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Camera
To recap the four rear cameras of the Oppo Find X3 Pro, we two 50MP Sony IMX 766 sensors, with a wide (f/1.8) and ultrawide (f/2.2) lens. There's also a 13MP telephoto with f/2.4 aperture, and the 3MP microlens.
Let's start with a look at general image quality – here we've taken a photo at 0.6x, 1x, 2x, and 5x zoom levels in the stock camera app. These are completely unedited, straight from camera:
As we can see, image quality is very solid across the board. The photos from the standard wide-angle lens do look the best to my eye, but the 2x zoom is also very clean. Things certainly look noticeably softer as we step up to the 5x zoom however, and that's because the 5x mode is actually a hybrid zoom – combining data from the wide and telephoto cameras. The telephoto itself is a native 2x zoom, so once you get beyond that image quality does go downhill. Not drastically, but compared to many other flagships the zoom capabilities of the Find X3 Pro come up slightly short.
There is also a noticeable difference in white balance, or general colour presentation, as we move from the wide-angle to the 2x lens. Thankfully, the ultrawide and the wide-angle, both of which use identical sensors, are very consistent, but stepping from the 1x to the 2x does result in colours typically looking a bit more washed out.
Of course, this is being hyper-critical – but I'd argue that's exactly what you should be with a £1099 phone. For your every day photos, the image quality is very impressive indeed. There is also the ability to take photos with 10-bit colour depth, but as mentioned earlier I was struggling to tell them apart from regular 8-bit photos when viewed on the Find X3 Pro.
One thing I did also notice is the lens distortion on the ultrawide camera. In my view, this is 100% to be expected and it's the same on my iPhone 12 Pro – but Oppo specifically notes its use of a ‘freeform lens surface coating', saying the ‘ultra-wide camera physically corrects distortion'. I'll be honest, I can't see if it has based on these samples. It's still an excellent ultrawide, mind, but perhaps Oppo is being too ambitious with its marketing.
What really is quite fascinating is the 3MP microlens camera. This lets you get impossibly close to a subject, with Oppo recommending the camera be held 1-3 milimetres from the subject. That's so close Oppo even put a ring light around the lens to provide its own light source, as you'd be blocking out so much light with the phone being so close.
It can take some hugely interesting, and frankly scary-looking images, and really is unlike anything I've ever seen before. The thing I would say though, is that during the first week of my testing, I was very excited to try out this new camera on anything I could. In the weeks since… I've taken barely any photos with it, for me the novelty factor definitely wore off. It's still something hugely unique, but as to how much you will actually use it long-term, that's another matter.
Battery
Coming now to battery life, the Find X3 Pro is fitted with a 4500mAh cell and it does a great job at keeping the phone ticking over. Interestingly, the Find X3 Pro does come set to FHD+ resolution by default, instead of QHD+. I instantly switched to the higher resolution, and did all of my testing with the phone at its maximum 120Hz refresh rate too.
On my heaviest days of use, I saw over five and a half hours of screen-on time before getting into bed, and even then I still had about 15% battery remaining. Lighter days could see me hit 2-3 hours of screen-on time and still get to the end of the day with over 50% battery remaining. It really is very solid and I never left the house feeling I might run out while not at home.
If you do need a quick top up though, I can't speak highly enough of Oppo's 65W SuperVOOC charging. This unit is included in the box (take notes, Apple), and offers frankly ludicrous speeds. Oppo claims a 40% charge in just ten minutes, and based on my use-case that is spot on. In fact, there were times when I'd get into bed, plug the phone in, and after just scrolling social media for 20 minutes, the phone was already back to 100% battery. Thankfully there is also an optimised night charging mode where the phone won't fully charge until an hour or so before you wake up to prevent damage to the battery's long term health.
