Oppo Find X2 Pro initial review: The pop-up camera is dead, long live the punch-hole

When the Oppo Find X first got into our hands back in 2019, we were enthralled by its mechanised pop-up camera mechanism. Sure, it was flawed in terms of future longevity due to the number of moving parts that could break, but, hey, this was an exciting thing to see in a phone - something that was becoming ever rarer in the world of same old same old mobile phones.

For the Find X2 sequel, here seen in its Pro form, the pop-up camera is dead. Long live the punch-hole camera! Which might not thrill and excite us to the same extent, but ultimately makes greater long-term sense, and gives Oppo the opportunity to focus on a stand-out feature: the screen, which is now a 120Hz OLED panel, much like the incoming OnePlus 8.

So does the Find X2 Pro continue to thrill, or by taking away one of its more out-there features, does it lose some of its X factor?

Design

• Black (all ceramic rear finish): 164.9 x 74.4 x 8.8m; 207g
• Orange (vegan leather finish): 165.2 x 74.4 x 9.5m; 200g
• In-screen optical fingerprint scanner
• IP68 water-resistance
• Dual stereo speakers

The trend for multi-colour gradient phone rears seems to be dying down in 2020. It's all about simple elegance and use of materials for this year. Keeping things simple, the Find X2 Pro comes in two options: a ceramic black, and a vegan leather orange which brings a refreshing alternative to the normal black slab.

The ceramic model doesn't necessarily exude that material to the fore though. It feels sort-of plasticky in the hand, while etched circular emblems all over the rear give it a very subtle texture. The black is more grey, really, in a metallic kind of way, and it absolutely adores fingerprint smears (really, a little bit too much, just as we said of the Oppo A5).

As we say up top, there's no mechanised pop-up camera unit that can rise from the top of the phone. While that removes a lot of the faff and some of the fun, it also adds a new feature: IP68 water-resistance. As there's no moving parts, it's easier for Oppo to seal the handset, ensuring it's water-resistant (the rules state in 1.5m of water for 30 minutes, but like many handsets we've seen the reality is often many times longer than this - not that we've stress tested it here!).

Around the back of the phone is where the protruding rear camera section lives. And boy does it protrude. Leaving this phone sat on a table is rather irksome, because it wobbles about so much. You might want to consider a case to level things out, if such details will grate with your OCD.

Other features are on the nose when it comes to flagship expectation: there's an in-screen fingerprint scanner, of the optical kind, while dual stereo speakers make for a loud output that doesn't seem too one-dimensional or just from the tail-end of the phone. As is also typical, this also means there's no 3.5mm headphone jack or microSD card slot expansion - the latter unnecessary, given the 256GB storage on board this Pro device as standard.

Display

• 6.7-inch OLED display, 19.8:9 aspect ratio, QHD+ resolution (3168 x 1440)
• 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sample rate (4.2ms)
• 800 nit brightness (1200 nit max peak)
• HDR10+ certification

To look at, the Find X2 Pro is screen dominant, thanks to a 6.78-inch diagonal, spread in an 19.8:9 aspect ratio - which we think is the right choice for one-handed holding, none of this 21:9 super-slim nonsense, or the older and chunkier 16:9 aspect, such as on the too-wide iPhone 8 Plus.

There's little bezel to concern yourself over on the Find X2 Pro, too, although Oppo hasn't gone all-out with a waterfall display, like you'll find on the Vivo NEX 3.

The Find X2 Pro's punch-hole camera is dinky and not obtrusive, plus Oppo hasn't opted for a dual front-facing camera, so it's not the larger-scale black bar that you'll see on the Samsung Galaxy S10+. It's neat and tidy.

There's stacks of resolution too, with panel cramming in more pixels than you're likely to need. That's ideal for watching downscaled 4K streams, though, especially as this phone will be 5G, with no 4G only variants in the European market.

It's the added extras of what this screen can do that will gather the most interest though. If any of this sounds familiar then, well, that's because this screen is a clear echo of what the OnePlus 8 will offer. It's got a 120Hz refresh rate, which means double the frame-rate for super smooth playback. It's got frame-insertion to make videos smoother. It's a 10-bit panel, so there's even more colour. It's calibrated, it supports DCI-P3 colour, HDR10+ high dynamic range, and all that good stuff.

But the thing is, a lot of that is superfluous. Having 120Hz available doesn't mean everything runs better: not every app or game supports that refresh rate. That said, by the end of 2019 the list had grown from a handful to around 175 titles, so the support is growing from a developer standpoint. Whether a game can maintain that fixed frame-rate - a lot will fluctuate depending on how much action is happening on screen - is also questionable, and if your astute brain sees a drop from such a high rate, you may be better just running it at 60Hz constant, knowing it'll be consistent.

The other contention is frame insertion. As a lot of content is shot at 24, 25 or 30 frames per second, that's miles off the refresh of the screen itself. To counter this, inserting black frames and/or frames produced from the content can give the impression of a smoother playback. Problem is, it can make things look hyper-real and, in part, is the bane of many movie producers' lives, as it produces the soap opera effect, where classic cinema looks like it was shot in your front room. You can opt to turn on or off the processing of the O1 Ultra Vision Engine that handles all this processing, however.

All that said, we looked at some YouTube videos and, frankly, the additional frames and refresh rate made little difference to our experience. Yes, the screen is resolute, it's colourful, it's bright, it's really rather good. But while Oppo is now saying its on par with Apple and Samsung thanks to DisplayMate A+ certification through its device-by-device calibration, we're not sure many users will see a huge jump here compared to many other flagships.

In short: there's a lot of great spec within this screen, but it's nuanced to the point that many people's casual glances aren't going to see the benefits. Gamers very well might, though, given the higher refresh rate and double-that-again 240Hz touch response rate, to give your PUBG: Mobile that extra responsive edge.

Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor, 12GB RAM (LPDDR5)
• Qualcomm X55 5G modem (no 4G model available)
• 4,260mAh battery capacity (dual cell system)
• Software: ColorOS 7.1 over Android 10
• SuperVOOC 2.0 fast-charging at 65W
  
  • Full charge in 38 minutes
  • TUV certification passed
  • No wireless charging

There's no questioning the power behind the scenes of the Oppo Find X2 Pro. With Qualcomm's top-billed Snapdragon processor at the helm, complete with 12GB RAM, no task is going to cause this phone issues. Which, again, will be great news for gamers looking to push those titles to maximum graphics and higher frame-rates, that's for sure.

Right now, of course, we've not used the phone as if it were our own, so beyond flicking around ColorOS 7.1 - that's Oppo's software skin over the top of Google's Android 10 operating system - and seeing those smooth transitions and rapid app loads, we'll have to wait and see how the phone fares in our hands when we get a final review sample.

As for the software itself, it looks as though Oppo has further refined its offering, with smaller icons in the swipe down shade, the ongoing support for an App Drawer (which even just a year ago was absent), along with additional customisation alerts for notifications. We'll be updating our ColorOS tips and tricks with more info in the future.

Where the Find X2 Pro really looks to excel is in the battery department. With a dual cell 4,260mAh total capacity, this phone's battery is not only capacious, its division into two means next-gen fast-charging is possible. Oppo has long been promoting its SuperVOOC system, but with version 2 that's accelerated to 65W charging. To put that in context: you can charge this phone's battery from dead in 38 minutes at a mains plug socket (well, the one included in the box, inferior ones won't do). That's absurdly fast.

How long the battery will last, however, is up for debate. There's a lot going on in the Find X2 Pro: the screen's 1200 nit peak brightness and massive QHD+ resolution will certainly eat away at the battery; plus the Qualcomm X55 modem, as used for 5G, is likely to get hot and demanding of power to cool it down when hunting out those extra-fast and low-latency 5G bands.

Cameras

• Triple rear camera system:
  • Main: 48-megapixels, f/1.7 aperture, optical image stabilisation (OIS)
    • Sony IMX689, 1/1.4in = 1.12µm pixel
    • Four-in-one processing, 12MP default
    • All Pixel Omni Directional PDAF
    • 12-bit raw shooting
  • Periscope zoom: 13MP, f/3.0, 5x zoom (10x hybrid), OIS
  • Ultra-wide: 48MP, f/2.2
• Video: Ultra Steady Video Pro digital stabilisation, 4K max
• Punch-hole front-facing camera: 32-megapixel

That rear camera bump protrudes so considerably because of all the tech crammed inside. Much like the Oppo Reno 10X, the Find X2 Pro squeezes in a triple camera system to its rear, complete with periscope zoom.

That's a 5x optical zoom, for a real step-up in making subjects far away appear closer in the frame, although Oppo would have you believe its a 10x zoom - which isn't strictly true, as it uses a hybrid optical and digital method there to achieve that. Besides, within the camera app the default is 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x, with 10x possible by tap, with only very slow pinch-to-zoom going beyond that. Indeed, 60x is possible if you keep on going - but the quality will decrease.

While that zoom is all well and good, even though we've basically seen it before, it's the Find X2 Pro's main camera unit that's of the greatest interest in this phone. That's because it's a 48-megapixel Sony IMX689 sensor - the first time we've seen one in any phone. This is a big deal for a number three main reasons.

One, it's larger scale than typical, so the on-sensor 'pixels' are larger, therefore more capable of adsorbing light for better quality. We've not seen how this will affect low-light shots, or even daylight shots, but the 1.2µm pixel size is a clear positive to have on the spec sheet, so long as processing is up to scratch.

Two, it can capture 12-bit raw, which is something typically reserved for prosumer DSLR cameras and great for post-production edits. This does seem somewhat at odds with a camera phone, though, as there's no on-board editing software, Oppo tells us, so you'll need to import to an editing suite on your PC.

Three, every 'pixel' on the sensor's surface can be used for omni directional phase-detection autofocus, meaning the full sensor plays its part in getting focus achieved, even in low light.

The typical four-in-one processing method is at play here, meaning 12MP output is typical from that 48MP sensor, but that's still more than resolute enough.

We've been rather impressed with Oppo's Reno 10X, with the Find X2 Pro looking to take that footprint and improve upon it with its main sensor at the very least.

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