Review: Oppo Find X7 Ultra

Before I tell you how phenomenal the Oppo Find X7 Ultra camera is, I must point out that this phone is not officially available outside of China. That’s a real shame, because the Find X7 Ultra is a stunning flagship phone with an eye-catching design, a gorgeous display, and top-notch specs. However, the standout feature is its camera. It goes well beyond most folks’ expectations from a phone camera, and it is an absolute joy to shoot photos with.

The fight to pack the most impressive camera hardware into a smartphone is still raging, and the Oppo Find X7 Ultra demands a place in the running alongside the best from Samsung and Xiaomi. This high-end smartphone takes camera hardware to a new level, with periscope lenses enabling powerful optical zoom and large image sensors to make the most of limited light.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Forgive the specs dump here, but there are four 50-megapixel lenses in the rear camera. The main lens boasts a 1-inch Sony LYT-900 sensor, an f/1.8 aperture, 23-mm focal length, and optical image stabilization (OIS). The ultrawide is packing a Sony LYT-600 sensor, an f/2.0 aperture and a 14-mm focal length, and can focus on subjects as close as 4 centimeters (1.6 inches).

For zooming, there are two periscope lenses. The first offers 3X optical zoom, and has a 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX890 sensor, an f/2.6 aperture, OIS, and a 65-mm focal length. The second offers 6X optical zoom and packs a 1/2.51-inch Sony IMX858 sensor, an f/4.3 aperture, equivalent to 135-mm focal length, and OIS.

To squeeze the best results from this hardware, Oppo has developed the HyperTone Image Engine and partnered with camera maker Hasselblad. There is a Hasselblad Portrait Mode for bokeh effects, a variety of photo filters, and a Hasselblad Master Mode that allows you to shoot in RAW and tweak ISO, shutter speed, EV, focus, white balance, and many more settings.

Daytime photography is excellent, with the Find X7 Ultra turning out richly detailed shots that are well-exposed and close to real-life color accuracy. The colors are well-matched across the lenses, you can achieve a pleasingly natural bokeh effect without the portrait mode, and the main and ultrawide lenses have a great depth of field. Oppo says its image processing resists over-sharpening and preserves natural tones, and I can’t disagree.

Low-light and nighttime photography is always trickier, but the large image sensors allow you to snap lovely low-light photos, often without the need for night mode. When it does kick in, the night mode captures impressively detailed shots with little noise, provided you hold still. Any movement inevitably introduces blurring.

The regular camera is solid for shooting people, but you can also opt for the dedicated Portrait Mode for a guaranteed bokeh effect to blur the foreground and background. It works at four set focal lengths—23 mm, 44 mm, 65 mm, and 135 mm—which enables you to snap portraits up to nine meters away from your subject.

The ultrawide is my favorite thing about this camera. It offers expansive, dramatic shots with impressive depth of field. The ultrawide also kicks in automatically for close-ups, as there's no dedicated macro mode. When you want to zoom in, you can pick your level with the two telephoto lenses (3X or 6X optical zoom), but you need a steady hand or a tripod for higher-level zoom.

There is also a 32-MP, f/2.4, 21-mm front-facing camera in a cutout at the top of the screen. It serves fine for video calls and selfies, but ask someone else to take the photo for superior group shots to take full advantage of the rear camera. All five cameras can shoot video in 4K at up to 60 frames per second.

Photograph: Simon Hill

While the Find X7 Ultra is mostly about the camera, Oppo has not scrimped elsewhere. The 6.8-inch AMOLED display goes up to 120-Hz refresh rate, supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+, and tops out at 2,600 nits in high brightness mode (4,500 nits peak for highlights). It looks lovely, vibrant, and plenty bright to me. The only display downside is the curved edges, making it tricky to handle without accidental touches.

The camera inevitably dominates the back and makes this a top-heavy device. I have almost dropped it a few times, usually when trying to use the camera one-handed. But I love the contrast between the deep blue, fake leather finish, the white glass of the top half, and the silvery camera module (the fake leather also comes in black or brown). The Find X7 Ultra scores an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, so rain or brief submersion is nothing to worry about.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Inside is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, and my review unit has 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. The Find X7 Ultra is slick, responsive, and keeps cool, even after shooting video or playing games for an extended period. Support for the very latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 provides some future-proofing.

The 5,000-mAh battery is enough to see you through busy days, and you can fully charge this phone from dead in half an hour with the 100-watt charger in the box. You can also wirelessly charge the Find X7 Ultra at up to 50 watts.

The Oppo Find X7 Ultra costs 6,999 yuan (around $980 or £780), but if you choose to import, you may have to contend with extra charges. You will definitely have to find your way around Oppo’s ColorOS 14, which runs on top of Android 14. It includes a wealth of Chinese apps and services as the defaults. The list of “enhancement services” that need various permissions during setup is quite off-putting. Sadly, the Find X7 Ultra also comes with loads of Chinese bloatware.

While it is possible to sideload Google’s Play Store, get most of your favorite apps, and uninstall most bloatware, there are some defaults you cannot change, and not everything works. I couldn’t get Android Auto working at all, Slack was wonky, and it proved impossible to set Google Assistant as my preferred voice assistant.

For most folks, importing is more hassle than it's worth, but keen photographers may be tempted. With no plans for a global version, we can only hope to see elements of this excellent camera system make their way into more widely available Oppo releases soon.