A Detailed Review | OPPO Find X5 | OPPO Ambassador

[ankitgondalia]

INTRODUCTION

Hello all. As you might know, I received the OPPO Find X5 last week and did an unboxing and first impressions post which you can find here.

Ever since I've received the Find X5 my sim card has been in it and I've been using it as my daily phone.

It's been a couple of days and I think I've fairly used this device to give my thoughts and share with you all my detailed review on the device.

The subjects that I will be reviewing in detail are,

• Design
• Camera
• Software & Performance
• Battery & Charging

I will try my best to share an unbiased and detailed review of the device and in the end, will share a verdict. If you have any questions or doubts about the device, feel free to ask.

Now let's take a closer look and find whether the Find X5 lives up to its expectations.

DESIGN

Starting my review with the design, this is probably the most interesting-looking phone design I've seen in a while.

I just love what OPPO has done with the colour and finish on the Find X5, especially the one in white with the black camera bump which gives it a very distinctive look.

The back of the device is glass, feels very smooth to the touch, and is very elegant & premium while holding. Since it's a matte finish, fingerprints and smudges are non-existent.

At the back, you find "OPPO | Hasselblad" branding, and since the device is an EU model you also get all the regulatory information.

I also really like the seamless slope design they've done around the camera bump.

The frame is aluminum however, if I had to nitpick, I would've loved it if the frame was black instead of shiny silver which attracts some fingerprints. Again that's only visible when you look for it at a certain angle.

It weighs 196 grams and does have a heft to it but the weight is well balanced. It isn't top-heavy, never felt that the device might accidentally fall from my hand.

At 6.55 inches in screen size, it is still decently large, but because it is quite narrow, the phone felt a little easier to use.

The button placements are done well and are placed at a reachable position.

Volume buttons to the left, power button to the right which has OPPO's signature green colour embedded inside. Buttons are very clicky and have good feedback.

Up top there's a microphone and below lies the Type-C port for charging and data transfer, a loudspeaker, another microphone, and a sim slot.

There's an IP54 rating for protection against dust. However, the sim tray does have a rubber ring. So the seals are present and should save it from occasional water splashes.

The sim slot does take in two sim cards. No SD card expansion, however, OPPO does offer the phone in a 256GB storage configuration, which should be more than enough storage for most.

The X-axis linear motor for the haptics is also quite good. The feedback is strong and during my test, I've never missed any calls or notifications.

The bezels surrounding the display are thin except for the bottom chin which is ever so slightly thicker compared to the top bezel.

The phone does come with a pre-applied screen protector which should last for a couple of months. Also, there's Gorilla Glass Victus used for display protection.

Moving to the display, it's a very good quality curved AMOLED display with a resolution of 2400×1080. The refresh rate is 120Hz with a touch sampling rate of 240Hz due to which scrolling felt quite smooth and never felt any lag during touch input. However, I wish the display panel was LTPO instead of regular 120Hz which can only drop down to 60Hz when the display is idle.

There's an in-display fingerprint sensor that is placed in a position where your thumb might naturally rest. Unlocking was pretty quick.

The display is 10-bit which means it can produce up to 1 billion colours. The default colour mode is set to Vivid however you can select other available colour modes that are Natural & Pro Mode to tune it as per your preference.

vivid, natural & pro-mode for display calibration.​

The display gets bright enough with 500 nits of default peak brightness which can go up to 800 nits and boosts up to 1,000 nits while watching HDR content. Visibility is great under direct sunlight.

There's an earpiece up top which also doubles as a secondary speaker. The speakers are loud enough and I did not find any distortion at high volumes.

I'm impressed with the device, OPPO has done a great job with the overall design and build quality of the Find X5.

 

[ankitgondalia]

CAMERA

I was really curious to test out the cameras on the Find X5 since this is the first device to have OPPO's self-developed chip, the MariSilicon X for better image processing, and their partnership with Hasselblad for natural colour calibration.

MariSilicon X is built on 6nm process technology that helps capture 20bit Ultra HDR, 4K night video, real-time 20bit RAW processing, and many more.

The primary lens on the Find X5 is a 50MP shooter with a Sony IMX766 sensor. The aperture is f/1.8 and it does have Optical Image Stabilisation.

Interestingly, the ultra-wide angle lens is also the same 50MP Sony IMX766 camera. The aperture though is f/2.2 with a field of view of 110°

The third lens is a 13MP telephoto camera with an aperture of f/2.4 that has a 2x optical zoom.

The camera app is quite straightforward to use. You get the Hasselblad coloured orange shutter button and the modes can be arranged by pressing the edit button which can be found in the more section. OPPO has also incorporated Hasselblad’s iconic leaf shutter sound.

user interface of the camera app.​

I did my camera testing under different conditions such as outdoors, indoors, and under low light, and here's what I have to say about the camera on the Find X5.

In case you don't want to read the whole review part and just want to check out the samples then click here.

Outdoor shots with the main camera are very good. Colour reproduction is quite natural looking and pictures have a good amount of contrast. The Find X5 handles dynamic range better most of the time and the pictures are well detailed.

pictures shot from the main camera.​

The white balance is correct, never encountered any weird colour shifting.

Also, due to the sensor being large, the pictures have a natural depth to them even without using the portrait mode.

Pictures from the ultra-wide angle camera are also quite good. Being a 50MP camera and having the same IMX766 sensor as the main lens, the details, white balance, and contrast levels of shots were quite consistent and similar to the main lens.

pictures shot from the ultra-wide angle camera.​

There are very minimal chromatic aberrations around the edges.

The phone can also shoot close-up macro shots. The camera switches itself to macro mode whenever you take the phone up close to the subject.

pictures shot with Macro mode.​

The 2X telephoto camera is also quite close when it comes to white balance consistency. The details are good but not as good when compared with the main & ultra-wide. Also, I did wish that the telephoto camera had more zoom capabilities, maybe a 3X.

pictures shot from the Telephoto camera.​

White Balance was mostly consistent between all the three lenses in the outdoor shots.

lens comparison - outdoor conditions.​

Under indoor conditions, pictures from the main camera are bright and detailed with very less noise. Shots from the ultra-wide camera are also very good with very less noise and good detail levels. Pictures from the telephoto camera also did a good job and details are quite close compared to pictures from the other two lenses. The white balance between all the three lenses was quite similar.

lens comparison - indoor conditions.​

The same goes with the low-light shots. The main camera takes good shots with plenty of light and very low noise levels. Pictures from the ultra-wide camera are also very impressive. It is as bright as the pictures from the main camera & the detail levels are similar. Pictures from the Telephoto camera are again good but compared to pictures from the other two lenses they are a bit soft and less detailed.

lens comparison - low-light conditions.
​

Now I noticed that during low light conditions, the Telephoto Camera uses the Main Lens which is cropped to 2X instead of the actual Telephoto Lens.

Using the main camera during low light conditions is better since the aperture and resolution of the main camera is better than the aperture and resolution of the Telephoto Lens.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of pictures shot on Telephoto & Main Camera with 2X zoom. Zooming in you can see the keyboard is quite detailed in comparison with the picture shot on Telephoto.

The colours are also off on the picture shot from the Telephoto camera.

There's Pro Mode that lets you have full control over ISO, Shutter speed, White Balance, Focus, and Exposure Values.

You can use all three lenses in Pro mode and all three lenses support shooting in "RAW" format. However, I do not like the position of switching the lens which is at the top instead of keeping it at the bottom. The bottom instead has a 1x and a 2x zoom which is a crop from the main lens. I would've preferred the actual lens switching option at that place.

There's a new "RAW Plus" mode that captures more details & a better dynamic range than the standard RAW mode. I loved the RAW Plus mode. Having dynamic range already on a RAW picture means that the shadows and highlights are already worked upon meaning editing these pictures in Lightroom took minimal effort.

Here are some pictures shot in RAW format & edited with Lightroom.

pictures shot with Pro mode.
​

One thing I do not like about the Pro Mode is that it does not remember your last used shooting format. The shooting format resets back to JPG after some time. This was very annoying as I have missed shooting in a RAW format a couple of times. Even if I did remember, it was still annoying to enable RAW format every time.

The front camera is a 32 Megapixel with an aperture of f/2.4. Now I'm not a selfie person but the pictures coming out from the front camera are good.

The Portrait mode worked great with animals and humans in daylight and also at nighttime. Edge detection was pretty good and skin tones were accurate.

There's a Long Exposure mode that you can use to capture motion shots not just at night but even during the daytime. Quite useful for those who do not know using Pro mode to shoot such motion shots.

OPPO has also introduced XPAN mode co-developed with Hasselblad which shoots panoramic images in two profiles, color mode, and a unique B&W mode.

shot with XPAN mode.​

All the cameras can shoot up to 4K with 1080p & 720p as options at 30fps or 60fps. However, you cannot change the lenses while recording which is a bummer.

Video samples with max settings can be found here.

There's a dedicated Film mode that lets you shoot in a cinematic ratio and has options to manually set shutter speed, ISO, white balance, manual focus, and exposure values.

film mode feature.​

The mode also supports shooting in LOG format. This is great for those Pro videographers who want to later color-grade the footage. The Film mode supports all three lenses.

Here's a sample footage shot on Film mode and color-graded.

Overall OPPO has done a great job with the camera on the Find X5 and I can definitely recommend someone looking for a phone with a very good Primary & Ultra-wide angle camera with a decent zoom range.

There are some software annoyances & limitations like the Pro mode switching back to JPG format & also not allowing to switch lenses while recording. These are software-related issues so I hope OPPO fixes them soon by pushing an update.

 

[ankitgondalia]

SOFTWARE & PERFORMANCE

OPPO has come a very long way when it comes to it's software. Over the years, OPPO has refined ColorOS with each version, making the user experience better.

Starting with the Android version, the Find X5 comes with Android 12 out of the box with OPPO's ColorOS 12.1 skin on top. ColorOS over the years has changed quite a lot. OPPO's objective with ColorOS 12 is to refine and simplify the whole UI making it cleaner and easier to use. All of its system apps have been updated to cleaner UI and are easier to use with one hand by placing important menus at the bottom.

There's a good amount of customisation option for the launcher that people will appreciate. From the option to change the icon shapes & sizes, grid layout, to the option to change transition while switching pages & more.

customisation for icon, grid layout & page transition.​

OPPO also has introduced its own wallpaper-based theming similar to Google's theming which extracts colours from the wallpaper and applies them across the system and apps.

Unfortunately, OPPO's theming is only limited to the system settings, notification panel, and its own apps, Google apps do not adapt to the theme.

Edit: The device received an update with March security patch. The update now supports theming for Google apps. Good to see OPPO making the user experience better.

There are also tonnes of customisation options for Always-On Display where one can add custom patterns, text & images including system-provided clock & image options. Customisation also includes Font & display, Fingerprint animation, Edge lighting & more.

portrait silhouette feature.​

There's a new Portrait silhouette feature that basically draws an outline around the face and lets you set it as the background of the always-on display.

ColorOS 12.1 also includes all of the Android 12 features such as quick settings toggle to turn off Camera & Mic access to all the apps, option to give an approximate location instead of a precise location, privacy dashboard for checking what permissions were being used by the apps.

OPPO has also worked on animations on ColorOS 12 which they call "Quantum Animation Engine 3.0" adding more lifelike & seamless transitions.

There's an Icon pull-down gesture that can be used by swiping up alongside the edge of the display to bring down the icons close to your thumb and select an app to launch.

icon pull-down gesture, flexible windows & smart sidebar.​

Another feature I really liked is Flexible window which has the ability to turn any app into a floating window for quick multitasking. Smart Sidebar was another handy feature to quickly access functions and apps.

OPPO has done a great job in implementing haptics with the ColorOS. You can feel subtle vibrations across the system while dragging your finger or reaching the end of the page after scrolling. O-HAPTICS under settings lets you turn off system haptics, adjust the haptic intensity, and select a haptic style that has two options, Crisp and Gentle.

Talking about pre-installed apps, the phone did have a good amount of bloatware like Amazon, Facebook, and more. However, most of these can be easily uninstalled.

Another issue I want to address is that the folders do not adapt to the selected icon shape. This makes the home screen look a bit inconsistent.

folder shape does not change to a circle.​

Performance was also quite solid even though it has the last year's chipset, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. I did wish it had the latest 8 Gen 1 processor, though adding last year's Snapdragon 888 to cut costs without sacrificing performance makes sense after all Snapdragon 888 SOC is quite a capable chipset and can handle everything you throw at it.

During my usage, it performed exceptionally well. I did not face any stutters or major slowdowns. 8GB of RAM was sufficient for multitasking and keeping the apps running in the background. If 8GB of RAM isn't sufficient then one can expand the RAM through the RAM expansion feature which utilizes the phone's storage space.

With a 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate the phone felt quite smooth to use and apps and games opened very quickly.

I don't really play games on my phone but I did install some games like BGMI & Asphalt 8 to test out its peak performance and it ran those games quite well with high graphic settings. The phone did get a little warm after running the games for about an hour but did not get abnormally hot.

Software experience has been mostly positive with the Find X5. Even though not having the latest 8 Gen 1 processor, the performance of the phone was pretty solid.

 

[ankitgondalia]

BATTERY & CHARGING

The battery size on Find X5 is a pretty respectable 4,800 mAh split between two cells allowing it to charge at a very high speed.

In terms of charging the Find X5, the device supports 80 Watt SUPERVOOC wired charging which charges the device instantly. The device also supports AirVOOC wireless charging at 30 Watts & Reverse Wireless Charging at 10 Watts.

Unfortunately, I couldn't test AirVOOC wireless charging as I did not have the wireless charger with me. However, Reverse Wireless Charging worked quite well with my OnePlus Buds Pro.

I did test the wired charging speed and the phone charged to 50% in about 15 mins & 100% in just about 40 minutes which is quite impressive. The device did not heat abnormally while charging the device at such high speeds.

I also briefly tested the battery life and in my moderate usage, I was getting somewhere around 7-8 hours of screen on time. Under heavy use expect the screen on time to be around 5 to 6 hours.

battery life with heavy and moderate usage.​

My usage generally includes apps like YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, and Reddit, taking a lot of pictures, and editing pictures in Lightroom.

There's Power saving mode which is nothing but Battery Saver mode. You can enable it manually or set it to enable automatically based on specified battery levels from 5% to 75%.

Power saving mode also includes options to control screen brightness, screen time-out, background sync, and screen refresh rate.

There's also a High performance mode under battery settings which increases device performance. I did not feel any need to enable it since the performance was quite good even without this mode being enabled. Other features include standby optimisation and optimised night time charging for preserving battery health.

Overall I would say OPPO has done a great job in terms of Battery and Charging department.

 

[ankitgondalia]

VERDICT


The Find X5 is a solid flagship with a little compromise.

Even though having last year's Snapdragon 888, performance will be more than adequate for the majority of users. The software did impress me more than I expected it to be. There are some minor software issues that can be easily fixed via a software update. The display & build quality is great, the charging speed is more than adequate, and battery life is also great. The overall camera performance is great, except for the decent zoom range.

And that's all I have to say about the OPPO Find X5. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'd be glad to answer them.

I'd like to thank the @OPPO Ambassador Team again for giving me the opportunity to review OPPO Find X5!

Looking forward to what OPPO brings to the table next year with the Find X6!