It’s no secret that we were big fans of the Oppo Find X8 Ultra. With its large sensors, refined Hasselblad color science, and incredible focal lengths, the Find X8 Ultra only fell short of a coveted five-star rating because it wasn’t available globally.
In his review, Gareth Bevan called it his “favorite camera phone last year”, but with the imminent launch of its successor, the Find X9 Ultra, and based on these new teased specs, I think he might have a new champion.
Zhou Shijie, product manager at Oppo, shared on Weibo how they’ve managed to cram a 10x optical quality camera – a focal length you'd usually need a teleconverter for – inside the latest X9 Ultra. This announcement could well be the beginning of the end for the humble compact camera.
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World's first phone camera technology
According to Zhou Shijie's posts, the Find X9 Ultra will feature Oppo's most advanced imaging system to date, and with a continued partnership with master Swedish camera makers Hasselblad, as Oppo looks to continue to define and disrupt the phone-camera market.
The new 50MP 10x optical telephoto lens boasts a five-reflection prism that has enabled OPPO to shrink the module length from 41mm to a super-thin 29mm, all the while maintaining a huge 230mm focal length.
Oppo has an incredible track record of delivering telephoto innovations, so these new developments come as no surprise. In 2017, it showcased a prototype with a 5x dual camera zoom system. In 2023, it released the Find X6 Pro, featuring a large-sensor periscope lens. And in 2024, it pioneered an inverted periscope lens, achieving a breakthrough in slimness.
The latest innovation delivers native 10x optical zoom, 20x optical quality zoom, and up to 120x digital zoom. This world-first five-prism setup is made possible by nanoscale prism cutting and an air diaphragm, triple AOA active calibration, and a customized JNL 50MP Fusion Sensor. Oppo has also “optimized the microlens and color filter, significantly reducing color shading and ensuring accurate and consistent colors.”
With the OPPO Find X9 Ultra having a planned global release on April 20, 2026, we’ll only have to wait just a little longer to witness, firsthand, just how this new 10x lens performs, but when we do, and it finally lands on European shores, I wouldn’t be surprised if it's finally awarded it's five star rating.
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