Lounge
A return to the flagship scene with a challenge to top Android smartphones
Summary
Does the Oppo Find X8 Pro have enough going for it to have Google and Samsung quaking in their boots as we head into 2025? Let's find out
Oppo’s flagship Find X series has, in recent times, topped each year’s list of “top phones you simply cannot buy in India". With many releasing only as China exclusives, the last Find X series device to have crossed the seemingly Himalayan-sized divide was the Find X2 back in 2020. That finally changes with the Find X8 Pro. This is a phone that sees Oppo return to the flagship scene guns a-blazing, with all the bells and whistles you should expect for something that sets you back by ₹99,999, including dual periscope zoom lenses and an iPhone inspired ‘Quick Button’. Enough to have Google and Samsung quaking in their boots as we head into 2025? Let's find out.
The design
Android phones are, by and large, slabs of glass and metal, and the Find X8 Pro doesn’t break the mould, almost playing it too safe even when compared to previous generations. There’s a subtly rounded frame that meets the gently curving 2.5D glass on the 6.78-inch screen. Coupled with the 215g weight, it’s a nice middle-of-the-road design between blocky flat-edged flagships and ultra-thin curved phones—great to hold while feeling well built and durable. On that point, the phone sports Gorilla Glass 7i protection on the screen and an IP69 rating—that’s one further than what its peers offer, so theoretically, you should not only be able to dunk it in water 1.5m deep for up to 30 minutes, but you can also spray it with water from a pressure washer. Feels somewhat academic at this point, but it’s good to know the phone’s extra protected.
Also read: Why the Ray-Ban Meta could be your best tech purchase of the year
All the action’s happening on the rear of the device, with the massive camera housing/bump that Oppo claims to have gotten thinner and smaller, so while it’s less likely to snag on your pockets, it’s still anything but small. Pick the Pearl White model, though—not only is the pearlescent pattern on the rear nicer looking than the muted Space Black version, but the camera module also has a nicer looking polished metal (the black is all glass).
Two notable additions—an alert slider that we’ve seen and loved on OnePlus phones, and a somewhat simplified version of the iPhone 16 series’ camera control, or the Quick Button as Oppo calls it. It’s not an actual physical button, working instead via haptic response, and it works as expected— double tap to launch the camera, tap to shoot (or hold down for burst mode) and slide to zoom in/out, though oddly the last feature only works when the phone is held in landscape orientation. There’s little else by way of customization or extra functionality which, in my opinion, actually works in its favour—it gets the job done, even though it may come off as a limited implementation when compared to Apple’s complex system of taps and half presses.
Around the front, the Find X8 Pro offers a 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with an adaptive refresh rate that scales between 1Hz and 120Hz, albeit with a 2780x1264-pixel resolution that falls between the full HD and the quad HD standards other phones stick to. That said, there’s a ludicrous claimed 4,500 nits of peak brightness (for HDR content, 1600 under high brightness mode) and 2160 Hz PWM dimming (for reduced flickering and eye strain) available, so unless you’re pixel-peeping for that slight drop in detail, you’ll likely enjoy using the phone both in the bright outdoors and late into the night. Colors are vibrant without being oversaturated, contrast is on point and black levels are inky black, plus HDR10+ and Dolby Vision standards are both supported, for anyone asking. One wishes the under-display fingerprint scanner was positioned a bit higher and of the faster ultrasonic variety too. The speakers are lively and dynamic sounding, if a little lacking on bass.
The camera
That massive rear camera island with Hasselblad branding is a clear giveaway about the camera chops of the Find X8 Pro, but here they are in their full glory—four 50MP sensors, one wide angle, one ultra-wide, and two periscope telephotos for 3x and 6x magnification, giving you a range of 15mm to 300mm with a macro mode thrown in for good measure. That range is courtesy the X8 Pro’s dual periscope telephoto lenses plus a sprinkling of AI, which allow rather usable shots even at full tilt.
Broadly speaking, the Find X8 Pro captures excellent photos from the primary camera, with abundant detail, on-point exposure and good dynamic range, although the camera does lean a bit towards warmer tones. The 3x telephoto turns out clean shots at mid-range, maintains color parity with the main camera and is great for portraits. The 6x on the other hand, is great for more lossless zooming (135mm equivalent focal range), while the ultrawide is strong on detail and colors. Even when the sun goes down, the main camera holds its own, as does the 3x camera, but the 6x shots are a bit soft and grainy. 4K 60 frames per second shooting on all of its cameras, selfie included, rounds out an incredibly versatile camera setup on the X8 Pro.
Under the hood
Bucking the trend for flagships priced in this segment, the Find X8 Pro eschews the Qualcomm silicon for MediaTek’s top-tier Dimensity 9400 chipset, and you get a generous 16GB of memory and a capacious 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage in the single variant Oppo has on sale in India. Beyond the obvious headroom for multitasking and AI tasks, the phone yielded strong performance on games like Call of Duty Mobile.
While I am yet to compare it to the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite phones, it’s certainly no pushover even over extended duration use, and the vapor cooling chamber seems to be doing its job keeping thermals under control. Despite its slim dimensions, the Find X8 Pro manages to pack in a 5910mAh battery, leveraging a more compact silicon carbon material instead of the regular lithium-ion batteries.
On the software side, it runs ColorOS 15 based on Android 15 and is due to get five years of platform and six years of security updates. Aside from the visual overhaul, there is the almost obligatory sprinkling of AI all over, from Circle to Search and AI Tools for summarization and rewriting text to AI Studio for rendering photorealistic images and even AI Eraser/Unblur capabilities. I’m no fan of the bloatware one saw preinstalled on the device, but I do think the new Touch to Share feature is a step in the right direction—it enables AirDrop-like seamless file transfers between the Find X8 Pro and Apple devices like iPhones and iPads, so long as you have the ‘O+ Connect’ installed on the Apple device. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the ‘iPhones can’t share files with Android’ jokes?
Battery life
The result is among the longest lasting battery life one has seen, and I easily saw it last nearly two days of moderate use. And while the 80W charging isn’t the fastest around, it’s still much faster than Samsung and Google…plus you get a 80W SuperVOOC charger in the box. There's also 50W AirVOOC wireless charging if you buy the appropriate charging stand. I’m all for trading off slightly slower charging speeds for these higher density batteries, for what it’s worth.
Verdict
The Find X8 Pro is a strong comeback from Oppo and goes to prove just how good it is to have another credible contender in the hotly contested premium flagship space in India. It gets a lot right, and sure, there are a few compromises made, but the price and the fact that Oppo hasn’t had a strong showing in the segment for some years now may contribute more to the uphill climb ahead.
Launching this late in 2024 means a fair percentage of its target audience will want to wait for the next few months of smartphone launchesthe OnePlus 13, the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, not to mention the X200 series from Vivo before they decide which phone to splurge on.
Also read: How wearable tech can help women fight breast cancer
