, Oppo again proves that it is always a step or two before the competition, even the Apple-Samsung duopoly that suffocates US carrier rosters. Just like Samsung, Oppo pulled the release of its first 2024 flagship forward, and named it the Find X7 Ultra, as if to leave little doubt whose flagship phone it will be targeting directly.
That’s not the only camera upgrade of Oppo’s newest flagship, though, as it also debuts Sony’s groundbreaking 1-inch LYT-900 sensor and a new HyperTone imaging architecture that guns for more natural HDR, developed in partnership with the storied camera pros from Hasselblad.
Oppo Find X7 Ultra design and display
The leathery material offers great traction in the hand and a warmer feel than your average phone back. Coupled with the curved front display, it makes for one very easy to grab and operate with one hand phone, more so since the big and round Hasselblad camera island is centered so that your fingers don’t get in the way of a good photo, while the top-to-bottom weight distribution is rather balanced as well.
Display
The per-unit panel calibration that Oppo does in the factory takes only a few seconds per phone, but in return brings breathtaking Delta values that ensure natural or vivid color schemes that are extremely close to the respective wide or standard color reference gamut. In other words, it’s a phone for online shopping and picture-peeping, as well as a colorific video projector.
Oppo Find X7 Ultra camera and the HyperTone Image Engine
Oppo Find X7 Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra camera samples
Our direct video comparison of the Find X7 Ultra against the Galaxy S24 Ultra picture and video samples below shows that Samsung produces the flashier, more crowd pleasing colors and warmer tones, whereas the natural Hypertone HDR would appeal more to photography purists.
Still, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra manages to beat the Galaxy S24 Ultra in many situations when portraits and zoom shots, especially low-light ones, are involved, as you can see from the quick samples below.
Portrait mode
Portrait mode
Daylight 30x zoom
1-inch camera and zoom range
Find X7 Ultra has TWO periscope zoom cameras
Add to these the largest periscope camera zoom sensor on any phone – a 50MP 1/1.56″ Sony IMX890 sensor – and the 50MP 1/2.51″ Sony IMX858 at the end of the 6x periscope zoom lens, and the Find X7 Ultra becomes the ultimate versatile shooting machine.
Its low-light prowess now spans the range of 14mm telemacro to 270mm equivalent focal lengths with equal quality, aided by the new HyperTone Image Engine. The AI-powered HyperTone system aims to end the unnatural looking HDR photos that so many computational photography efforts now churn out. Oppo says that HyperTone “safeguards photo integrity, preserving highlights, shadows and mid-tones with a natural look,” and the Find X7 Ultra camera samples below prove its point.
Portraits
Needless to say, the fullest high-quality zoom range on any phone also brings the ability to make stunning portraits and macro shots. The Find X7 Ultra’s Portrait Mode increases the available focal lengths to four – at 23mm, 44mm, 65mm, and 135mm – each “calibrated to a different Hasselblad lens, producing cinematic bokeh with foreground and background depth” that can isolate the subject down to a single hair. Oppo’s Hasselblad Portrait Mode is “also incredibly respectful of individual differences” now, faithfully representing skin hues and facial features at up to 30 feet from the subject.
Hasselblad Master Mode
We put the Find X7 Ultra camera through our benchmark paces and it indeed scored up with the best in our database, including the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra, with a total score in the top percentile.
Video
Both our camera benchmark test and the wild cat video sample below show that the Find X7 Ultra’s 4K video prowess falls just short of the top-end performers like the iPhone 15 Pro Max in that respect. Stabilization and color representation are great with only the transition between the zoom range stops that could be smoother. That could be addressed with an update, though, as a similar one is rolling out to previous Oppo flagships.
And a quick comparison with a 4K video in the same conditions coming from Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra below.
Performance and software
As can be seen from the benchmark scores above, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra performance is in line with the other flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phone in the ranking here – the Galaxy S24 Ultra – while it beats the iPhone 15 Pro Max and its powerful A17 Pro chipset in the graphics department. Despite all that GPU power, the battery life doesn’t take a hit and the Oppo finished neck and neck with the iPhone in our 3D gaming battery benchmark test.
Battery and charging
The large 5,000 mAh battery unit can be charged completely in less than 30 minutes with the 100W brick, and Oppo also offers record fast 50W wireless charging, faster than the Galaxy S24 Ultra‘s wired top-ups, what gives, Samsung?
When it comes to battery life, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra excels in the video streaming test and gives way only to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and its integrated Safari experience in the web browsing test. Thus, you can rest assure that this powerful flagship will get you through a day of heavy usage or give you a weekend of light interaction away from the charger.
What’s more, it nearly matches the iPhone’s 3D gaming battery life which is not an easy feat to achieve given the holistic interaction between Apple’s homebrew GPU and tailored software that only iOS-laden phones can pull off.
Summary
Even if the Find X7 Ultra cost is only slightly lower than the tags of its main competitors – the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max – it would be with a very good reason.
