Last year I reviewed the OPPO Find X8 Pro ahead of the global launch thanks to NXT Magazine where I contribute articles. This year again, I received the new Find X9 Pro before their announcement and reviewed it for NXT Magazine (article published here).
The Find X9 Pro offers several new hardware improvements like a Snap Key instead of the alert slider which allows personalisation when clicking it. However, I find myself accidentally clicking it too often when holding it, and when I do, I had to look and see if I have accidentally activated anything.
OPPO has changed the rear design, from the round camera system to the normal square layout, which makes it look as premium than the predecessor. The sides are also less curvy, although the edges are still more rounded than angular. The Find X9 Pro has almost the same dimension as Find X8 Pro, but its battery capacity has increased by more than 26% – from 5910mAh to 7500mAh. The display size is still 6.78 inches, but its screen ratio has increased to 95% with bezels measuring just 1.15mm. Overall UI experience is fluid and tame, but I prefer snappier animation, which I have to enter Developer mode to speed up.
The camera system is also reduced from four to three. What has changed is the X9 Pro uses a single 200MP telephoto lens instead of two 50MP telephoto, which allows more light with a larger aperture at the tele end. And similar to previous models, the Hasselblad Master Camera system comes with various shooting modes that makes me feel like I am using multiple camera systems. This is because different shooting modes have different zoom range. For the normal photo mode, I can zoom steplessly from 0.6x to 120x. All photos are captured in 50MP across the full zoom range, sometimes reducing to 25MP or even 12MP depending on the image quality due to low light conditions.
In Portrait mode, I can only shoot from 1x to 3.6x with the option to adjust aperture value for the desired depth-of-field effect. In Hasselblad Hi-Res mode, I can only frame in 0.6x, 1x and 3x zoom steps. At 3x, there is an option to switch to 200MP. The Master mode allows zoom range from 0.6x to 10x with the option to manually control the ISO, shutter speed, EV, AF, and white balance.
Finally, the XPAN mode mimics the XPan 65:24 aspect ratio, but unlike the actual film, this mode on the smartphone is effectively a crop from the sensor, so you might as well crop it after taking a normal shot, but the preview window does trigger some creative perspective. Just like in Master mode, the zoom factor is fixed at 0.6x, 1x, 2x and 3x.
Additionally, the Find X9 Pro supports the optional Teleconverter accessory that extends the optical zoom range to 10x and further extends the digital zoom range to 200x for photos and 50x for video. This is a must-have add-on for concert goers to get the best long-range video capture. But once you slide the accessory, the other camera lenses will be covered up and unusable. It would be a hassle to switch around the shooting modes.
I noticed that sometimes my images cannot use the Hasselblad watermark frame, probably because the camera did not apply the Hasselblad colour processing. For instance, this moon shot could not use the “H” branded frame, so I applied the “OPPO” one instead. It might be a bug during image saving where the EXIF is lost.
Overall, I like the outcomes of the images, the tonality is rich and film-like, the dynamic range is wider than normal smartphones, I can see the shadow details retained in night scenes, and the highlights are also not blown out. AI edits are really convenient and has certainly improved in leaps and bounds.
But care should still be given when processing. In the below image, after removing all the people, the empty chairs look rather weird.
Strange though, the AI functions were reduced compared to the X8 Pro. I could not find the smart function to summarise webpages. OPPO has lost the lead in the AI race and its general AI functions are no better nor worse than competitors.
While the official retail price is S$1599, OPPO is offering at S$1299 at launch, even lower than the Find X8 Pro launch. Running on MediaTek Dimensity 9500 with 7500 mAh battery, the phone is priced aggressively and I would say this is really worth looking at, especially for photographers.