The Oppo Find X9 Pro Has a Crazy-Long Detachable Zoom Lens
For several years, China’s biggest smartphone brands are fighting for photography dominance. Even though the changes from year to year are often minimal, these companies try to outdo each other. Take Oppo’s latest flagship, the Find X9 Pro, as an example.
It has a 200-megapixel telephoto lens developed with camera maker Hasselblad, which lets you zoom in on a subject from afar. If that wasn’t enough, Oppo is selling a crazy Hasselblad teleconverter kit, a true 3.28X telephoto lens that slots onto a special body offering more optical zoom than I’ve ever seen in a smartphone.
The Find X9 Pro, launching alongside the slightly more modest Find As you would expect, this is an absolute unit in terms of specifications. Besides the versatile camera system with professional software tools, there is a beautiful 6.78-inch screen and a huge 7,500 mAh silicon-carbon battery.
Close up
Photography: Simon Hill
I love a telephoto lens in my phone. Although I rarely bother with ultra-wide, the ability to zoom remotely often proves useful. You can get close-ups at concerts and other stage events, spot cool architectural details, and sometimes figure out what that distant thing is. The aptly named zoomers don’t realize how good they are; You used to need a DSLR with a huge lens to get as close as your average phone can now.
The Oppo Find Oppo claims it’s capable of 13.2X lossless zoom using computational photography; I’m not sure about that number, but the Find X9 Pro certainly takes great photos of any distant subject. Technically, digital zoom goes up to 120X, but anything over 30X starts to look like an oil painting.
As impressive as it is, there are other phones with 200-megapixel telephoto lenses, so Oppo has taken things up a notch with the optional Hasselblad teleconverter kit. Used in conjunction with its magnetic photographer’s case, there is a sliding attachment that fits over the camera module, then the lens twists and snaps securely onto the telephoto lens, adding another 3.28X zoom.
