6 months with the Oppo Find X5 Pro: a near perfect phone
I spent six months with the Oppo Find X5 Pro, the flagship of the Chinese giant. After being nominated smartphone of the year at the Frandroid Awards, it’s time to take another look at the company’s likes and dislikes. The latter also stops abruptly… but we’ll be back here. Beautiful photos, fast charging, comfortable in hand, smooth screen… look back at the real crush.
It’s not always easy to explain why we love smartphones. When they have flaws, it’s easy to point them out, but when things fall in line, as was the case with the Oppo Find X5 Pro, it can be a bit difficult to put into words. .
Objectively, we can even find fault with this phone: the absence of a telephoto lens beyond the X2, the sometimes a bit tight battery, the slightly heated chip… Of course, but all this pales in comparison to the pleasure it ‘brought me. Go back six months with the best phone to pass through my hands in 2022.
Comfortable for hair, neat interface
The first element that comes to mind when thinking about the Find X5 Pro is the general impression of being comfortable in the hand. This phone is quite elongated with an aspect ratio of 20:9 and a thickness of 8.5 mm which feels relatively thin in the palm of the hand. It will all depend on how you hold your phone, personally it tends to be nestled in the lower right corner of my right palm and this position is one of the most comfortable I’ve had on a phone this year.
The ceramic back helps a lot with this general comfort feel. This one feels silkier to the touch than a regular glass or faux leather back. Note that both models we tested have a ceramic back that drops to 218 g in weight, compared to 195 g on the vegan leather version.
To be honest, the weight of the phone has never surprised me and even convinced me. By the way, if you have the chance to pick up the white model instead of the black ceramic, do so unless you’re allergic to white, as black is far more fingerprint-inducing.
Let’s also be clear that the weight imposed by the ceramic never seemed to bother me from watching videos, whether in vertical or horizontal format. And let’s talk about the viewing experience. In my opinion, Oppo has made a very good choice by placing the selfie camera punch at the top left rather than the center.
This allows for a nice unobstructed view of the left side of the screen. Also, it’s a nice big 6.7-inch panel, with LTPO 2, meaning it can drop down to 1Hz and refresh up to 120Hz. Brightness levels, at 1300 cd/m² hours, I’ve never experienced a lack of brightness in broad daylight.
The viewing experience at night is just as enjoyable as the phone managed to drop the brightness down to 1.89 cd/m² according to our tests. I can experience it more than once. You can actually go really low to the point where the screen gives the impression it’s turned off. The colors have never failed me and I even think that my television sometimes gets a little jealous of my phone because I spend time watching series or YouTube.
On the other hand, I can see a bit of strange behavior, at night. I tend to watch the remaining time of the video a lot (don’t judge me). However, every time I opened the interface, the quality of the video in the background immediately dropped, as if it had suddenly become more compressed. Once the interface disappears, returning to normal takes a few seconds. Nothing too serious, you will understand, we nitpick.
And since we’re talking about the interface, we touch on (we’ve never done this before) another strong point of the Oppo Find X5 Pro. ColorOS 13 is one, if not the best interface on Android. Smooth, highly responsive, full of small features with the added bonus of the switch to ColorOS 13 (Android 13) that took place earlier in the year, starting September 2022.
The app drawer is great to use with a little floating animation on scrolling. Some features enrich the experience a bit: split screen, floating windows, or even Monet, which lets you draw wallpaper colors for interface colors.
Convincing camera
When it comes to smartphone photography, you can split your hair for hours to find out if the image submitted is the most beautiful or the most realistic. So, let’s be clear, the Oppo Find X5 Pro may not be the most versatile, it doesn’t have a native telephoto lens for it. The color that is conveyed is certainly a little warm.
But the shots taken with the main sensor are, in 95% of cases, very satisfying because they combine excellent clarity, very pleasant sharpness, undeniable HDR and, let’s say flattering, colorimetric processing, which allows you to post your findings immediately.
On a more personal note, I’m totally in love with these camera spots. This one has a translation that could be described as predictable in a good sense of the term. Since using it, I already have an idea of the result when I press the shutter button. Good point.
I also really like the processing speed and triggering, which really captures the scene you want at the time you want. That’s why I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun blowing up my surroundings as I do with this phone. And in the end, that’s what matters most with a camera phone.
A bit like what my colleague Omar mentioned in his lengthy review of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, unless your friend is equipped with the latest fashionable flagship, there’s a safe bet that you’ll be your friend’s official photographer with this phone, as was my case.
Also, the background blur, also known as bokeh, in portrait mode is very satisfying and highlights the subject well.
The ultra wide angle is to be honest very close to the main camera, maybe a little more pronounced in the color treatment, but overall it feels like we have two devices that work to the max. The close-up use, as you can see with the photo of the doe, is quite stunning in detail.
The X2’s zoom is a bit more questionable. Already because it doesn’t allow you to get too close to your subject like the X3 or X5 or even the X10. But also and most importantly because we lost the quality of focus a bit. As soon as you move a bit, the blur starts to set in.
Nonetheless, we maintain the great quality of the other two sensors and again, colorimetric consistency is very important. There’s only one point where the Oppo Find X5 Pro didn’t really convince me: night photos. Here are two fairly representative examples below. Generally the result is too noisy as on the left, or hard to achieve focus as on the right.
However, the result was not disastrous. It just works less than in other situations.
And there is damage
Well, I’ve been telling you about mountains and wonders since the beginning of this article, but now it’s time to get to the subject of anger. My romance with the Oppo Find X5 Pro has come to an abrupt end. While I was quietly mounted on my desk, I decided to take a photo of my colleague Cassim’s desk to show the large screen sitting there enthroned to the world.
I could never post this photo.
The phone just broke, understand with this that the text below is shown to me, and it’s impossible to restart it normally.
So Cassim probably “cracked”, I’m pretty sure nothing (I’ll be watching you anyway ?). After trying a few manipulations, we returned the phone to Oppo, which failed to revive it. I also determined that the phone wasn’t subjected to any particular shaking or submersion.
It goes without saying that a 1,300 euro phone broken six months after its receipt is a bit of a shame. Even under warranty, it looks bad. As for the reason for the failure, Oppo explained it with two reasons:
- Presence of “unstable test software in Beta (in this case, the phone did have ColorOS 13 in Beta, but had switched to the stable version at the time of failure);
- Pre-series hardware. That is, the phones that are given to journalists sometimes, and this is the case here, smartphones are sent upstream and don’t pass all the usage tests.
It is clear that Oppo considers that, both in terms of software and hardware, the use of the Oppo Find X5 Pro, which we have used for 6 months, does not reflect normal use. Way to say that the users who buy it won’t have any problems.
Well-known drawback
It’s not objective, but after this brutal separation, I miss the Oppo Find X5 Pro. However, smartphones are not lacking in Frandroid’s editorial staff. I lost count of items I searched for in other terminals. I’m thinking about the very specific grain of the photo I’ve attached, which only the Pixel 7 Pro can come close to, but without the capture speed or reliability as a result.
I also thought about the convenience of fast charging, which is very rare in the high-end segment. We can also mention the general ease of use with its excellent screen, ceramic back and quiet and very fluid interface. In short, the Oppo Find X5 Pro is undoubtedly a smartphone that you will remember for a long time.
Source: Frandroid – Chloé Pertuis
Source: Frandroid – Chloé Pertuis
Hence, the only black dot on the board was this sudden breakdown. This puts us in the somewhat odd situation of praising a phone for a very good reason when this one only lasted 6 months. Nonetheless, Oppo’s argument seems plausible to us, as our test sample didn’t pass all the usual certifications. If we can hear it, we’ve made the choice to let you know so you can vote with full knowledge of the facts based on extensive user feedback.
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