Oppo Find X First Impressions

The Oppo Find X is the Chinese company's latest flagship in the Find series, and it was launched in India on Thursday. Oppo Find X's most unique and interesting feature is a camera slider that allows its front face to be completely dominated by the screen. This marks the comeback of Oppo's Find series, which has not been refreshed since the launch of the Oppo Find 7 and Find 7a back in 2014. The Oppo Find X is the most expensive model in Oppo's India lineup. The Oppo Find X price in India is Rs. 59,990 for the model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and there are no other configurations. A limited Automobili Lamborghini Edition was also announced at the event but is not coming to the Indian market as of now.

Key specifications of the Oppo Find X include a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the unique camera slider that houses the selfie camera as well as the dual rear cameras. This smartphone, much like other offerings in Oppo's lineup, runs ColorOS 5.1 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. The phone will be available exclusively on Flipkart online, but also across Oppo's offline stores. It is one of the most unique smartphones available right now, but can it compete with flagships such as the iPhone X (Review), Samsung Galaxy S9 (Review), Huawei P20 Pro (Review), and OnePlus 6 (Review)? We spent some time with the Oppo Find X and here are our first impressions.

We got access to a Chinese unit of the handset, as the Indian units are not yet available for testing. With a large 6.42-inch edge-to-edge AMOLED display, the Oppo Find X looks sleek. The 19.5:9 aspect ratio means that the resolution is 1080x2340 pixels, making this phone taller than usual. There is no notch, which gives the phone a seamless design. The Find X comes with iPhone X-like gestures. These include swiping up from the bottom (in the middle) to go to the home screen, swiping up and pausing to open the app switcher, and swiping up from a corner to go back.

At first glance, there is nothing of interest on the back of the Oppo Find X. There is no fingerprint sensor, which means you are stuck without any other biometric unlocking solution. You will have to use a passcode or pattern to unlock the phone quickly. The rear cameras are also hidden thanks to the camera slider. There is, however, an Oppo logo and "Find X - Designed by Oppo" branding. On the left of the smartphone are the volume control buttons, and the lock/ power key is on the right. The USB Type-C port and SIM card tray, which supports two Nano SIM cards, are on the bottom.

The design is one of the highlights of the Oppo Find X. It comes in Red and Blue colour options, both of which are extremely glossy and great to look at. It feels slippery in the hand, but the width is just right. This might not be the most power- and feature-packed phone on the planet, but it's definitely one you'd love to show off.

The camera slider is triggered when trying to unlock the phone using facial recognition, and also slides out when using the stock camera app or any third-party one. It does not snap out, and vibrates while it is sliding into place. It goes back in slowly and you might have to wait a couple of seconds before putting the phone back into your pocket. The front of the slider houses the 25-megapixel selfie camera and sensors for the O-Face 3D face recognition technology, which Oppo claims is similar to how Face ID works on the iPhone X. The rear of the slider sports the 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel rear camera combo. Stay tuned to Gadgets 360 for our full review in which we will extensively test the performance of all the cameras on Oppo's 2018 flagship.

At its core, the Oppo Find X is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, which is now the primary choice for premium flagships globally. The Oppo Find X has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, so performance shouldn't be much of an issue. Initial impressions suggest that this phone is quite snappy, and we didn't experience any lag in the few minutes that we got to spend with a sample unit at the launch event. We will soon be able to test the Indian version of this phone in real-world conditions to see how well it performs.

The Oppo Find X runs the heavily customised ColorOS 5.1 UI on top of Android 8.1 Oreo. As stated earlier, the unit we tested was the Chinese variant, and it did not have common Google apps including the Play Store. Instead, we found dozens of preloaded Chinese apps, including WeChat, Ctrip, Taobao, Alipay, 58Life, Weibo, Amap, and Baidu. We will have to wait till we receive the Indian unit for testing to comment on the preloaded apps and the amount of bloat in the software.

Let's talk about some of the software features that this phone brings to the table. The first one is 3D Omoji, which makes use of the 3D facial recognition sensors on the handset. There are 5-6 animal characters but users can create their custom avatars as well. Initial impressions suggest that the AR-based emoji characters read face movement well but perform poorly when detecting lip movement. Interestingly, Oppo India's website does not mention this feature, so it might not be supported on the Indian units.

Face recognition with the Oppo Find X is pleasant enough. Setting it up is extremely easy; it takes a few seconds to register your face and the phone gives you a choice of activating face recognition when you press the lock button or after you swipe up. Either way, it accurately reads the saved facial pattern. While the camera slider opens up pretty quickly, we would have liked it to be instantaneous. Additionally, there seems to be no way to manually push out the slider. Also, it's worth noting that Oppo is not advertising any sort of waterproofing on the Find X, which sets it apart from other phones at this price level.

The Oppo Find X also features a large 3730mAh battery that should be enough to last through an entire day. If not, the Find X comes with Oppo's VOOC charging technology, and the company claims that you can get two hours of battery life with just 5 minutes of charging. We will also test the phone's battery performance in our full review, coming up soon.

Stay tuned to Gadgets 360 for an extensive review of the Oppo Find X's performance, battery, software, and cameras, and to find out whether or not this phone is worth the Rs. 59,990 price tag.

Are Vivo Nex and Oppo Find X revolutionary phones or overpriced prototypes? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.