Elbowing for consideration alongside Vivo and Xiaomi, Oppo has lastly launched its long-teased “extremely” model of its flagship smartphone. The Discover X9 Extremely is one other camera-first smartphone from Oppo, with an much more spectacular spec sheet and a brand new array of equipment. We’re not even midway by 2026 and we’ve been spoiled with decisions, whether or not it’s the Galaxy S26 Extremely, the Xiaomi 17 Extremely (with or with out Leica livery) or Vivo’s X300 Extremely.
The Discover X9 Professional was already a strong, succesful digicam telephone. So, what’s modified with the Extremely? We’ve had the bottom gadget for over every week, however we’re ready on the upgraded telephoto converter package to land earlier than we sort out a extra in-depth evaluate.
There are a number of design modifications, beginning with the 2 colour choices. Canyon Orange seems just like Oppo’s latest flagship telephones, with a delicate etched end meant to copy the Grand Canyon. In the meantime, Hasselblad followers would possibly want the opposite choice: a woodland-themed Tundra Umber, impressed by the digicam maker’s X2D. Oppo says this colorway channels “Scandinavian minimalism and the uncooked class of glaciers.” Collectively eventually.
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Maybe on account of all of the digicam {hardware}, it’s an enormous, thick telephone with the digicam unit protruding noticeably from the again. The digicam array on the Extremely now has a delicate hexagonal design, apparently a nod to digicam historical past — and that Hasselblad partnership. That space has a round, steel body, like lots of Oppo’s rivals. The sides of the digicam unit are knurled, which lets you grip the gadget when taking photographs. In contrast to Xiaomi’s latest Ultra phone, the ring doesn’t act as a zoom management, however Oppo and Hasselblad’s “Earth Explorer Package” for the Discover X9 Extremely provides a really understated digicam grip with a zoom lever.
Placing final 12 months’s Discover X9 Professional subsequent to the X9 Extremely, the Extremely mannequin seems extra trendy, extra superior and extra highly effective. And it’s. The Extremely has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a notable step up from the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip discovered on final 12 months’s Discover 9 Professional.
There’s additionally a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon battery that helps 100W SUPERVOOC charging. Oppo says it has included the “business’s first” encapsulated thermal unit to maintain temperatures beneath management when pushing the gadget laborious, reminiscent of recording high-resolution video for prolonged durations. The show screams costly Android flagship, too. The 6.82-inch 144Hz show can attain as much as 3,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and drop to 1 nit in low-lit conditions.
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It’s all in regards to the cameras, nonetheless. The Discover X9 Extremely’s primary digicam is a 200-megapixel sensor. At 1/1.12 inches, Oppo says it’s the biggest 200MP sensor in a telephone but. It has a low f/1.5 aperture, too. This was my ‘primary’ digicam after I first began taking the X9 Extremely out to shoot pattern photographs. In any case, greater sensors imply extra element, and extra capacity to crop for tighter zoomed photographs. With a combination of streetlights, neon indicators and extra, I used to be impressed by the colour accuracy. Oppo has embedded a brand new True Colour Digicam into the Discover X9 Extremely’s digicam module, which works throughout stills and video. Nonetheless, in case you’re demanding punchy, high-contrast pictures, there’s an array of Hasselblad filters and results for taking part in with, too.
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There’s additionally a 3x Telephoto digicam, with one other (completely different!) 200MP sensor and f/2.2 aperture. That is the digicam that the brand new teleconverter lens attaches to. There’s one thing interesting about having an on the spot 3x zoom digicam, although it will get somewhat misplaced among the many cropped focal-length equivalents within the digicam app. In truth, Oppo claims that the Discover X9 Extremely presents the equal of eight focal lengths. Sadly, I seen some variations in colour temperature and lightweight sensitivity because the Discover X9 Extremely hopped between all these digicam sensors whereas I examined completely different zoom ranges.
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The following digicam is one other telephoto, with a powerful 10x zoom with a 50 megapixel sensor. We’ve seen 10x zoom on telephones earlier than, just like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Extremely, however by no means at such excessive decision. Oppo added help for its Portrait mode right here, even at full zoom. You too can crop in for a 20x zoom, however the outcomes didn’t blow me away in early testing. At 10x zoom, although, I used to be impressed. That’s loads of zoom earlier than even enthusiastic about attaching a teleconverter.
Oppo isn’t going fairly as laborious on video as its rival (and distant company relative) Vivo, however the Discover X9 Extremely can seize 4K 60 fps video with Dolby Imaginative and prescient. It’s additionally the primary Oppo smartphone able to recording 8K video at 30 fps. For these trying to dig into video element, Oppo has launched a brand new log profile, O-Log2. The corporate says this may assist reveal larger shadow element and scale back picture smearing — it’s one thing else I’m itching to attempt as soon as the teleconverter lands.
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Like Vivo’s X300 Extremely, Oppo’s latest telephone is licensed for the Academy Colour Encoding System (ACES), so videographers can combine its footage into skilled workflows. You too can load third-party LUTs (look-up tables) immediately onto the gadget to observe customized colour grades in actual time and see how they give the impression of being within the on-device preview.
As is usually the case with Chinese language telephone makers, there’s a lavish accent package to construct on the smartphone’s taking pictures abilities. Oppo’s Hasselblad Explorer case provides a two-stage focus button and the aforementioned zoom controls. The case has the identical muted black and clay colours because the Tundra Umber version of the Discover X9 Extremely. Then there’s the brand new Hasselblad 300mm Explorer Teleconverter. The magnification ratio of the teleconverter has been elevated from 3.28x on Discover X9 Professional to round 4.3x on the Discover X9 Extremely. The lens mounts immediately onto the 200-megapixel 3x telephoto lens, upgrading it to a heady 13x optical zoom.
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That is additionally the most important smartphone telephoto lens but, dwarfing each the Discover X9 Professional’s add-on and Vivo’s not-petite 400mm teleconverter. The businesses selected completely different mixtures of digicam sensors and lenses, making spec sheet comparisons somewhat trickier, however Oppo’s newest accent is definitely the biggest to this point. I can’t wait to see how the Discover X9 Extremely’s photographs fare in opposition to pictures from the Vivo X300 Extremely, although. Within the Discover X9 Extremely’s favor, it has an iPhone 17 Professional-like touch-sensitive button for shortly launching the digicam, one thing I missed on Vivo’s new flagship.
Sadly, there isn’t any cross-compatibility amongst earlier Oppo teleconverters and telephones. The corporate says that is to make sure optimum picture high quality, nevertheless it’ll disappoint devoted Oppo followers hoping to hold over the costly digicam equipment from earlier years. The corporate has discovered some classes from the Discover X9 Professional, with a brand new telephoto adapter that may be left mounted on the telephone with out obscuring the opposite digicam lenses.
On first impression, the Discover X9 Extremely is shaping as much as be one other highly effective digicam telephone, with one other hard-to-actually-buy caveat. The Discover X9 Extremely will arrive in components of Asia and Europe. Within the UK, it’s set to launch on Could eighth, priced at £1,449 (roughly $1,959). Whereas there’s no US launch deliberate, we’ll replace this story once we hear extra particulars on the worldwide launch. As soon as the telephoto add-on arrives, I’m excited to place it by its paces. I’ve obtained its rival from Vivo too, so it’s time for the battle of the teleconverters.
