more in the example above, but also smooth out the details, making them appear more smudged. None of them look perfect, but you can actually still see some of the wood grain in the sign on Oppo's photo. 

Night Mode

Night mode is something of a given in smartphones these days, as it attempts to make low light photography possible even using a phone completely handheld. Again, using AI to automatically adjust for any hand movement/shake while also holding the shutter open for seconds at a time. The result: more light gets in, but the image has no blur from the inevitable shakiness of your hands.

It's worth noting, the fact any of this is possible is awesome on any handheld smartphone, but each phone approaches things differently again. Samsung, once more, tends to give you a lot more saturation in the blues of the sky, even when it's dark. 

Huawei appears to do the opposite, with a lot more prominence on the warm light coming from the orange street lights around the scene. Samsung and Oppo also seem to do a better job of picking up the pastel colours of the building across the river in the first image, where Huawei over-exposes that part leaving it looking bleached.