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Oppo’s Find X9 Ultra offers something that no other new phone has for three long years: a 10x telephoto lens. In an attempt to win the photography front of the war between the various Ultra flagships, Oppo has turned to a trick last employed by Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra. It’s a better 10x lens than ever before, but is it good enough for the moments you might really need it?
The long-distance lens is the best of its kind, but compared to this phone’s other lenses it struggles a little with the usual suspects: moving subjects, low light, and moving subjects in low light. Fortunately the Find X9 Ultra is an excellent phone otherwise. It pairs top specs, including a big battery and excellent display, with what I think is a truly handsome design (it’s my favorite of the year so far). And while the 10x lens might be verging on a gimmick, the rest of the camera system is among the best on the market.
Unlike Oppo’s previous Ultras, and its Find N foldables, the X9 Ultra is launching in Europe and the UK, where it costs £1,449 (around $1,960) and ships from May 8th. That includes 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
That gets you an excellent phone. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protects the 144Hz OLED display and a joint IP66, IP68, and IP69 rating keeps out everything from dust to high-temperature water jets. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 powers the performance, and a hefty 7,050mAh silicon-carbon battery keeps things running well past a full day. The top 100W charging speed relies on Oppo’s proprietary SuperVooc chargers, but it still tops up at a relatively speedy 55W over USB-PD. It’ll receive five major Android OS updates, and six years of security patches.
Of course, you could look at any 2026 Ultra flagship from Oppo’s rivals and see a similar spec sheet. They’re now competing on design and cameras instead.
The horizontal logos emphasize that this is as much camera as phone. I’m not a fan of the curved hexagon effect on the camera glass. The shutter button and camera ring provide Hasselblad orange accents.
Oppo has outdone its competition on design. My “tundra umber” version is explicitly styled after retro cameras, and does a better job of it than Xiaomi’s 17 Ultra Leitzphone. The two-paneled rear, finished in vegan leather, evokes classic camera aesthetics. And the horizontal Oppo and Hasselblad logos reinforce the idea that this is designed to be used first and foremost in landscape. The flat edges have curved corners to keep the phone comfortable, and orange accents on the camera ring and shutter button serve as a subtle nod to Hasselblad’s classic color (though the phone’s alternative “canyon orange” finish owes more to Apple). The hexagonal effect on the edges of the camera glass is the only design choice I’m not a fan of, clashing with the simplicity in effect elsewhere.
The company hasn’t held back on the cameras, either, where competition is fiercest. Alongside a 50-megapixel selfie camera, Oppo has included four rear cameras: 200-megapixel main and 3x telephoto lenses, and 50-megapixel ultrawide and 10x telephoto options. Video is impressive, with 4K and 60fps Dolby Vision HDR recording across all five lenses, front and back. That’s in addition to a 300mm telephoto extender lens and a Hasselblad-branded camera grip case, sold separately — Oppo sent me both, but they arrived too late to test for this review.
The eagle-eyed may spot a fifth rear lens — it’s a multispectral color sensor.
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