If you're in the market for a new high-end camera phone, three brands are likely to spring straight to mind: Apple, Google and Samsung. Thanks to their huge marketing might, they enjoy unrivalled brand recognition. It's therefore easy to assume that these industry titans must produce the best camera phones on the market - after all, how could a smaller brand possibly compete?
But the reality is that the competition isn't just catching up, or even equalling the camera phone giants - it's already overtaken them. Massive brand recognition can become an easy way to generate sales, reducing the need for genuine hardware innovation. We’ve seen exactly this from the last few generations of iPhone and Galaxy S Ultra phones, with the latter reusing camera sensors not just for one phone generation but three, and counting. Incremental upgrades are now the order of the day. This is currently somewhat understandable, as the skyrocketing cost of NAND flash is increasing the overall price of camera phones, thereby preventing manufacturers from making substantial camera hardware upgrades without raising unit costs still further. However, this alone doesn't excuse what is now multiple years of stagnating camera phone hardware from the major players.
So if the latest iPhone or Galaxy S Ultra isn't going to give you the most advanced camera experience available right now, what will? For that you need to turn to China. Not content with dominating almost every other area of consumer electronics, China also now gives us the most innovative and impressive camera phones on the market. The three brands at the top are Vivo, Xiaomi and Oppo. For the last few years all three have consistently produced more compelling flagship camera phones than anything from Apple, Samsung or Google. The Chinese contenders pack bigger image sensors, more optical zoom, and extra features that make recent iPhones and Galaxy S Ultra handsets look downright dull.
I've been lucky enough to long-term test Oppo's current flagship, the Find X9 Ultra, for the past three months. With a launch price of £1449, it can't rely on being substantially cheaper than its rivals, but it doesn't need to be. In its Tundra Umber colorway, it's immediately more distinctive than the comparatively bland Galaxy S26 Ultra, even to those not in 'the know'. And if you are a photographer that recognises the Hasselblad design cues, the Find X9 Ultra just looks better still.
Start shooting and the consistency of image quality from the four separate camera modules is immediately apparent. There's seamless focal length transitioning from 0.6x (ultrawide) through to the maximum 10x optical (230mm-equivalent) zoom. But the Find X9 Ultra’s zoom capability doesn't stop there. Through a combination of on-sensor cropping and clever AI zoom, up to 120x reach is possible, and with surprisingly competent image quality. Stick with the default photo mode and shots look immediately appealing, with strong vibrancy and contrast, as well as bags of fine detail. Dynamic range is high, but thankfully stops short of looking over-processed. If you'd rather have an even more natural image aesthetic, there's always Hasselblad Master mode. This has been tuned to emulate the more subtle image quality from Hasselblad's medium format cameras, and it opens up various manual controls. I’m also a fan of the X-Pan mode, which enables instant panorama recording and is a lot more convenient than using the much slower and fiddly sweep panorama mode.
All well and good, but most flagship phones have plenty of optical zoom, along with manual control and a plethora of shooting modes. Where the Find X9 Ultra really pulls ahead of its rivals is its ability to be teamed with Oppo’s Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit. This contains a bespoke 300mm teleconverter lens, along with a special phone case to which the lens mounts, plus a tripod collar and other small accessories. You might assume this is all a bit gimmicky – after all, clip-on telephoto lenses can be plasticky garbage – but you’d be very wrong. With aesthetics and build quality that are truly befitting of the Hasselblad branding, this is so much more than just a publicity stunt: it turns what’s already a darned good camera phone into a genuinely usable option for capturing sports and wildlife. Check out our full review of the teleconverter lens for more details.
Oppo isn’t the only Chinese brand pushing camera phone boundaries. Vivo also offers a similar case+teleconverter kit for its flagship camera phone, the X300 Ultra, and though I’ve yet to test this, it looks just as impressive as Oppo’s implementation.
I fully admit that optional teleconverter lenses aren’t going to change the camera phone world: as effective as they are, they’ll always be a niche product. Rather, Oppo and Vivo’s camera cases and teleconverters serve as symbols of China’s desire to innovate and enhance the camera phone industry, while also highlighting the comparative lack of hardware development we've seen from the more established brands.
So when the time comes to choose your next phone, and you want something that’s been designed for enthusiast photographers, I implore you: don’t just default to the current iPhone/Pixel/Galaxy S: check out the competition from Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, as these are now the brands at the forefront of phone camera development.
