10 min Devices

Review: Oppo Find X3 Pro lacks business appeal

Review: Oppo Find X3 Pro lacks business appeal

The Oppo Find X3 Pro is an impressive and complete smartphone with a corresponding price tag. For 1149 euros, you can buy a smartphone that can do everything and has some interesting features, but at the same time, it struggles to justify that price. In this review, we tell you why the Find X3 Pro is not the best deal for the business user.

Last year, Oppo showed that it is a serious player in the smartphone market. With the Find X2 Pro, the company had one of the best high-end smartphones of 2020 in its hands and successfully competed with Samsung, Apple and Huawei. Now that the latter brand has all but disappeared due to ongoing tensions with the US government, there is an interesting gap for Oppo to jump into. On the consumer market, this gap is being filled successfully, and Oppo might just become the third smartphone maker in Europe. On the business front, however, Oppo is not yet able to make real strides, as evidenced by the launch of the Find X3 Pro.

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The hardware won’t be the issue. The Oppo Find X3 Pro has all the basic specs you would expect from a high-end smartphone in 2021, with some interesting extras. For example, the device supports a full 10-bit pipeline from camera to display and is equipped with a special microscope camera. All of this is cast in a relatively handy and beautifully designed housing. The software is also generally very good but lacks in business features and support. Moreover, Oppo doesn’t really seem to have a clear business strategy.

Of course, none of this means that the Oppo Find X3 Pro isn’t an interesting smartphone. Read all about it in this review.

Main specifications

BodyAluminium frame, glass back. IP68 waterproof
Display6,7″ AMOLED, 1440×3216 pixels. 120Hz variable refresh rate
Network support5G
ProcessorQualcomm Snapdragon 888 (2,84GHz octa-core)
Memory8GB/12GB RAM, 256GB storage space
Battery4500mAh, 65W fast charge, 50W wireless charging
SoftwareAndroid 11 with ColorOS 11.2
Camera50-megapixel primary camera, 50-megapixel wide-angle camera, 13-megapixel 2x zoom camera, 3-megapixel microscope camera. 32-megapixel front camera

Strikingly light and handy

For a phone of this calibre, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is remarkably light and manageable. Don’t get us wrong: with its 6.7-inch screen, it’s by no means small. But because Oppo has kept the smartphone relatively thin and light and the design very streamlined, the device feels less clunky than many competitors.

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Oppo is also very proud of the back of the smartphone. It is made of one continuous glass pane, which bends up around the camera island. A clever piece of engineering that we think looks beautiful. The Find X3 Pro is available in two variants: a glossy grey version and a matte blue version. We got the former, and while it looks nice, it’s susceptible to fingerprints. The smartphone’s frame is made of aluminium, and the finish checks all the boxes; in short, it comes across as very luxurious.

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Functionally, the design of this smartphone is alright. The casing is IP68 waterproof and has pretty good stereo speakers. An audio jack is not present and memory cards are not supported either, but unfortunately, that is the standard nowadays. A fast fingerprint scanner is integrated in the screen and the selfie camera supports face recognition. A small disadvantage is that the fingerprint scanner is a bit on the low side, making it hard to reach. But that is really the only negative thing that can be said about this design.

Gorgeous display

The Oppo Find X3 Pro is one of the first smartphones to feature a 10-bit display. This means that the screen can display 1 billion colours, which should provide extra smooth colour gradients. That sounds very impressive, but in practice, the difference with a regular 8-bit display is really not noticeable.

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Fortunately, it doesn’t mean that the Oppo Find X3 Pro’s display doesn’t look amazing. In fact, it is without a doubt among the best displays in the smartphone market. The 6.7-inch AMOLED panel has a resolution of 1440×3216 pixels and a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz. The screen is smooth, the white balance is excellent, the colours look great, and the brightness is high. The screen is, in a word, beautiful.

High-end hardware

Under the bonnet of the Find X3 Pro is a Snapdragon 888 chipset from Qualcomm with 12GB RAM. Exactly the specifications that you can expect from a high-end smartphone these days. Oppo has optimized the software well, and the performance of the smartphone is excellent. 5G-support is present, although the mmWave band is not supported in Europe. However, this applies to most smartphones, and in the coming years, there will be no large-scale rollout of mmWave networks in Europe.

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The battery of the Oppo Find X3 Pro has a capacity of 4500mAh, about average for a contemporary high-end smartphone. So is the performance: the smartphone easily makes it through the day, even with intensive use. It’s alright, but not remarkably good.

What is remarkably good is the charging feature. The Find X3 Pro is capable of fast charging at up to 65W and uses two separate cells in the battery, which means it can maintain that charging speed for longer. After ten minutes, the smartphone is about 40 percent full, and a full charge takes about half an hour. Wireless charging is possible up to 30W, but a special charger is needed. Strangely enough, we couldn’t find one anywhere, but the wireless Warp Charger from sister brand OnePlus also works. Charging with a standard Qi charger is also possible, although slower.

Extensive cameras

The camera system is – for several reasons – the pièce de résistance of this Oppo Find X3 Pro. Three things stand out about the cameras: the wide-angle camera is of excellent quality, the camera can take, process and store 10-bit photos, and a microscope camera is present as well. Unfortunately, like the screen, the 10-bit functionality does not offer a lot of added value. Fortunately, the other two features do.

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First, the regular cameras: the Oppo Find X3 Pro uses a Sony IMX766 sensor with a resolution of 50 megapixels for both the main and wide-angle camera. Thanks to pixel binning, the device produces nice detailed 12.5-megapixel photos with both cameras by default. The most striking feature is the beautiful colours. With its colour processing, Oppo maintains a nice balance between vividness and realism, and thus delivers good photos. This applies to both the main camera and the wide-angle camera.

However, if you think that the wide-angle and main camera deliver photos of equal quality because they have the same sensor, you will be disappointed. The wide-angle camera has a slightly less good lens with a smaller aperture and lacks optical image stabilisation, making the photos worse, especially in the dark. However, the wide-angle camera does score better in the dark than all other wide-angle cameras on the market, except for the OnePlus 9 series that is equipped with the same camera.

Apart from the wide-angle and main camera, the Oppo Find X3 Pro has another 13-megapixel camera with 2x zoom and that microscope camera. The zoom camera performs fine and is a nice addition, but is at the same time a downgrade compared to the zoom camera of the Oppo Find X2 Pro. The microscope camera is unique to this device and is quite impressive. The microscope camera magnifies 30x and can therefore see details that are not visible to the naked eye. For example, a white screen breaks down into red, green and blue subpixels, and the sharp contours of a grain of sand suddenly become clearly visible. It’s not very useful, and we can imagine that after a few weeks you’ll be bored with the feature. But until then, it’s a nice extra.

Software aimed at consumers

Oppo has created its own shell on top Android 11 called Color OS. It is beautiful, easy to use and has a number of very handy features. After unlocking, you can immediately reach a number of shortcuts by pressing and holding the fingerprint scanner, and a bar with shortcuts also floats on the side.

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It is possible to create two accounts on the device, for work and for private use, for example. That’s nothing new, but the way you can access those accounts is new and very convenient. By simply setting a different password or fingerprint for each account, you can decide which account to open from the lock screen. For example, you can open your work account by putting your index finger on the scanner, and your thumb will take you to your private account.

This is a very handy feature that also offers added value for business use. Unfortunately, the business features of the Oppo Find X3 Pro stop there. The smartphone does not fall under the Android Enterprise Recommended program, Oppo does not have its own solutions for remote management, for example, and also lacks a business strategy. Moreover, Oppo’s update policy is not very good. The Find X3 Pro gets two years of Android upgrades and Oppo only guarantees two years of security updates. For a smartphone of more than 1000 euros, especially the latter just isn’t enough for business users.

Conclusion

Last year with the Find X2 Pro, Oppo proved it could make an excellent high-end smartphone and compete at the top of the smartphone market. The Find X3 Pro continues that streak, and in many ways, is one of the most impressive smartphones today. The display is gorgeous, the design is impressive, and the cameras are excellent. On top of that, the smartphone has fast wireless charging, is waterproof, performs excellently and Oppo’s software shell is nice. Still, the manufacturer is not quite there yet – especially for the business user. The microscope camera is a nice addition, but for its price tag of 1149 euros, the Oppo Find X3 Pro still misses that little bit extra.

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On the business front, Oppo lacks a clear strategy. The Find X2 Pro, for example, was admitted to the Android Enterprise Recommend programme, but not the Find X3 Pro. Oppo doesn’t appear to have any plans that extent either. Add to that the rather limited promise of two years of security updates, and this smartphone will not immediately be the best choice for many business users. A shame, because the potential is definitely there.

7
  • Beatiful design
  • Amazing display
  • Great performance
  • Good and extensive camera system
  • Nice software
  • Update policy
  • No business strategy and extras
  • Expensive