Oppo Find X3 Pro Google Play

Oppo Find X3 Pro review: the Chinese phone to beat

A legit flagship from ane of Mainland china'due south biggest brands

By May eleven, 2021, three:00am EDT

You might know of Oppo as a company opaquely related to OnePlus, but it recently became the leading smartphone maker in China — the beneficiary of Huawei'south sanctions-induced slide in sales even in its home market. As such, the new Find X3 Pro flagship is an of import handset for the visitor, presenting an opportunity to solidify its identify as a major thespian in premium smartphones.

And this time around, Oppo isn't keeping the Find X3 Pro in China. The company still doesn't sell phones in the U.s.a., merely there are international models with Google services available in countries like the UK, where it starts at £one,099 (about $1,500). If you take the option and you're shopping for a loftier-end phone, it's worth checking out, because this is one of the sleekest Android devices you'll see this year.

From the forepart, the Notice X3 Pro looks almost identical to the OnePlus 9 Pro. Both phones have a 6.7-inch 1440p 120Hz curved OLED screen with a hole-punch selfie camera in the top left; since Oppo and OnePlus share a supply chain, it's virtually certainly the aforementioned Samsung panel.

Plow the Find X3 Pro around, though, and information technology looks null similar the OnePlus — or any other phone, really. The camera crash-land is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone 12 Pro in its arrangement of three lenses within a rounded square, but the bump is part of a single piece of glass that smoothly rises up to accommodate the cameras. Coupled with the mirrored finish, it makes the telephone look like something out of Terminator two — at least until you become your fingerprints all over it.

The Discover X3 Pro feels relatively calorie-free and thin for a 2021 flagship telephone, at 193g and 8.3mm thick, and the total lack of sharp edges anywhere on the device makes information technology very comfortable to concur. I've too been using it with an included Kevlar-mode case that preserves nigh all of the device's thinness, which is a relief because this is one telephone I would non want to run a risk dropping.

The Find X3 Pro has a microscope camera with a born ring light.

Similar the OnePlus nine Pro, the Find X3 Pro has a very good screen. However, Oppo is aiming to differentiate it with what information technology describes every bit the first full-path 10-bit color management organization for Android, allowing you to capture and view more than a billion colors as opposed to the 16.7 million on other devices. The Find X3 Pro software even includes eye tests to help the brandish compensate for various forms of color blindness.

I haven't been able to run into a huge difference between this and other displays in full general use, but we don't yet live in a 10-bit world. In all likelihood, you'll only ever brand use of this capability past creating your own content with the Notice X3 Pro's cameras, and even and then the reward is going to seem niche.

As for the cameras themselves, the Find X3 Pro has a respectable array of hardware. The heart of the system is two identical 50-megapixel Sony IMX 766 sensors for the main camera and the ultrawide; it'due south not the biggest sensor out there, but it more than holds its own confronting flagship competitors. Oppo'due south color tuning and HDR grading is relatively restrained, and information technology's both unusual and refreshing to have an ultrawide that performs just also in terms of resolution and dynamic range as the master camera.

At that place'due south besides a 13-megapixel 2x telephoto camera, which doesn't friction match the other cameras' functioning. This is a picayune disappointing from Oppo, which did more than any other company to popularize periscope telephoto cameras. Granted, zoom lenses are never the best-quality optics on a smartphone, simply this feels like a footstep back from the 5x unit on last yr'due south Find X2 Pro. You could brand the case that a 2x zoom is more versatile considering it improves the quality of shots between 2x to 4.9x, only why not include both?

I can inquire the "why not both" question with a reasonable caste of fairness because Oppo chose to classify a large section of the camera bump to a bizarre microscope tool. The 3-megapixel sensor has a lens in front end of it that Oppo says is capable of up to 60x magnification, and in that location'southward even a ring light around the drinking glass to illuminate subjects that would otherwise exist obscured by the phone's shadow.

Is this cool? Admittedly, yes. It'south quite difficult to get subjects in full focus considering of the extremely shallow depth of field, but you tin can admittedly capture ethereal images unlike anything yous've ever seen from a smartphone by property the Discover X3 Pro up to threads, food, or OLED screens. But is information technology useful? Peradventure this is a failure of imagination on my part, but I think I'd accept the periscope zoom. If you can call back of a ton of reasons you might want a microscope-class camera on a phone, by all means savour this one.

The Find X3 Pro's overall operation is equally adept as yous'd await from any other Snapdragon 888-equipped flagship. Oppo'due south ColorOS skin is far snappier than it used to be, to the point that OnePlus itself is using it for phones in Mainland china now. The 4,500mAh bombardment doesn't quite make this a ii-mean solar day telephone, but I never had whatsoever problem getting through a single day of heavy use.

Battery life is helped past the fact that Oppo has finally put wireless charging on a flagship phone. This was past far my biggest complaint almost its predecessor — information technology might not be a big deal for everyone, but if you lot're used to wireless charging, the lack of it is absolutely a dealbreaker. Oppo's 30W wireless system can supposedly accuse the Find X3 Pro to 100 percent in 80 minutes, though I don't have the necessary proprietary charger to test that. The wired charger, meanwhile, is 65W and gets yous a forty-percent charge in ten minutes.

The Find X3 Pro looks very like to the OnePlus ix Pro from the front.

It sounds pocket-sized, just the addition of wireless charging is really all I needed to be happy with the Observe X3 Pro equally an everyday phone. I've been using information technology daily for about six weeks at present, and I take very few complaints. I could've washed without the microscope camera, certain, simply Oppo is now as capable equally any other Android manufacturer at turning in legitimately premium, performant phones.

Don't retrieve you'll get it at the sort of brand discount that OnePlus made its name with, though. The Find X3 Pro's starting price in the UK is just £fifty less than Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra. I think the Find X3 Pro is a reasonable competitor to that device, just I can't encounter also many people picking information technology over the larger and more trusted brand.

However, the Discover X3 Pro is an excellent device on merit, and further cements Oppo as a company worth paying attention to. This shouldn't be surprising, of course, but the best phone from one of Cathay's biggest players is one of the best phones you'll observe anywhere.

Photography by Sam Byford / The Verge

Source: https://www.theverge.com/22411538/oppo-find-x3-pro-review