There is little doubt in the mind of any observer of the smartphone industry that, after the disappearance of Huawei as a frontrunner, two Chinese brands — Oppo and Xiaomi — have been vying to take up the fight to market leaders Apple and Samsung.
The latest Oppo flagship — the Find X5 Pro — appears to be built with this consideration in mind, with the company taking great pains to offer top-notch hardware, extremely fast charging, a big battery and an excellent display among a host of other notable features.
Price-wise, the Pro matches the top models from Apple and Samsung, with an Australian RRP of $1799. On the marketing side, too, Oppo has gone hard, perhaps having become cognisant that its efforts in this direction have been a little lukewarm until now.
Weighing in at 218 grammes, the Pro is a work of art, with a black body, somewhat reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy, cloaked in a black protective case. Neither Apple nor Samsung offer such cases along with the phone.
The rear camera bump is fashioned in such a way, sloping down, so as to make it almost level at one end with the ceramic rear of the device. It is extremely pleasing to the eye.
The LTPO2 AMOLED display measures 6.7 inches, offers a choice of refresh rates – up to 120Hz and up to 60 Hz; the former is snappy as expected and makes it a pleasure to use. Once again, top marks to Oppo for this display.
What are now standard features for a phone in this price range — fingerprint and face recognition, IP68 water and dust resistance and 1440 x 3216 resolution — are all present.
On the charging front, Oppo supplies an 80W Supervooc charger — neither Apple nor Samsung offer chargers — that can charge the device to 100% in a little less than 30 minutes. Wireless charging is also available, at 50W, though one would have buy a charger for $129 to use this feature.
The fingerprint recognition is done through the front display, unlike in some cheaper Oppo models where it is through the on-off button.
Oppo lags behind in name recognition when it competes against both Apple and Samsung – and this seems to be why it has tied up with Hasselblad for camera technology. But it is difficult to pick what has changed with the introduction of Hasselblad, as Oppo has always offered good cameras.
The Pro is built atop a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC which uses a 4nm process. It tends to run a bit hot at times, when it is pushed to the hilt. But with 12GB of memory, that does not happen very often and the overall experience is extremely pleasant.
The Pro comes with Android 12 and over this is overlaid Oppo's own ColorOS, the latter at version 12.1.
The 50MP f/1.7 main camera has a 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide snapper that has a 110-degree field of view and a 13MP f/2.4 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom. The selfie camera is a single 32 MP, f/2.4.
The picture on the right is taken using 2x zoom
The Pro has a new neural processing unit known as MariSilicon X which is claimed to improve video footage taken at night. Photos are very good overall, with bright colours, but low-light pictures still have some way to go before they are par for the course.
One can zoom in more than 2x, but the effect is not very good. At 2x, the images are clear and sharp.
The Pro has excellent sound, no matter whether one uses Bluetooth headphones or not. One oddity I experienced was that it refused to pair with my favourite Bluetooth headset, a Sennheiser set. But with a no-name set, it produced very good sound.
The X5 Pro is a 5G phone but I did not bother to test out the offerings of any of the three 5G providers in Australia, though I have always done so in the past. The reason is that 5G plans are not affordable at the moment and with a very good 4G service in Australia, one really doesn't need them.
Many of the downsides that I experienced with the Pro are due to the presence of Android 12. [I have been using an Oppo A91, with Android 10 and then 11, since May 2020.] Google appears not to have any limits when it comes to slurping up data to drive its advertising business, its main money spinner, and at times, this does get a bit on the nerves.
But then, Oppo has little choice, I guess, given that it has now invested a lot in trying to create its own fork of Android. The smartphone market is a two-horse affair, where one cannot ride the second one.
The Pro has a big battery, 5000mAh, and it is fairly easy to reach the end of a day of use with about 15% charge still remaining. This is another aspect in which it outdoes both Samsung and Apple.
But Oppo is still learning and there are some basic errors: under the Bluetooth Advanced settings, the word display is misspelled: Dsplay Codec Standard. I have never found that kind of error on any phone to date.
The device, which was released in Australia in April, is currently being sold by Telstra (black model only), Vodafone, Optus (black model only), JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, The Good Guys, Wireless1, Woolworths Mobile, Catch, Kogan, TeleChoice, Amazon, MobileCiti, Bing Lee and Australia Post.
The Find X5 Pro comes in two colours: Glaze Black and Ceramic White.
NETWORK Technology GSM / CDMA / HSPA / CDMA2000 / LTE / 5G
BODY Dimensions 163.7 x 73.9 x 8.5 or 8.8 mm Weight 218 g
Build Glass front (Gorilla Glass Victus), ceramic back or eco leather back, aluminum frame
SIM Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, eSIM, dual stand-by)
IP68 dust/water resistant (up to 1.5m for 30 mins)
DISPLAY Type LTPO2 AMOLED, 1B colors, 120Hz, HDR10+, BT.2020, 500 nits (typ), 800 nits (HBM), 1300 nits (peak)
Size 6.7 inches, 108.4 cm2 (~89.6% screen-to-body ratio)
Resolution 1440 x 3216 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~525 ppi density)
Protection Corning Gorilla Glass Victus
Chipset Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (4 nm)
Internal 256GB 12GB RAM UFS 3.1
MAIN CAMERA Triple 50 MP, f/1.7, 25mm (wide), 1/1.56", 1.0µm, multi-directional PDAF, OIS (3-axis sensor-shift, 2-axis lens-shift)
13 MP, f/2.4, 52mm (telephoto), 1/3.4", 2x optical zoom, PDAF
50 MP, f/2.2, 15mm, 110˚ (ultrawide), 1/1.56", 1.0µm, multi-directional PDAF
Features Hasselblad Colour Calibration, LED flash, HDR, panorama
Video 4K @ 30/60fps, 1080p @ 30/60/240fps; gyro-EIS; HDR, 10‑bit video
SELFIE CAMERA Single 32 MP, f/2.4, 21mm (wide), 1/2.74", 0.8µm
SOUND Loudspeaker Yes, with stereo speakers
COMMS WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot
Bluetooth 5.2, A2DP, LE, aptX HD
GPS Yes, with dual-band A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
USB USB Type-C 3.1, USB On-The-Go
FEATURES Sensors Fingerprint (under display, optical), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, colour spectrum
BATTERY Type Li-Po 5000 mAh, non-removable
Charging Fast charging 80W, 50% in 12 min (advertised)
Fast wireless charging 50W, 100% in 47 min (advertised)
MISC Colours Glaze Black, Ceramic White
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Sam Varghese has been writing for iTWire since 2006, a year after the site came into existence. For nearly a decade thereafter, he wrote mostly about free and open source software, based on his own use of this genre of software. Since May 2016, he has been writing across many areas of technology. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years in India (Indian Express and Deccan Herald), the UAE (Khaleej Times) and Australia (Daily Commercial News (now defunct) and The Age). His personal blog is titled Irregular Expression.
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