OPPO Find X9 Pro: Smartphone Camera of the Year? 🤔

So, fellow creator MKBHD calls the OPPO Find X9 Pro the smartphone camera of the year, and Mrwhosetheboss calls this the smartphone of the year. So, I decided to test those claims to help you make a purchase decision. So, Watch First and Buy Smart!

 

Design & Build

I have this in the Titanium Charcoal color and it’s a color that you’ll like because it does give a premium look to it with a matte finish at the back which does feel good in the hands. Very grippy, no fingerprints, no sliding around.

But another thing that you will feel is how heavy it is the moment you pick this phone up. While 226 g sounds like nothing because it is only 2 g heavier than the vivo X300 Pro, but in the hand you will feel the extra weight.

This could be because it has a bigger battery maybe, but more on the battery life later. But with that heavy weight that actually makes the phone feel more solid and planted, especially when just using this phone in one hand. Now the front is made of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

And of course, the back is made out of glass as well, but OPPO doesn’t officially say what glass it is. However, to my touch, just rubbing it against my face, I feel that it is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i… just joking!

But another thing that will make you lean towards this phone is the new flat design. While brands like HUAWEI called curved screens premium, I’m with OPPO and Samsung with their decision of making the phone a bit more flatter in terms of the design, especially for the screens.

But one thing you wouldn’t expect, and so did I, was the fact that even the camera bump is slightly shifted to one side. But surprisingly, there’s almost no wobble when typing this on a table or on a flat surface. So that part, well done, OPPO.

But that being said, I’m personally not a huge fan of the camera bump design itself because I still prefer the circular camera module that the previous OPPO Find X8 Pro had and also what Xiaomi did with the 15 Ultra and also what vivo is doing with the X300 Pro.

And while that’s not necessarily bad, it makes the Find X9 Pro look very close to the OnePlus 15. So, is that a coincidence because they are all under the same group of companies?

 

Display

Well, but another thing similar to the OnePlus 15 is the phone’s display. Very similar on paper to phones like the vivo X300 Pro. But the only difference is the peak brightness is lower at about 3,600 nits compared to vivo’s insane 4,500 nits of peak brightness.

But in real world use, the display is still very bright indoors and outdoors as well. And the flat screen mentioned earlier will make you type on the phone easier. Swiping feels more controlled.

But another big win is that if you ever crack the display, well, the good news is that it is also very easy to repair because it’s lower compared to the cost of a curved panel. But besides that, the colors over here on the screen are very accurate, text is actually quite sharp, and the content consumption is really enjoyable.

However, while the stereo speakers do get loud and clear, the sound quality itself is honestly one of the weaker parts of the phone compared to Samsung and Apple’s flagship as the EQ tuning over here isn’t as rich.

But one thing that I do wish that OPPO added is some sort of an anti-reflective display tech. Not necessarily like a matte finish display like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but something closer to what Apple did on their iPhone 17 Pro like this since there are other few Apple inspired decisions on this particular phone. And more on that in a bit.

However, I do have one tiny little complaint where the automatic brightness under low light can be a little too dim. And I get why OPPO is doing this probably to save the battery on the phone, which brings us nicely or a nice segue to the battery life of this particular phone.

 

Battery

I’ll be honest with all of these animations, right, gestures and the smooth transitions on the phone software, I was a bit worried about the phone’s battery life.

While this phone packs a massive 7,500 mAh of battery, but big battery doesn’t always mean great endurance, because while the X300 Pro’s 6,510 mAh of battery gave me close to 8 hours of screen on time when I was using it daily. The question is, how much more can I get on this OPPO Find X9 Pro?

Well, I was very wrong in my initial thoughts because currently this is the best battery life that I’ve tested on any flagship this year.

• Firstly, I got about 44 minutes of screen on time with just 1% battery gone. Yeah, just one freaking %! That was quite crazy.
• And the battery drain continued to do very well where I ended Day #1 with about 3 hours and 46 minutes with still 66% battery. So yeah, that was Day #1.
• As for Day #2, it gave me 3 hours and 54 minutes of heavy use with still 38% battery left.
• With Day #3, getting another almost 1 and 1/2 hours with 10% battery left.

All of which means that you’ll get an average of about 9 hours+ close to 10 hours. And that is with a super heavy use. So yes, size matters in this particular case.

And on top of that, you get an 80W wired charging where the charger does come inside of the box. Not the highest wired charging in the industry, but still very good, which takes from 0 to about 80% in roughly 70 minutes. And there’s also 50W of wireless charging which hits around 80% in about 100 minutes.

So yes, my friend, battery anxiety on this phone. Totally not a factor. So amazing job, OPPO.

 

Performance & Software

But what about the performance? Well, this is powered by the new MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip paired with 16 GB of RAM, which is a LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB of UFS 4.1 storage. And for daily use, this is completely an overkill. Apps just fly. Multitasking is totally effortless and everything feels smooth and very responsive.

If you game a lot, the good news is that the experience was really excellent with no overheating. Genshin Impact runs smoothly where it was properly optimized which also means that using this phone from a day-to-day just feels lovely.

 

This runs on ColorOS 16 based on Android 16. And honestly, OPPO has come a very long way where this particular UI is clean, smooth, and packed with some customization. But here are a few little things that I really appreciate.

Firstly, you can bulk remove apps or move multiple apps between home screens easily. You can also double tap to an empty area to lock a screen. And I almost forgot about the three-finger screenshot gesture, which works very perfectly too. And even things like opening the camera app from the lock screen and closing it feels so smooth and intentional.

Then there’s also the OPPO Aqua Dynamics which is basically OPPO’s version of Apple’s Dynamic Island where it shows things like timers and music and it’s super useful but not as powerful as vivo’s Origin Island, for example, you cannot drag content on it to trigger any suggested apps if you highlight attacks like what vivo does very well.

And speaking of some of the downsides, there’s still lots of bloatwares and you can’t fully remove the text label without having an external app to be installed over here. But there are other areas where OPPO told Apple, I will copy your homework, but I will make it obvious.

Firstly, there’s the Snap Key which works very much like Apple’s Action Button. Now you can assign this to different actions. But the most interesting thing to assign to it is what OPPO calls the Mind Space where it uses AI to analyze what’s on your screen and saves it into a central hub where you can think of this as a mix of a Gemini’s screen sharing and Nothing’s Essential Space where everything that you capture ends up in one organized place.

And then there’s also this Quick Button which is the iPhone’s Camera Control button. By default, double pressing it launches the camera app. And in the camera app, you can zoom in and zoom out by default. You can adjust the sensitivity and customize how it behaves.

But the limitation of this is that you can’t assign a single press button to launch the camera where the iPhone still does that very well. And just a single press, it will automatically open the app. So, yeah, this would be something very useful if you want to quickly take a photo of your son or your cat or daughter.

 

Accessories

Speaking of taking photos, before we talk about the camera’s performance on this phone, since MKBHD calls this the best smartphone camera this year, let’s talk about this, the Telephoto Extender Kit. Now, this is worth RM799, which is about USD 195 (as of the timing of this review).

Firstly, yes, it does similar to what vivo does where it is a physical telephoto lens which attaches directly to your phone. If you buy the entire kit, it will include this particular smartphone case which is surprisingly strong with the MagSafe-like magnets, stronger than I expected. Then there’s also the Adapter Ring which you need to slide on top of the phone.

 

Plus, a Tripod Mount is included, which is something that vivo doesn’t give in their particular Telephoto Kit.

But what OPPO doesn’t give but vivo gives is this Camera Grip with all of the physical buttons for recording and snapping a photo. So keep that in mind.

What’s also different is the fact that this is a 3.28x optical telephoto which is about 230mm instead of vivo’s 200 mm. And in case you’re wondering, no, you cannot interchange between the lenses to use both because I tried that.

 

Cameras

Speaking of which, camera wise, the setup is very similar to the vivo X300 Pro:

• a 50 MP main,
• a 50 MP ultrawide,
• a massive 200 MP telephoto lens, and;
• a 50 MP selfie camera

And the main difference between these two phones is the fact that the color sciences are just totally different. vivo uses ZEISS and OPPO uses Hasselblad. The weather recently hasn’t been great, always rainy and gloomy. So, I couldn’t really test out the overall dynamic range, but other than that, I did get some really good shots on the phone.

Starting from the ultrawide lenses, they look great with no barrel distortion on the edges and look very nice both outdoors and indoors as well.

The main lens is obviously what’s cooking well, and it looks great in any situation. Compared to the vivo X300 Pro, this phone can zoom up to 120x instead of 100x.

But my advice is to make sure to touch the subject to focus because when I was going into my zooming test at 10x zoom, it didn’t focus properly.

But yeah, if you are one of those people who just loves to flex their camera zooming capability, this particular phone will do you good. The portrait mode shots has 3 different focal length, 23mm, 47mm, and 70mm. And yes, the quality was amazing with great subject to background separation.

Even the strands of my wife’s hair were really great, but sometimes it get things wrong. Like this 47mm shot of me, it thought that the tree at the back of my hair far away was part of my hair, even though it’s in a totally different color. But other than that, it’s all good.

This particular photo of my wife and my son did very well when it comes to properly exposing the background even when it was very bright outside.

Then as for portrait mode on objects, no issues too, looking nice overall even if the subject is further from you.

The daytime selfie shots were good as long as you have light facing towards you because if there is backlight your face might look a little dark something that the vivo X300 Pro and the iPhone usually does better.

Both the portrait selfies have two focal lengths, 21mm wide and a closer 25 mm. But the non-portrait mode selfies have 3 focal lengths of 21mm, 25mm and a super close 49mm. And what’s with vivo and OPPO making you do some super close selfies like this because you really need to stretch your hand that far in order to get you in frame. So, I don’t think it’s very useful.

The nighttime ultrawide photos were very good and very consistent throughout. The main and the telephoto lenses quality was great throughout. Although I’m not a huge fan of how that 3x zoom made the image look a little oversharpened and the skies brighter than how it was in real life.

The nighttime portrait photos were really good in all of the 3 focal lengths mentioned earlier.

But the nighttime selfie was quite a mixed bag. And here’s where you really need to be mindful of where exactly the light is to take the best selfie.

 

Video Recording

[Check out all the video footage on my YouTube video]

Video-wise, it goes up to 4K 120 fps. So, there’s no 8K recording here compared to what you have on the X300 Pro.

The ultrawide video quality during the day was really nice. So was the 1x or the main lenses, especially with moving objects where it was equally as good on the 2x video recording too.

However, one huge caveat that I must mention or an issue is the fact that when I was switching between 2x to 3x, they had this very weird abrupt lens switching. Let me explain. So, while switching between 1x to 2x, it was nice and smooth where the colors remained and the zoom was very nice and smooth as well.

The moment when you go from 2x to 3x, it shifts totally. And that really surprised me because this doesn’t happen with other recent flagship phones.

 

But if you’re just shooting on 3x, 6x, or even 10x mode separately, it was totally fine. But when it comes to the quality, not so much on the 18x max zoom.

Stabilization was really good during the day from the ultrawide lenses to the main, the 2x, even up to 6x as well.

There’s also Log recording over here but the lens shifting issue is still present over here in Log recording. So probably it’s a physical issue.

When it comes to the quality for the front video camera, it was really good with nice stabilization as well, but the dynamic range, if you’re against the light will degrade a bit, and yes you can change the focal length in video too. So it only performs better if you have the light towards you not so much on the backlight situation.

As for night video recording the ultrawide lenses look great. So it was on the 1x and the 2x video too. But here’s where you start to see that dreaded lens flare on the 3x onwards and even the 6x something that we only thought that the iPhone 17 or any iPhone had but right now is also present on the OPPO Find X9 Pro too.

Then the nighttime stabilization was good, not as good as the daytime, and the front video nighttime video was just decent.

So, to answer the question, whether or not is this the best smartphone camera in the year 2025? During the day, yes, but at night, and the videos on this, nope. Sorry, brother Marques.

[Check out my YouTube video for the vlogging test here]

 

Conclusion

Okay, so the OPPO Find X9 Pro starts at around RM4,999 or roughly USD1,220. And this is without the camera kit. And yes, it’s more expensive compared to the likes of the vivo X300 Pro, but it’s slightly cheaper than the flagships from Samsung, Pixel, and Apple.

So, if you’re looking for a smartphone that doesn’t feel like it’s missing so much, then yes, you should get it. But the question is, is this really the best smartphone camera in the year 2025? Best battery life? Yes. But you tell me after watching my full review video!

[Watch the full video on YouTube here]

 

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