Oppo’s pushing both the high-end specifications and its reputation for more affordable price points with the Oppo Find X2, and we’ve already had the opportunity (or is it oppo-rtunity?) for some hands-on evaluation time.
The launch of the Oppo Find X2 was meant to be at Mobile World Congress, with Oppo keen to get ahead of the pack with a Saturday launch. That didn’t happen due to the COVID-19 Coronavirus of course, with Oppo instead opting for a “virtual” launch of its new flagship handset online.
Just prior to that, however, I had the chance to go hands-on with the Oppo Find X2 Pro, which is the model that we’ll see in Australia before the middle of the year.
Oppo Find X2 Pro: The basics
While Oppo’s got a strong position locally in the more affordable phone space, it’s been busy in recent years with some genuinely interesting premium phones. I say interesting because Oppo hasn’t been afraid to experiment and innovate, with phones like the Oppo Find X and its pop-up camera, or the Oppo Reno 5G and its rear nub that regular Gizmodo editor Tegan was obsessed with.
You don’t always generate a hit when you experiment, but it certainly keeps everyone else on their toes and provides some smart glimpses into what’s possible in a mobile phone form factor.
The Oppo Find X2 will ship in Australia in just two colours. You can opt for quite standard-looking Ceramic Black or the much more eye catching Vegan Leather Orange.
Where last year’s Reno 5G opted for a shark fin selfie camera, Oppo’s taken a rather more standard approach with the Find X2 Pro, which features a single front-facing selfie camera in a punch hole. Dropping the pop-up camera does mean that Oppo can add IP68 rated water resistance to the Find X2 Pro, not that Oppo representatives were all that keen for me to take it for a swim.
The primary display is a 6.7 inch OLED with support for 120Hz refresh rates, although the review models I was able to spend a little time were set to the default 60Hz. That’s a smart enough move, because it should allow you to sacrifice a little visual smoothness in return for better battery life. Oppo says that just having a 120Hz display won’t be enough for a flagship phone in 2020, however, so it’s also utilising what it calls an “Ultra Vision” display with HDR10+ support, 3168×1440 resolution and 100% P3 colour gamut support.
Underneath the display lurks a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, although there’s no support for external storage via microSD. It’s running Android 10 with Oppo’s own ColorOS 7.1 overlay. The days of Oppo only shipping phones that look suspiciously like they’re iPhones are long behind Oppo, although ColorOS does have a few quirks if you’re more used to a plain Android UI.
Oppo prides itself as a “camera phone company”, and at least in a raw specification sense the Find X2 Pro should satisfy most photographers. That front punch hole houses a 32MP f/2.4 selfie camera, while at the back you’ll find a primary 48MP Wide Angle f/1.7, secondary 48MP f/2.2 120 degree Ultrawide and 13MP f/2.4 periscope style telephoto lens. There’s support for hybrid zoom at up to 10x ” Oppo’s spec sheet doesn’t say but that means it’s fairly likely it’s natively 5x true optical ” and digital zoom at up to 60x.
Is it any good? You can see below for my impressions, but Oppo’s claim at launch is that it’s scored a DXOMark of 124, making it the equal best camera that site’s tested alongside the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro.
The battery isn’t market leading at 4260mAh, but Oppo claims its charging is. It’s a further evolution of its own inhouse SuperVOOC standard, this time with support for charging up to a toasty 65W. Oppo’s claim is that you can pump up to 40% of the Oppo Find X2’s battery into it with the supplied charger in just 10 minutes, or to full charge from zero in just 38 minutes. There’s no mention of wireless charging ” which would naturally be much slower ” in Oppo’s specifications for the Oppo Find X2.
Oppo expects to launch the Oppo Find X2 Pro in Australia “in the coming months” at a very sharp retail price of $1599.
Just on the included specifications, that’s very keen pricing, but what’s it like to use?
Oppo Find X2 Pro: Early impressions
Now, there’s a lot about the Oppo Find X2 Pro that I couldn’t possibly get to in the 30 or so minutes I had to test it out. I couldn’t see how well its antennas worked with 5G networks, although I was in an area of Sydney where at least Telstra’s 5G network is operational. I couldn’t run the battery down in order to see how warm it might get with that 65W charger attached. It was the middle of the day, so opportunities to test out its new low light mode were few and far between. Suggestions that I take it for a swim to test its water resistance in nearby Darling Harbour were met with nervous grins from Oppo staff who weren’t entirely sure if I was serious or not.
What I could do was play around with the UI, and of course do a little camera testing on the side. Oppo was even happy enough for me to take away a few of my camera samples with me, which you’ll find below.
I really do like the way that Oppo has moved away from aping iOS and instead offering its own take on Android with ColorOS. There are a few conventions that I do wish Oppo would follow in terms of the layout of screens or some of the language used when it’s warning you about required app access, but for the most part you can use the Oppo Find X2 in the same ways you can any other Android handset.
In very brief tests, there wasn’t much that seemed to tax the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, but that should absolutely be expected for a flagship phone running Qualcomm’s fastest and most efficient processor to date.
In terms of hand feel, it’s a mixed affair. The Ceramic Black Oppo Find X2 is”¦ well, it’s a standard black body phone with a slightly reflective surface, so it picks up fingerprints very quickly indeed. Were it mine, I’d be slapping a case on it anyway ” I’m like that ” so that may well be moot.
The Vegan Leather Orange finish is more divisive. Your own tastes may vary, but I’m torn. On the one hand I love a phone with a striking colour back, and the Oppo Find X2 Pro can’t help but remind me of the orange model of the Google Pixel 4, which I adore in a colour sense.
However, I find I just cannot get on with leather (or in this case, faux leather) backed phones. There’s something about the different grip and friction that I just don’t like, and that’s after years of testing out multiple leather-backed smartphones. I also found my hand caught just a little on the metal Oppo nameplate stitched into the rear of the Vegan Leather model of the Find X2 Pro.
Regular Gizmodo editor and writer of extreme brilliance Tegan Jones differs in her opinion though. Those are her hands above, because my own nails are terrible. Tegan is a big fan of the tactile feel of the Oppo Find X2 Pro, and was hoping that the extra friction it provided might mean it’s less likely to slip off surfaces when you place it down.
Your own tastes could fall on either side of that debate, and thankfully there’s no price premium if you do want the Vegan Leather Orange Model.
With a little help from Tegan, I had the chance to put the Oppo Find X2 through a few quick camera tests.
First up, a portrait shot. Tegan wants it to be known that the lighting was “terrible” (and she’s not wrong) but that’s not a bad way to put a portrait camera through a tougher test:
Then the zoom functionality, which can go all the way up to 60x zoom. A little tricky to find something far enough away to be framed, so I chose a landing over the way. Predictably, if you push it to full slightly-creepy 60x zoom, it looks quite poor.
That’s totally the story for everybody’s full-scope digital zoom, and while 60x is less than the 100x claimed on the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, the reality is that either phone will give you awful shots if you want full digital zoom.
The ultrawide camera does double duty as the effective macro lens, and here I found it worked acceptably well with the few subjects to hand.
Regular everyday shots were fine too, but it was inside and in decent light. I’d expect nothing less.
There’s still a lot about the Oppo Find X2 Pro that I’d want to put through its paces before coming up with a definitive conclusion, but based on its specifications and a little hands-on time, and especially that price point, Oppo could well have a hit on its hands.
The Oppo Find X2 Pro is expected to launch in Australia in the 2nd quarter of the year for $1599 outright.