It is not everyday that we get to try out exclusive tech that probably won’t even make it to the Indian market. The Oppo Find X7 Ultra is the latest of such smartphones and I was one of the few lucky guys who got to experience the device, along with a visit to Oppo’s headquarters and factory in Shenzhen, China.
The Oppo Find X7 Ultra is a camera smartphone and a very good one at that. This is not me, even in DXO Mark’s Global Camera Rankings, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra takes the top spot among all the smartphones in the world. This itself has my attention and from the moment I saw DXO Mark’s ratings, I was very excited to test the Oppo Find X7 Ultra’s camera. So in this review, I will begin by talking about the camera itself.
So the Oppo Find X7 Ultra has a quad camera setup with four 50-megapixel sensors. It is also the first smartphone in the world to come with a dual periscope lens, meaning we are getting two telephoto periscope lenses with the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. Now, while this is something that hasn’t been done before, it still only unleashes a 6x optical zoom, as compared to the 10x optical zoom that we have seen in some other competitors like the Vivo X100 Pro (review) or last year’s Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (review).
Not taking away from anything that this new zoom tech brings to the table. The 6x optical zoom is brilliant and there is literally no lack of detail in 6x zoom shots. Further, what impressed me more was the smartphone’s 120x zoom. This is probably the best quality on 120x digital zoom that I have personally seen on any smartphone. Brilliant.
Coming to more normal stuff, the camera on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra is brilliant. Be it images from the primary shooter, or the ultra-wide angle shooter, or even the telephoto lens, the images are sharp, have a good dynamic range, and represent colours very nicely.
There is also little to no colour shift when switching from the primary shooter to the ultra-wide angle lens. Even the level of details remain consistent, but there is a slight difference since the wide-angle shooter isn’t able to eek out as much detail as the primary shooter on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. In low light scenarios, the difference between the primary and ultra-wide angle shooters is much more evident.
In low light also, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra puts out brilliant photos. The only thing I felt while shooting in low light was that the shutter speed gets a bit too slow automatically and each time I need less light and a quick snap, I have to turn off the low light mode on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra.
Same is the case while using the telephoto on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. While the shutter speed is quick and the smartphone doesn’t take any time to close the camera shutter, the processing is not able to match up. Almost always while using the telephoto, the final processed photo is that of the next frame, and not the one that you captured, which makes it a bit tricky to capture moving objects.
Then there are portraits and here also, the results are as good as on any other smartphone, maybe better than some. Yes, we don’t get as much to play around with as compared to the Vivo X100 Pro, but then again, no one would complain as long as the shots look straight out of a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The background blur is exceptional. It looks natural and singles out even the minutest details while focusing on the subject. Very good.
The skin tones from the photos in the Oppo Find X7 Ultra also feel very natural. Yes, there isn’t as much tuning for Indian skin tones as much Vivo puts an effort, but as far as things are coming out to be natural, even in zoomed in shots, it is fine.
One thing I wish Oppo did better here is the collaboration with Hasselblad. I believe the Oppo’s partnership with Hasselblad doesn’t bring as much of “Hasselblad” into the cameras as some of the other ongoing collaborations that smartphone brands have with legacy camera makers. While the camera tuning has obviously been a team effort between Oppo and Hasselblad, the “Hasselblad” experience is limited to just the X-Pan mode, the three preset filters and the master mode, which is also the latest feature on Oppo and OnePlus smartphones.
Now, coming to the design, this by the looks of it, is a camera smartphone. The massive camera bump that takes over the whole top part of the smartphone leaves nothing to guess that this is, indeed a device that is focused on the camera. Add to that the prominent “Hasselblad” branding within the camera module, and the Oppo Find X7 Ultra, from the first glance, establishes itself as a camera-centric smartphone.
I got the blue and white colour option for my review and without any bias, this is my favourite out of the three colours that Oppo has launched the Oppo Find X7 Ultra in (not in India). The smartphone also comes in a black and dark grey colour option and a familiar tan leather and aluminium colourway. Out of the three, I like the blue and white, particularly because of the ceramic-like finish on the white part of the Oppo Find X7 Ultra.
The design, as you can tell, is intricate. There are other details as well, like the frame of the camera module, or the copper dot on this frame, which is taken from the legacy camera-maker Hasselblad. Up front, we have the curved display which merges into the metal frames. This year, we also have an alert slider on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. The alert slider making an entry into Oppo smartphones is surely welcome from me.
Then there are other design and durability features like IP68 dust and water resistance. So the design is overall good. The smartphone, from the moment you first set your hands on it, feels exquisite and premium. There are too many elements here and there to notice as far as the aesthetics and design go.
The phone may be a bit too heavy for some at 224 grams, it may be too big for someone with a 6.82-inch display, but all of that comes together really well in a premium package which doesn’t shame away from clearly looking like there is a camera on my phone.
Now the display on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra is a 6.82-inch LTPO AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 1440p resolution. The screen quality is very good and it is quite bright as well. I tested the brightness of the Oppo Find X7 Ultra’s luminance to be 1,450 nits under bright sunlight, which is outstanding and means that visibility won’t be an issue, regardless of how bright the environment is.
The display is also pretty immersive. For starters, it is perfectly sharp given the 1440p panel, it is super responsive, thanks to the 120Hz LTPO AMOLED display, and for those who watch a lot of content on their smartphones, it also supports all kinds of HDR formats like HDR 10+, Dolby Vision, HLG, and much more. Further, the smartphone also comes with a 100% DCI-P3 coverage, which means that the colours are also accurate to some extent.
While I wasn’t able to test the colour accuracy of this display objectively, it does seem to be very good in all senses. The curved display is prone to mistouches every now and then, but apart from that, there is much less to complain here in terms of the display.
Coming to the performance, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset paired with up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage. In terms of performance also, this performs like any other flagship. The usage is absolutely smooth, multitasking is an absolute breeze and each and every swipe or movement is buttery smooth.
I faced no issues with how the smartphone performs. Even in games, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra was able to push maxed-out graphics and high frame rates for a long period of time without much issues. Yes, there was a bit of heating and throttling, but it is nothing we haven’t seen with other flagships as well.
While it does perform as well as any other smartphone, the benchmark scores of the Oppo Find X7 Ultra fall short of some of the closest competitors. For example, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and the Vivo X100 Pro were able to score better in CPU and GPU-based benchmarks. There were a few tests that the Oppo Find X7 Ultra was ahead, but overall, it falls short of the competition.
The battery on the smartphone is brilliant. Each time, I was able to get more than 7 hours of on-screen time. This is after using the smartphone extensively. Meaning that the battery is pretty good. Even in our battery tests, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra fared really well. The smartphone only lost 4 percent of its battery while playing Call of Duty: Mobile for 15 minutes. The smartphone only lost 4 percent of the battery while it also played a video on YouTube for 30 minutes on 2160p resolution. In our video loop test, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra survived xx minutes.
The charging is also super fast. We get 100W fast charging and 50W fast wireless charging with the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. The 100W fast charging allows the smartphone to go from 0 percent battery to 100% in just about 41 minutes.
While we are at battery and performance, it is also important to mention the smartphone’s security features, since that is something brands like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and the likes are usually criticised for. The Oppo and also comes with a VIP mode (thanks to the alert slider) that shuts off the smartphone’s GFind X7 Ultra has a dedicated security chipPS, camera, and mic, making sure that no one is able to track you down or get in your smartphone’s camera.
So yes, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra unleashes the true camera potential of Oppo smartphones. It does prove that amid the Vivo X100 series and Xiaomi 14 series’ of the world, Oppo should also be taken seriously when it comes to offering a kickass camera. However, the sad part is that this smartphone will not be launched in India so however much I may like the Oppo Find X7 Ultra, I can’t recommend it to anyone in India.
But yes, it does offer a good showcase of Oppo’s camera smarts. This smartphone is as good as any other camera smartphone without a doubt. Yes, in every setup there is room for improvement and the Oppo Find X7 Ultra is no stranger to that. But it is, most definitely, one of the most capable camera setups out there currently.
