The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is a flagship phone in a sea of other premium smartphones, making every effort to differentiate itself, although little effort appears to be needed in doing so. Armed with Hasselblad imaging technology, a sleek, solid chassis, and a (really expensive) fixed zoom lens kit, the phone is marketed to the professional photographer, as well as budding enthusiasts.
What Am I Looking At?
You already know what the Find X9 Ultra is: it’s a flagship, and then some. Unlike the Find X9 Pro, this is the only phone in the lineup to run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC. Additionally, the unit in my hands is the one that comes with 12GB RAM and 512GB of internal storage, but as you can see from the chart, it’s really more than plenty.
The display is about as clear as you’d get with an AMOLED panel; colours are punchy but feel a little too saturated, but again, that’s just the nature of AMOLED. To that end, contrasts are deep as well, with blacks being nice and inky, and whites really hurting my eyes at times, thanks to the peak 1,800 nits’ brightness that it has.
On a sidebar: do remember to peel off plastic screen protector that Oppo ships out with Find X9 Ultra. It’s not of good quality and honestly, it scratches up something fierce in just a short period of time.
In keeping with its design this year, the Find X9 Ultra sports a dedicated “AI” button on the left side, which can be reprogrammed to open up other programs, if prompting an AI assistant isn’t what you want. There’s also a dedicated shutter button at the bottom right of the phone, which doubles as a aperture slider when you glide your finger over it. But again, that’s reprogrammable too.
Speaking of, the main camera is very obviously the star of the show here, and how. The Find X9 Ultra’s main shooter is a quad-camera model, comprising a 200MP wide, a 200MP periscope telephoto with 3X optical zoom, a 50MP periscope telephoto with 10X optical zoom, and 50MP ultrawide. Additionally, Oppo was kind enough to provide me with its Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit, which is a fun piece of kit, albeit a bit overkill.
As for the performance, there’s not much I can talk about that hasn’t been said about the chipset powering this phone. On the surface, the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 barely breaks a sweat on the benchmarks. That said, it seems to have a problem running the Solar Bay test on 3DMark, but really, it’s a non-issue. Beyond that, there’s not much else to be said with the company
What’s Good About It?
The Find X9 Ultra was my workhorse for the entirety of my work trip to Taiwan for Computex 2026. Throughout the course of the working week, the phone’s camera, along with the Earth Explorer casing, captured all subjects of the lens in vivid detail, albeit with a bit of lag. More on that in the next part.
Without the casing, the Find X9 Ultra is still pretty light and feels secure in the hand, even more so with the textured back. It’s a design feature you don’t see on a lot of phones these days, and more to the point, it’s functional – some folks don’t like using phone cases, and the texture behind the phone prevents any accidental slips.
And then there’s the battery life. On a day-to-day basis, the Find X9 Ultra was able to give me in excess of two days of general usage before requiring a recharge from the wall. Throw it to the side and leave it, and that battery life extends to more than five days before reaching close to single-digit battery life.
On our loop test, where we run a video continuously on loop with the brightness set at 40%, the phone would last just a little longer than 24 hours. For that matter, the Earth Explorer casing also comes with its own battery pack, and that lasted for days, even when I forgot to turn it off.
As for the camera: although it’s rated at 200MP, it’s actually limited by default to 50MP when using it as a daily shooter. In my opinion, that’s more than plenty, and the final images speak for themselves.
Two things to note: by itself, the Find X9 Ultra captures stunningly detailed pictures, and in this review, I spent a lot more time taking vivid, vibrant shots of food that I was going to eat.
The second point of note is that the fixed zoom lens from the Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit really works a treat, especially if you’re taking long distance shots of iconic buildings. The best thing I found about it, though, is that the camera teleconverter kit mode automatically adjusts the bokeh of a subject to make it stand out more. That said, there is a catch to using this mode, which I’ll explain in the next part.
What’s The Catch?
So, a lot of my peeves with the Find X9 Ultra revolve around its camera and particularly with camera-centric casing of the Earth Explorer kit. It’s slow. I won’t lie: the fixed zoom lens is heavy, as is the casing. When used as is (read: naked, without a casing), the phone’s a shutterbug’s companion, provided you’re not using the dedicated shutter button on the side.
Going off on a tangent for that last bit: Oppo, you didn’t have to emulate Apple and place your shutter button so far in. Sony did a fine job having the dedicated shutter button on their Xperia 1 flagships closer to the edge, so I see no reason why you couldn’t emulate them instead.
Getting back on point, and still on the subject of shutter buttons and capture speeds, I suppose it’s both a relief and a frustration that the Hasselblad shutter speed on the Earth Explorer kit casing remains slow and steady. In all fairness, it’s a camera system that is clearly designed from still shots, architectural photography even, and damn it all, it really works well, and even plays with the bokeh very well. Even more maddening is how the shutter button would sometimes capture burst shots, all because I held it down for too long after locking in on the focus.
The means of attaching the fixed zoom lens is where things get a bit…iffy. The Earth Explorer kit’s casing alone won’t hold, and you actually need to attach the adapter ring inside the box for it. Once that is attached, only then can you attach the zoom lens on to it. Basically, it’s the professional DSLR and Mirrorless lens swapping experience, brought on to the mobile phone, which honestly feels a bit much for me, but hey, to each their own.
Then there is the zoom distance of the teleconverter mode when affixed with the fixed zoom lens. Perhaps this is stating the obvious, but capturing anything beyond the 10x optical zoom begins to look less than stellar, even in broad daylight. Sure, I managed to take a shot of Taipei 101 at 100x zoom, but as you can imagine, the images just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Finally, there’s the price tag. The base model of the Find X9 Ultra starts at RM6,799, with the top-spec model costing RM7,799. If you want the Hasselblad Earth Explorer Kit, that’s going to cost you an additional RM1,999, bringing the total cost of the set close to RM10,000.
Sample Images
Competition
Xiaomi 17 Ultra
While the Find X9 Ultra has the backing of Hasselblad, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra poses a threat to the phone, thanks to its partnership with photography powerhouse Leica.
It’s powered by the same Snapdragon 8 Gen5 SoC and comes with up to 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage. The display is slightly bigger at 6.9-inches, but it uses an AMOLED panel with 120Hz refresh rate.
The main camera is undoubtedly the highlight of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Although a triple-camera sensor, it boasts a 50MP 1-inch 22mm wide sensor, a 200MP periscope telephoto 1/1.4-inch sensor with a 75-110m continuous optical zoom lens, and a 50MP wide angle, capable of macro photography up to 5cm. It’s also cheaper than the Find X9 Ultra, retailing for RM5,499.
vivo X300 Ultra
Oppo has Hasselblad. vivo has Zeiss. With the X300 Ultra, the phone also gets its own Zeiss-oriented photography kit, complemented by a wide array of the brand’s Master Lenses Collection.
Like the Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, the X300 Ultra is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 SoC and gets up to 16GB RAM and 1TB of expandable storage. Camera-wise, the main island is a triple-threat contender, sporting a 200MP 1/1.12-inch Sony Lytia 901 sensor, a 200MP 1/1.4-inch telephoto, and a 50MP 1/1.28-inch ultrawide.
As for pricing, the X300 Ultra retails from RM3,299 for the 12GB+256GB configuration, while the 12GB+512GB model sells for RM3,899.
Should I Buy It?
For Hasselblad fans who love and understand the nature of the brand and the imaging technology it brings to the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, this phone would probably tickle you pink. I will reiterate here and now that this flagship camera phone is a shutterbug’s delight, but it will teach you to exercise patience and probably improve your ability in nature and architectural photography.
As for the Earth Explorer Kit – the fixed zoom lens, the adapter rings – it is the dictionary definition of the term “optional extra”. If you can look past the finicky attachment steps, and you want to feel like an stalker, and you have deep pockets, then yes. By all means, add this to the tally.
As a phone, though, it’s hard to deny that the Find X9 Ultra is excruciatingly expensive. Sadly, and as much as I hate to say this, that price tag is due in part to rising costs of memory chips and, to some extent, the premium attached to the phone carrying the Hasselblad branding.
Photography by John Law.
