Oppo Find X8 Ultra Review: Extraordinary Camera Phone Finesse

Breaking the Apple and Samsung duopoly in the smartphone segment is a losing battle. Don't get me wrong. These two labels make terrific phones, especially at the summit, where the sticker price takes a backseat and a polished experience is all that matters. But every once in a while, a phone from the East arrives on the scene and makes you do a double-take. The Oppo Find X8 Ultra is one such phone.

The equivalent price of this phone is roughly 30% lower than the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Yet, there is hardly an area where the Oppo phone falls behind its established rivals. On the contrary, if one were to talk solely on the merits of innovation, the Oppo flagship makes its rival feel like a laggard.

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It packs a one-of-a-kind solid-state camera shutter button with haptic feedback and it's grown on me despite early skepticism. Aside from the usual fingerprints of a flagship, Oppo leapfrogs the competition with superior charging chops, higher stability in the most demanding processing scenarios, and a camera hardware tailor-made for the most demanding users out there.

I was skeptical of the wild claims made about this device's camera system at launch, but after using it for over a month (provided by Oppo for this review), I can't help but feel impressed. If you're brave enough to go the import route in order to get a no-compromise smartphone, read on to gauge whether this phone is worth its salt.

The Oppo Find X8 Ultra offers a sharp 6.82-inch QHD+ (3168 x 1440 pixels) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and 1,600 nits of peak brightness, falling in the same league as the OnePlus 13. It's a gorgeous flat panel with extremely thin bezels, and it's nothing short of a visual treat. The display panel is protected by a layer of crystal shield glass, while the surrounding frame is made out of aluminum alloy.

The package comes with IP69-level dust and water resistance, the best that the smartphone industry has to offer. As far as the in-hand feel goes, it feels almost identical to the iPhone 16 Pro Max, down to the dimensions and heft. The rear glass shell has a silky surface finish, but it's not slippery.

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The color appears to be a solid white when looking at it head-on, but seen from an angle, it has a distinct pink tinge to it. The camera bump at the back is huge, but it adds its own distinct aesthetic flair to the blocky phone. There's a multi-function button on the left edge that can be customized to trigger a wide range of tasks, from utilities like the LED flash and switching sound profile to activating AI translation or taking screenshots.

There's also a solid-state button with haptic feedback that can launch the camera and allows adjustments such as zoom level using slide gestures. Another rarity that it serves is an IR blaster that comes in handy for controlling appliances such as smart air conditioners and televisions.

The defining feature of the Oppo Find X8 Ultra is the imaging hardware. You get four 50-megapixel cameras at the back, two of which are optically stabilized telephoto zoom cameras with folded lens optics. There's also a fifth 2-megapixel sensor that is solely responsible for color and temperature adjustments, ensuring that the environmental light color doesn't mess with the true tone of the subject's skin or other objects in the frame.

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On the front is a 32-megapixel selfie camera. The rear cameras can capture Dolby Vision 4K videos at up to a 120fps frame rate, while slo-mo videos can go up to 480fps. I can confidently say that this is the best camera phone I've ever tested. And by a healthy margin. Before I dig into the imaging quality, there are a few aspects worth highlighting. 

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The shutter speed is astoundingly fast, and the automatic focus lock is simply in another league. Even at close quarters, it doesn't struggle with focus locking, and captures a level of fine surface detail that I've rarely seen on a phone.

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The main camera uses a 1-inch sensor that lets you switch between 23mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 47mm focal lengths. Starting with the stills, it's hard to find a fault in the images captured by the main 1-inch sensor, which goes up to 2x zoom in cropped mode. The snaps turn out sharp with tight dynamic range, realistic color reproduction, and plenty of surface details. At the native range, all four cameras deliver stunning results.

Over the years, Chinese smartphones have received a lot of flak for whitening the skin tone and doing a shoddy job with color saturation. None of those weaknesses are visible on the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. The images and videos captured by the Oppo Find X8 Ultra are consistently good with beautiful depth realism. One of my social media-savvy friends took it for a spin and remarked that the phone just doesn't take bad photos.

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I was most surprised by the portrait shots. Even at 6x zoom level, the subject separation is accurate and the bokeh effect feels natural, without any sacrifices made to the color accuracy or details. They look quite cinematic, irrespective of the optical zoom range you pick. Talking about zoom output, the Oppo Find X8 Ultra even made the Google Pixel 9 Pro feel like a rookie.

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Pictures clicked at up to 30x carry plenty of details without much fuzzy character. Beyond this level, AI reconstruction. But if the frame is contrast-rich, even the 120x digital zoom shots captured under natural light look unbelievable. Locking the focus is a bit of a struggle at this range, but pixel-level algorithmic correction is pretty accurate and handles noise pretty well.

30x macro shots. (Credit: Nadeem Sarwar/SlashGear)

Low-light capture is another area where the Find X8 Ultra stands out. Even against bright backdrops, the exposure compensation and color reproduction are fantastic. I was particularly impressed by how well light streaks are handled. If I were to pick a phone solely based on the camera performance, I'd pick the Oppo phone without a second thought.

Oppo has equipped the Find X6 Ultra with Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite silicon, paired with up to 16GB of RAM (LPDDR5X) and 512GB of fast UFS 4.1 onboard storage. For thermal management, there's a large vapor chamber and a double-layered graphite sheet under the glass-metal chassis. Overall, Oppo has made sure that this phone can handle anything that you throw at it with ease.

On synthetic benchmark tables such as Geekbench (v6.4), this phone is right there at the top with heavy-hitters such as Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Pushing things into the graphics-intensive territory, the Oppo flagship surpassed its Samsung rival at the 3DMark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited, GFXBench Car Chase, and GFXBench Aztec Ruins (all three: full-HD, 2K, and 4K). On the ray-tracked 3DMark Solar Bay test, it was marginally slower than the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

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But what really stood out was the stability. Across the demanding 3DMark suite, the Oppo Find X8 Ultra delivered much better stability compared to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. The mean stability score was often in the 85-90% bracket, which is rarely seen on phones with Qualcomm's top-tier mobile silicon. The excellent performance optimization reflects in games, as well.

Playing "Zenless Zone Zero" was a joy with the graphics settings maxed out. Likewise, "Diablo Immortal" looked lovely, and even the emulation experience was the best that I've ever had on a smartphone. The NPU is flagship-tier, so you won't have to worry about on-device AI processes, either.

The Oppo Find X8 Ultra comes armed with a massive 6,100 mAh dual-cell battery. For the entire review duration, I kept the screen resolution at the highest QHD+ preset while the display refresh rate was set to 120Hz. I spent roughly three to four hours each day tethered to a 5G network and streamed music for 6-7 hours each day over a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. As far as apps go, I had 219 installed on the phone.

Thanks to the large battery, I never had to reach for a charge mid-way through a day. On average, I ended the day with nearly 30-40% battery still left in the tank. Even on the days that I indulged in a few losing sessions of "Call of Duty: Mobile" and earned noob badges, I didn't have to enable power saver mode towards the evening bracket. To keep the battery in a healthy shape, you can limit the charging to an 80% level, or enable trickle top-up for overnight charging sessions.

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Thanks to 100W wired charging support, the battery can be fully replenished in just over 46 minutes. But even if you don't have Oppo's fast charger, any USB-PD charger can still provide 55W output for fast charging. This phone also supports an unprecedented 50W wireless charging, but that would require you to splurge on Oppo's wireless charging pad. The phone can — in wireless mode — also charge other phones and accessories at a 10W rate.

The software and user interface is the point that is going to make or break the experience for an average buyer. For an enthusiast who knows their way around custom ROMs or handling APKs, it's going to be a smooth sailing journey. Bonus points for those who have used a OnePlus smartphone before. Now, the design may not be up to your personal taste, especially if you prefer minimalism or Google's Material approach. However, as far as functionality goes, ColorOS is leagues ahead of vanilla Android and iOS.

The sidebar that many love on OnePlus devices is here to stay, as is the AI Mind Space, which serves as a digital memory notebook. It's somewhat like Windows Recall, with the added benefit of summarizing everything from your pictures to screenshots, and with a search feature thrown into the mix. You can launch apps straight from the fingerprint authentication stage on the lock screen, natively upscale pictures, perform native transcription, and use push for fun edits in photos, such as removing objects.

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There are some iOS inspirations (like Dynamic Island), but Oppo has added more functional flair. Speaking of Apple, you can tap to transfer files to an iPhone, using either NFC or the O+ Connect app. There are customization options, ranging from lock screen tweaks to game performance enhancements. Oppo has also done a fantastic job with the system animations. The only caveat is the absence of Google Play services, but you can get it working within a few minutes, and get the full stack running without any root or flash hassles.

The Oppo Find X8 Ultra is the most complete phone you will find out there here in the summer of 2025. And even if you're looking for a package that is future-proof, this is as good as it gets. The build quality is every bit as premium as you would expect from a top-shelf phone, but it's the quality of what's within that really stands out.

The pixel-dense OLED display is bright and smooth, and the thermal hardware underneath also does a good job of keeping things cool under stress. The battery lasts all day, and then some more, while support for 100W wired and 50W wireless charging puts this phone in a league of its own. The performance is, expectedly, among the best. The software serves its own set of perks and meaningful AI-driven experiences.

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The standout element is, of course, the camera hardware. I never imagined that a smartphone camera would be able to capture the scuff marks on a LED-lit glass surface, and that too, at 6x zoom level in Night Mode. But that's exactly what the Oppo Find X8 Ultra achieved. It excels at stills and video capture, while setting a high benchmark for Samsung and Apple.

The only caveat with this device is the China-only availability. The sticker price is equivalent to $900, which makes it a steal compared to the best from Apple and Samsung. You just need to make the leap of faith, and live with the typical drawbacks of an imported gadget. For the willing, the reward is phenomenal.