Oppo's Find X8 Pro Wants to Be an AI Phone, but Its Camera Is the Real Star

Even before unboxing the Find X8 Pro — let alone using it, I knew Oppo wanted AI to be this phone’s main attraction. It was obvious: The words Oppo AI Phone were conspicuously emblazoned on the side of the device’s box, and the company had been playing up the features on the device ahead of its launch.

After all, the Find X8 Pro is Oppo’s top flagship phone aimed at Samsung’s Galaxy S24 lineup and Apple’s iPhone 16 line — both of which boast their fair share of useful AI features. The Galaxy S24’s AI features include live translation on phone calls and generative image features like Sketch to Image. Meanwhile, the iPhone 16’s features include a revamped Siri as well as time-saving message summaries. The Chinese company’s ambitions are hardly surprising given the continued buzz and gen AI product releases in the smartphone and broader consumer tech space. 

For its part, the Find X8 Pro delivers on its promise. It’s the company’s first “AI phone” that offers a slew of features relating to productivity and photo editing, as well as AI recommendations that are designed to make the experience more intuitive. 

But it’s the pair of 50-megapixel periscope-style telephoto cameras on the device that stood out to me during my day testing this phone. Those cameras were among the most impressive zoom cameras I’ve ever tested thanks to their crisp images of faraway objects, along with the sheer versatility and creative freedom they enabled. 

Beyond the cameras, the Oppo Find X8 Pro has a bevvy of flagship-level features going for it. It features an impossibly bright and crystalline display, runs on a large silicon-carbon battery backed up by ultra-fast wired and wireless charging, and boasts impressive durability credentials of IP68 and IP69. The latter means the device can withstand jet sprays of water, even at sizzling temperatures of 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit).

However, it’s not perfect. The Find X8 Pro receives a slightly shorter duration of software updates than some other rival Android phones. It gets five years of Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which is less than the seven years offered by Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series and Google’s Pixel 9 lineup.

Oppo also unapologetically mimics Apple’s features. The Find X8 Pro’s so-called Quick Control buttons copies the iPhone 16’s camera control button, which is a hardware feature designed to offer users convenient access to the camera, at least for now. Oppo has had a history of borrowing Apple’s designs, case in point: the Oppo Watch from 2020. 

Lastly, the Find X8 Pro isn’t receiving a US launch. However, it’s the first time since 2022 that Oppo is releasing its flagship Find X series internationally. At the time of writing, Oppo hasn’t shared pricing information. 

The Find X8 Pro’s duo of telescope cameras

The headline feature of the Find X8 Pro’s camera module is the duo of periscope-style telephoto cameras. There are two 50-megapixel telephoto cameras capable of 3x and 6x optical zoom. 

Unlike digital zoom, which partially achieves a closer shot by cropping into an image, optical zoom is considered to be a true zoom because it uses the camera’s lens to magnify the image without losing image quality. However, Oppo does have an AI Telescope Zoom feature that enhances the images taken using digital zoom. It’s automatically activated at 10x, just beyond the range of the optical zoom, and takes crisp images in various lighting conditions, including low-light environments. 

Plus, thanks to its periscope-style cameras, the Find X8 Pro offers a versatile range of focal lengths to choose from, which allowed for more creative freedom. It was just fun, and I felt I could trust the camera to deliver detailed images without trying too hard. Telephoto lenses are already a coveted premium feature on smartphones, and this periscope-style telephoto is an even bigger step up when it comes to zoom quality.

AI goodies on Find X8 Pro

I didn’t get to use the full extent of the AI features on the Find X8 Pro since Hong Kong is uniquely disadvantaged in the AI chatbot arena — most Western tech giants don’t extend their services to this city.

For instance, I couldn’t use the Google Gemini app, which is natively installed on the Find X8 Pro. Additionally, the AI Toolbox didn’t seem to activate automatically, as I didn’t receive recommended tools based on the active app.

Most of the AI features available on the Find X8 Pro are already present on competing phones. These include Circle to Search, a new recorder app powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro and a text-generating tool called AI Writer. Despite this, I absolutely appreciated having generative AI features neatly integrated into apps like Oppo’s Notes app, which helped generate text. The AI summary tool on the recorder app was supremely useful to me as a journalist who’s often using a voice recorder for stories. Those features worked well enough for them be go-to features in my productivity tool kit. 

However, I would love to see more action-oriented features that an AI agent can deliver. For example, fellow Chinese rival Honor has implemented such features with the Magic V3 in mainland China. It helps users order coffee or groceries by learning their preferences and habits over time.

Find X8 Pro’s quick button 

The Find X8 Pro also has a new hardware button, similar to iPhone 16’s Camera Control button. The Quick Button — as Oppo has dubbed it — is pressure-sensitive and allows you to take photos, zoom in and out of shots and take a burst of photos. It doesn’t have as many supported features as the iPhone 16’s camera button, such as adjusting the aperture or even taking videos, but I doubt I’d even want it to.

In my short time with the Find X8 Pro, I didn’t end up naturally using the Quick Button much because it’s simply not a habit. I don’t expect to use it much in the long-run either and would prefer to take pictures the regular way. But when I did try Quick Control, I found it intuitive in terms of figuring out how to use it, although I haven’t developed the habit of taking pictures that way. Still I found myself wondering whether Oppo might update this feature to take on more functions that I would use.

Battery and performance 

Oppo has hopped on the silicon-carbon battery bandwagon, which fellow Chinese phone maker and rival Honor pioneered in smartphones, taking a page from the electric vehicles industry. I haven’t spent enough time with the device to test the battery life, but there are potential advantages to this emerging trend over lithium-ion batteries. 

Those include a lower environmental impact and reduced risk of overheating. The long-term reliability of silicon carbon batteries is still being researched, and adoption in the smartphone industry is still in its early stages. But the fact that more smartphone makers are switching over from lithium-iron is an encouraging sign.

The Find X8 Pro run on Mediatek’s Dimensity 9400 chipset, which supports advanced AI capabilities on premium Android phones along with promises of performance improvements.

Initial thoughts on Find X8 Pro

The Oppo Find X8 Pro is a promising phone with all the trappings of a high-end 2024 phone, from its durable and sleek design to its impressive camera system and that silicon-carbon battery. While those periscope style cameras will remain a highlight from my early impressions of this phone, I’m still thinking about the potential of Oppo’s AI features. Even though my limited access to these features means I haven’t fully explored them, I did love having the writing feature on the Notes app and the AI summary tool on the recorder app. However, if Oppo really wants to take things to the next level, an AI agent would help turn this device into a true assistant.

Watch this: Oppo Find X5 Pro: 5 Things I Like About This Flagship Android Phone

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