A Great iPhone for Android Lovers

File this under “phones that I wish were available in the U.S.” Now available in over 50 countries, the Oppo Find 8X Pro (£1,049, 16GB of RAM, 512GB onboard storage) is a revelation. A sleek flagship that’s also pleasantly durable, the Find 8X Pro is seriously impressive. Boasting powerful Hasselblad cameras, the smartphone can definitely take a pretty photo. And the 6.78-inch display is one of the brightest I’ve encountered thus far. It also has an 80W charger for speedy recharges. Plus, its MediaTek processor handed the Find 8X Pro an unexpected win over the iPhone. And, of course, there are several AI features baked in.

Speaking of the iPhone, the Oppo drew heavily from one of the best smartphones in the game. It even has a programmable Action button that defaults to snapping pics. Heck, even the icons in its Color OS 15 UI are iPhonesque. Oppo’s even made transferring files to an iPhone easier by using a simple tap. However, heavy iPhone influences aside, the Oppo Find 8X Pro is an excellent smartphone for people who are bored with the usual suspicions of flagships.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Design

I’ve handled a lot of smartphones in my day, but this is the first I’ve seen with so much pearlescence. And I’m smitten. The matte Pearl White glass rear panel has bands of silky finish that produce soft glints whenever it catches a little light. There’s a large flash in the top left corner, right next to the massive circular silver metal module that houses a quad of camera sensors. “Oppo” is written in sterling lettering. The phone is also available in Space Black, a color found on iPhones.

The front of the phone is nearly all screen thanks to the Infinity View display. A 32MP shooter sits at the top of the display, with an integrated fingerprint reader towards the bottom. The Find 8X’s sides are wrapped with silver metal. A pair of light gray stripes sit near the top, demarcating the volume rocker on the right and the alert slider on the left. The Power and Quick buttons are also located on the phone’s right. The latter button acts like the iPhone 16’s Action button, allowing you to snap a photo with a quick press. The USB-C charging port and microSIM slot reside along the Find 8X Pro’s bottom.

Both sides of the phone are durable and made of Corning Gorilla Glass to protect against scratches and potential cracks. But that’s not where the durability ends. Oppo outfitted the Find8X with IP68 and IP69 protection. That means the phone is dust- and water-resistant. Regarding the water component, the Find 8X Pro can survive 30 minutes of submersion in water up to 1.5 meters deep.

The Oppo weighs 7.6 ounces and measures 6.4 x 3 x 0.33 inches, which is slightly lighter than the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL (7.8 ounces, 6.4 x 3 x 0.3 inches), iPhone 16 Pro Max (7.9 ounces, 6.4 x 3.1 x 0.32 inches), and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (8.2 ounces, 6.4 x 3.1 x 0.33 inches).

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Display

Slim bezels, bold, almost lurid color with a dazzling brightness. The Find 8X Pro’s 6.78-inch, 2780 x 1264p, OLED Infinity View display is a sight. Whether watching episodes of Dan Da Dan, Found, or playing Dead Cells or Alien Isolation, I enjoyed vivid hues with sharp details and inky blacks. If you don’t like the screen’s default look, you can go into the Display Settings menu and choose between one of the two modes. Or you could adjust the color temperature from warm to cold or something custom. Still, as a flagship phone, the resolution could be higher.

As for brightness, you might want to grab a pair of shades or keep the adaptive brightness on. The Find 8X Pro’s minimum brightness starts at 800 nits and tops at a ludicrous 4,500. At max brightness, I’ve noticed that lighter colors and blacks can get washed out, and in some instances, they can look a little gray.

Like most modern flagship smartphones, the Oppo has an adaptive refresh rate ranging from 1Hz to 120Hz. This is ideal for gaming, as it kicks the refresh rate to maximum and drops it to lower, more power-efficient rates when reading or surfing the web.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: UI

This is my first Oppo phone review, so it’s also my first brush with Color OS, and so far, I think I like it. Based on Android 15, Color OS 15 is a user interface with a few AI elements and streamlined sharing with iPhones. The UI also boasts smoother interfaces compared to previous iterations thanks to the Luminous Rendering Engine, which boasts over 800 animations and 18% faster touch response. It’s also uber customizable as you can pick between unified and split notifications/quick toggles panel views. You can also personalize the status bar’s look.

Color OS 15 interface

Color OS 15 navigation doesn’t differ much from stock Android. There are gesture controls or the classic three-button setup. The icons and widgets are similar to those on an iPhone. Navigation is very smooth, and as an Android fan, I find the interface comfortable and familiar.

AI features are grouped under the company’s Oppo AI umbrella, covering productivity and photo editing. We’ll kick things off with the AI ToolBox, encompassing AI Speak, which reads emails and notifications for you aloud. Then there’s AI Summary, which summarizes highlighted text, and AI Writer, which adds a bit of polish to your writing while considering your writing style. Speaking of summaries, the Recorder app creates concise summaries of transcription. Documents offer summaries in seven languages, while Notes summaries and restructure formats.

For photos, Oppo has several AI-powered photo remastering tools including AI Clarity Enhance which upscales low resolution images, AI Unblur highlights finer details like hair and skin. And for those shots with distracting glare, there’s AI Reflection Remover. AI Studio quickly became my favorite as it let me create AI avatars of myself so I could see myself as a futuristic space soldier or a beauty queen in various styles.

Oppo also made sure the Find 8X Pro plays nice with the iPhone. The smartphone’s Touch to Share feature lets iPhone and 8X Pro owners transfer files with a quick tap as long as the Apple device has Oppo’s O+ Connect app. And speaking of iPhone, Oppo cribbed off of Apple’s Dynamic Island Alerts with ColorOS’ Live Alerts as it displays real-time updates centered around the punch-hole camera.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Performance

The Oppo Find 8X Pro is the first smartphone with MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 processor. The 3-nanometer chip works with the Trinity Engine, a proprietary system architecture designed to improve the phone’s performance and efficiency. The Find 8X Pro also has a vapor chamber with a graphite layer and thermal gel designed to dissipate heat, keeping the smartphone’s components cool and running at peak performance.

I didn’t hold back with the Oppo Find 8X Pro. I launched over 50 tabs in Google Chrome and had a number of apps open, including Adobe Photoshop Express, Netflix, and a few G-Suite apps. The Oppo didn’t slow down as I navigated through pages or switched between apps, and the animations were just as smooth. The phone also held its own when I played Dead Cells for an hour. The phone stayed relatively cool, and I lived to die quite a few deaths.

I also ran Geekbench 6 to see how the Oppo would fare against other flagships, and it held its own. The Oppo scored a single-core result 2,818 and a multi-core outcome of 8,434. It obliterated the Pixel 9 Pro XL (1,920 single, 4,208 multi) and even gave the iPhone 16 Pro Max a run for its money (2,975 single, 7,438 multi). It’s one of the few phones I’ve seen this year to route the iPhone.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Camera

What’s in a name? If it’s Hasselblad, it’s a world-renowned camera brand synonymous with excellent cameras and lenses. Oppo teamed up with the Swiss company to create Find 8X Pro’s quad camera set. Each of the four cameras has 50 megapixels and a pair of telephoto shooters. Oppo says the Find 8X Pro is the world’s first smartphone with dual-periscope telephoto cameras.

The main sensor has a ƒ/1.6 aperture, with a 1/1.4-inch sensor. The first telephoto lens offers 50MP resolution, a ƒ/2.6 aperture with a 3X optical zoom, while the second telephoto camera (ƒ/4) offers a 6X optical zoom. Next, you have the ultrawide lens with a ƒ/2.0 aperture and the front camera, which deviates from the rest with 32MP (ƒ/2.4). I’m itching to do a shoot-off between this, the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max because my testing yielded some impressive results.

Wide shots

My favorite is a wide shot of a hornet’s nest. Zoomed into 3x, you can see the individual ridges of the nest clearly, along with the tree’s pods. I also captured a few shots of my puppies, accurately capturing their adorableness. Despite being an action shot, there’s not a lot of blurring, and if you zoom in, you can see Natasha’s (on the left) eye color and brindle pattern.

Zoom shots

Now, regarding digital zoom, the Find 8X Pro gives the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra a run for its money. The former boasts a 120x digital zoom to the latter’s 100x. But as you’ll discover with both phones, maxing out the zoom leads to incredibly blurry shots. Oppo attempts to fight this with its AI Telephoto Zoom, which, as you can see in my shot, is the top of a far-off skyscraper. Although you can make out the outline of the building and some of the lights, the photo is ultimately really blurry.

Selfie shots

The selfie cam is no slouch, either. The front shooter produced clear details, displaying the intricate design in my boyfriend’s pocketwatch and the individual hairs in his beard. His skin tone was warm with red undertones, offset by his olive-colored T-shirt.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Battery

When I ran the Gizmodo battery test, playing a 24-hour YouTube video with the display brightness set to 50%, the Find 8X Pro lasted 19 hours and 42 minutes. However, the battery life will differ depending on how you use the phone. I squeezed 12:29 out of the phone with mixed-use, including scrolling through social media, watching the latest episodes of Dune: Legacy, streaming music from Spotify, playing Streets of Rage 4, texting, and making a few calls here and there.

The smartphone is capable of 80W wired fast charging or 50W wireless. However, you’ll have to fork out some extra cash for Oppo’s proprietary wireless charger.

Oppo Find 8X Pro Review: Verdict

This is my first time with an Oppo phone, and I like much of what the Find 8X Pro offers. It’s got a unique, eye-catching design, a stunning display, and a great set of cameras. While the Color OS user interface is Android software, it offers features similar to modern iPhones. Hell, Oppo even made sure that the phones play nice when transferring files. Plus, a host of AI features run the gamut of productivity and photo editing. This is one of the few smartphones that have upended the iPhone 16 Pro Max in terms of performance. The phone also has great battery life, depending on what you’re doing.

However, in terms of some of the features and the interface, Oppo’s flying a bit too close to the iPhone’s sun. And while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Find 8X Pro is toeing the line of derivativeness. Regarding the display, if this is a flagship, I expected a higher resolution for the price. Then there’s the brightness. 4500 nits is the highest I’ve seen on a smartphone, and although that means you’ll rarely have problems reading anything on this screen, it can be too much of a good thing at times, as the extreme brightness can wash out some colors.

If you’re looking for a flagship Android smartphone with heavy iPhone influence, great performance, endurance, and a lovely display, the Oppo Find 8X Pro is it.