Having found massive success in Asian markets over the past few years, Oppo finally launched in Europe towards the end of 2018, following that up with UK presence from early 2019. It's just one of a handful of Chinese brands to be welcomed on British soil in recent times. 

Given its history building mid-range, affordable metal phones, the Oppo Find X is about as far removed from the traditional Oppo phone as can be. This is all about introducing concept-like new features in an eye-catching design that you can actually buy. A year later, it still looks incredibly modern, although there are now more companies pushing for that all-screen look with hidden cameras.

But is it worth its £799 asking price, or is it more a display that Oppo means business and will be a major player to watch in the future?

OPPO Find X

Our quick take

Given its near bezel-less screen, eye-catching rear glass panel and cool pop-up camera mechanism, the Oppo Find X is easily one of this year's most interesting phones. In fact, it's one of the most interesting phones we've seen in a long time.

That vibrant display and class-leading battery life make it a winning device, but its less-than-stellar cameras, restrictive software and flagship-matching price leave a bitter after taste to what is an otherwise delicious flagship.

In the end, the Oppo Find X is a promising glimpse at the future of smartphones. Bezel-less and notch-free screens are possible - as we've already seen from the Vivo NEX S - and we suspect we'll be seeing more of them as technology develops over time. Hopefully with more refined software and consideration for some of the features too.

Oppo Find X - 4.0 / 5

FORAGAINST
  • Stunning glass design
  • Pop-up camera mechanism is cool
  • Bezel-less screen is a surefire head turner
  • Battery life is superb
  • Software is overly restrictive
  • Camera only decent rather than great
  • Not very durable and prone to dust
  • Horribly expensive
OPPO Find X

Fresh, innovative looks... and a moving camera!

  • Curved glass front and back
  • Pop-up camera mechanism
  • No fingerprint scanner
  • 157 x 74 x 9.4mm

From a design perspective, the Find X is a big change from the usual, plain-looking metal and glass phones that were typical of Oppo in the past. It is, quite simply, one of the best-looking phones to date.

Look at it from the back, and you'll see why we think so: the glass back is truly stunning, with either a blue or purple edge that subtly gradients into black to the middle of the phone. And, depending on the angle you're looking at it from or how light hits it, the coloured section varies in visible size. 

However, this shiny finish does mean the Find X is something of a fingerprint magnet. Oh, and it will slip off virtually anything you place it upon if it's not level. Sofa arms? Don't do it! Still, it looks and feels like a high-end and premium device (if it's not smashed all over the floor).

The curved glass on the back is matched by the curved glass that covers the screen on the front, making for a phone that feels pretty comfortable to hold. It's slightly shorter and noticeably narrower than an iPhone 8 Plus, which makes it far easier to use and carry around in a pocket, despite the mammoth screen on the front. 

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Look at the front of the Find X with the screen on and you'll notice there's no notch at the top, with barely any bezel at all around the edges. That means it's almost entirely screen, which posed something of a problem to Oppo's engineers: where do you put the earpiece and the selfie camera?

The answer: into a popup mechanism. Go to use the camera and these slide up, out of the body of the phone, on both front and on the back. It's not a small area that moves either like it is with the Vivo NEX S, rather the whole width of the phone goes into motion. Others have since arrived in China with similar non-mechanical sliding mechanisms - we compare them in our feature here - including Xiaomi, Honor and Lenovo.

While this pop-up mechanism is undoubtedly cool, it does mean some compromises in durability. It means the phone's frame isn't quite as strong as most flagship phones (not that we've tested it to destruction). It also means that it's not waterproof. Even after just a couple of weeks using the Find X, we've already found that dust has begun to gather inside - although less so than the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3

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We've been impressed with the mechanism's reliability in our time with the Find X. Each time it's activated, it slides up without fault and does so quickly, which bodes well for everyday use, since the only secure way to unlock the phone is by using the facial recognition system. It's quicker than the combined face and iris scanner on the Samsung Galaxy S9, which is good news, because there's no fingerprint sensor on this Oppo anywhere. Saying that, it's noticeably slower than the Face Unlock on the OnePlus 6T.

Borderless viewing

  • 6.42-inch AMOLED screen
  • 1080 x 2340 resolution
  • No notch

Few screens excite as much as the near bezel-less 6.42-inch display on the Find X. But that's mostly down to the design. There's very little frame around the edges, and there's no notch (you know, the black-out 'dip' to the top of many current flagships, from the iPhone X to the Huawei P20 Pro). Combine that huge screen with the contrast and saturation offered by the AMOLED panel and you have a vibrant and eye-catching display. 

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It's not perfect though. Its 1080 x 2340 resolution means it's not quite as sharp as some of the most pixel-packed panels on the market. With that said, the 401ppi pixel density is certainly sharp enough to make it almost impossible to see individual pixels. Besides, too many pixels can often mean battery life issues, so the 'not overdoing it' approach can often be best.

Playing games and watching our favourite shows on Netflix has been fantastic, because the screen is so dynamic when watched head-on. Change the viewing angle and the colours start to shift slightly too much, though, with whites appearing more pink when you tilt the phone. That's the one notable issue with this screen because of its curves.

Flagship performance

  • Snapdragon 845 processor, 8GB RAM
  • 256GB storage, no microSD slot

Look at the specification list of the Find X and it's easy to see why its performance is fast and fluid. The current best-in-class processor and a massive 8GB RAM make sure of that.

We've had no issues with the Find X for sure, despite it running its own software skin over Android (Colour OS here). Whether we were launching apps or playing graphically intense games, the Oppo handles it all without so much as a whimper. That's a good job as, oddly, the also-launched Oppo RX17 Pro has lots of software quirks that are far more apparent than on this Find X.

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However, due to its software animations, it doesn't feel quite as instant and snappy as phones with more lightweight software, like the OnePlus 6T or the Google Pixel 3 XL. The difference is negligible to the point you'll barely notice, but it's still a downside compared to the flagship elite.

Even the facial recognition for unlocking the Oppo is relatively speedy and reliable. Not once has the face scanning failed for us. Similar to the iPhone X, it'll ignore your attempts if you're looking away from the screen, which is comforting to know. You won't get any accidental unlocks like you might when you tap a fingerprint sensor, or purely camera-based face unlock system on another phone. Although the lack of a fingerprint scanner is disappointing - especially as the Vivo NEX S offers one under its actual screen.

Long battery life, stupid fast charging

  • 3730mAh battery
  • VOOC flash charging (20W)
  • Super VOOC on UK model (50W)

If there's one area the Find X impresses more than other flagships, it's in its battery performance. With a capacious 3,730mAh cell powering the device, you'd suspect it can at least get to the end of the day without needing to be charged. You'd be right, but probably also underestimating its performance wildly. 

In our testing, with what we'd class as moderate usage - browsing the web, playing a little PUBG, catching up on emails and social media, as well as snapping the odd photo and listening to music - we got to the end of a second day on a single charge more often than not. We suspect even heavy users could comfortably make it to a day and a half.

So battery is awesome, but what really puts the cherry on top is the speed it charges back up again. Especially if you get the UK model. Initially, at its launch event, Oppo stated that only the special Lamborghini edition of the Find X would get its 50W Super VOOC flash charging. But by the time the UK launch happened, the regular Find X got it too. 

Initially, we tested the "regular" VOOC charging model, which was quick enough. It could fully charge the phone from 0-100 in less than 90 minutes. But with more than double the power, Super VOOC essentially cuts that time in half. With the phone completely drained and unable to power on, we were able to get it fully charged in around 35 minutes. It's insane. 

The great thing about this tech though is that if you're in a hurry and don't have 35 minutes to spare, you'll still get a good amount of charge in just 20 minutes. In fact, it doesn't take much more than that to get it up to 80 per cent charge. 

You can see just how insane it is compared to other fast charging technology in the video above. Although that test was done on the Find X's sister phone, the RX17 Pro, the same experience rings true on the Find X. 

TL;DR: There's no such thing as battery anxiety with the Oppo Find X; it lasts for ages and ages. 

Software

  • Color OS software over Android Oreo operating system

Oppo's Color OS is a re-skin that sits over the top of Google's Android operating system... and it's among the least Android-like in its approach. Historically, it's always been more like Apple's iPhone system, iOS, which will make it a little tricky to use if you're coming from another Android phone.

There's no app drawer, for example, so you're forced to have all of your apps in folders on the home screen (although some of the Pocket-lint team actually prefer this approach). Launch the multitasking/recent apps view and you get a bunch of app preview cards that you swipe through horizontally.

Being Android, of course, you could install your own custom third-party launcher to try and make it feel more Android-ish. But if you do, you'll likely come across extra issues as everything fights for space. We've done just that in our testing and experienced several freezes and blank screens, and so were eventually forced to retreat back to the default Color OS launcher.

Which is a shame, as Color OS has a habit of over-aggressively protecting against using other default apps. For instance, try and use Google's smart auto-fill feature to quickly login to services and the Find X simply wouldn't allow it, forcing us to manually login to virtually all of our apps and services. The software also kept warning us about not using the preinstalled SMS app as our default, even in apps where it wasn't relevant. 

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Part of the joy of Android OS is that you can decide to use different default apps and launchers if you want to, yet Color OS does its utmost to kill that joy. 

Still, it's not all bad, it just takes getting used to if you're more familiar with 'traditional' Android. There are flashes of enjoyment, like the way you can have the screen pulse colours around the edges when notifications come in. There's also the Gaming Engine mode which ensures that you don't get any notifications while you're playing specific games (Asus and others offer this too); it also boosts performance while you're in those titles. 

Cameras galore

  • Dual 20MP/16MP f/2.0 rear setup
  • Front 25MP selfie
  • 3D depth sensing 
  • Animated emoji

With both the dual rear and single front cameras all built into the ejecting portion of the phone, that means less space for lenses/optics, so it's no surprise that these aren't the Find X's cameras aren't the most impressive cameras we've seen in a smartphone. With that said, they're perfectly good enough for daylight photography. 

In low-light situations motion is captured with blur and image noise levels start to rise, which is also true of the front-facing camera. And like so many other front-facing selfie cameras, the default setting adds a beautification mode, over-softening skin and making it look unrealistic. 

Despite that, Oppo has loaded its camera app with features we've seen made popular on many other devices. Using the phone in auto mode with the rear cameras, it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine what kind of scenery and subject is being shot and adapts the settings to match. This isn't perfect on any device just yet, as AI evolves.

As for the 25-megapixel front-facing camera, it combines with the depth sensors to create a 3D photo of your face to build custom beautifying modes, which can make your nose thinner, skin smoother and your face less round, if you so desire... well, not in real life, but you know what we mean. And just like the iPhone X (among others such as Huawei) there's an artificial lighting mode that adds lighting effects to portrait photos. 

Then, there's Oppo's version of animated emoji which - similar to Animoji - use the front camera and sensors to mimic your facial expressions using either your own custom made character or a handful of animals. The former is disappointing, in that it has a grand selection of just five hair styles, so you have three short styles, one afro or dreadlocks, and you can't change the eye colour. It's safe to say, the character - despite being generated by scanning your literal face - won't look anything like you. 

In other words, there are a lot of gimmicks here that are fun for a few minutes, but soon become forgotten, while the actual cameras could do with more core work to be a better all-rounders.

OPPO Find X

To recap

Its near bezel-less screen, eye-catching rear glass panel, cool pop-up camera mechanism and leading battery life make the Oppo Find X one of 2019’s most interesting phones. However, its less-than-stellar camera, restrictive software and price leave a bitter after taste to what is an otherwise delicious flagship.