This week, OPPO announced the Find X8 and Find X8 Pro in Bali. This was the global launch after the two devices had been launched in China about a month earlier. Sitting through their keynote here in Bali, one thing really stood out to me. OPPO isn’t so much targeting Apple users, but Samsung users and the company itself.
During the keynote, every comparison that OPPO made, was to the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Whether that was in software (specifically animations) or with the camera performance. It was all being compared to Samsung. And surprisingly, not Apple, considering OPPO has taken a lot of design influence from Apple over the years.
So why is OPPO going after Samsung so much? Well, this launch marks its return to the international stage for the Find X series. The previous two models – Find X6 and Find X7 were China only – and of course, the biggest Android competitor there is Samsung.
OPPO is correct; there is a new Zoom King
Back in 2020, just before the pandemic changed the world forever, Samsung introduced the Galaxy S20 series. The Galaxy S20 Ultra was the company’s first phone with “Space Zoom”. Where it was able to achieve 100x digital zoom. Now, obviously, it looked terrible and has gotten a little better over the past few years. But Samsung was one of the first to offer meaningful zooming capabilities, at 5x and even 10x optical zoom. But that’s been pretty stagnant for Samsung over the last four years. In fact, they ditched the 10x zoom lens for a 5x this past year.
Now, enter the OPPO Find X8 series. On the Find X8, we’re looking at a 50-megapixel 3x telephoto lens. And on the Find X8 Pro, we have a 3x and a 6x telephoto lens. This allows the phone to go seamlessly from 3x to 6x and all the way up to 120x. Surprisingly, 120x does look pretty decent, not perfect, but decent, in some conditions.
However, it is not all about the zoom capabilities of this camera and why it’s now better than what Samsung offers. Something else that is really important here is the Zero Shutter Lag. They did not really talk about all that much during the keynote, surprisingly. And for me, this is the killer feature.
We’ve seen phones talk about having zero shutter lag before, but with OPPO’s Find X8 this year, it’s absolutely true. Even when taking shots that are digitally zoomed in, also known as AI Telescope Zoom. That means that you can take the shot right away without having to risk missing the shot. This is really good for action shots, or fireworks or even in concerts.
Samsung has a new bar that it needs to reach. But, since OPPO won’t be selling the Find X8 series in the US, Samsung likely won’t do much to catch up to OPPO, unfortunately. We’ll have to wait and see how good the OnePlus 13 cameras will be in the next few months. However, OnePlus is still at a disadvantage since its devices aren’t sold on carriers.
OPPO’s Find X8 series is better than Samsung’s Galaxy S24 in almost every way
Something OPPO didn’t talk about on stage was how much better the Find X8 is, versus the Galaxy S24, in almost every way. And honestly, I think the non-Pro Find X8 is probably the best all-around smartphone you can get right now. There are really no downsides to that phone, and the fact that there’s no dedicated 6x telephoto lens on that phone is likely not a dealbreaker for most people.
OPPO is now using Silicon-Carbon for its batteries, like HONOR, Xiaomi, and a number of other Chinese smartphone makers. This allows them to put much larger battery capacity into their phones and keeps them rather thin. The Find X8, for example, has a 5630mAh battery, while the Find X8 Pro has a 5910mAh battery. That’s much larger than what Samsung is putting into its phones. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is larger than both Find X8 models and has just a 5,000mAh capacity battery. That means that the Find X8 Pro has a 16% larger battery in a smaller and thinner form factor. This also results in some pretty incredible battery life.
While I’ve been here in Bali, I’ve been using the Find X8 Pro quite a bit and have been pretty surprised at how well it has performed. Despite the heat and using the camera a whole lot more than normal, I was still able to get through a full day. Which is honestly hard to do on days like that with this kind of heat, as well as on most other phones. By the end of the day, my iPhone 16 Pro was down to 30% with not a whole lot of usage, while the Find X8 Pro was down to 39% with a lot more usage – about four hours of screen on time too.
OPPO has also already launched Android 15 for the Find X8 and will start updating other devices in the coming days. That’s something that Samsung is struggling with, too, now. One UI 7, which is based on Android 15 hasn’t even started public beta yet. And that’s not expected to start until the end of the year. Meanwhile, ColorOS 15 is out and is actually starting to be pushed out via OTA.
Finally, the last area where OPPO is better than Samsung right now is with its displays. The Find X8 has a flat display with an incredibly thin bezel. The Find X8 Pro has a quad-curved display, which looks amazing, to be quite honest. It has some pretty thin bezels, too, but that quad-curved display is just stunning to look at when watching videos and playing games.
Samsung better get its act together
If Samsung doesn’t watch out, they could end up being dethroned by other companies in the smartphone world. They’ve been in the top 2 for many years. Often trading places with Apple depending on the time of the year. But with brands like OPPO doing so many great things with their phones, Samsung might be dropping to third or fourth.
Lately, we haven’t seen much innovation from Samsung. The most innovation we saw from them this year was with the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition, which had a wider front display, thinner bezels and a 200-megapixel camera. Yeah it’s a nice upgrade, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that “innovation”.
Samsung has been resting on its laurels a whole lot in the past few years, knowing that its brand name holds a lot of weight and people will still buy their phones, particularly in the US. In the US, we are limited to basically Samsung, Apple, Google, Motorola, and OnePlus. And with the big updates Google made with the Pixel this year, it’s starting to eat away at Samsung’s market share. I’d expect Samsung to do something drastic soon, to stop that bleeding. The US is its second largest market, behind Korea. So it’s not a surprise that they (supposedly) moved to help keep many Chinese brands like Huawei out of the US. Because they’d be done for.
