Oppo's all-screen Find X hides a pop-up selfie camera

June 19, 2018

Almost every phone manufacturer is trying to develop a handset with a truly edge-to-edge display. Most end up with a small notch, but others are finding new and unusual ways to hide the front-facing camera. Oppo, for instance, has packed a tiny motorized mechanism into its brand new Find X flagship. At a glance, it looks like a regular phone with a 6.4-inch, 1080p display -- but as soon as you launch the camera app, the top section slides up to reveal a 25-megapixel selfie shooter and a dual-camera system on the back. Close the application and the cameras will automatically disappear again.

It uses this pop-up trick for face unlock, too, complete with iPhone X-style infrared depth detection (nicknamed O-Face -- no, really) to securely sign you in most any lighting condition. Other party tricks will seem familiar, too, including portrait lighting effects for both front and rear photos as well as Omoji, Oppo's take on Animoji.

Otherwise, though, the Find X is everything you would expect from a high-end smartphone in 2018. The display curves on the left and right, similar to Samsung's Galaxy S9 Plus, but covers an even larger 93.8 percent of the phone's front. Inside you'll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. There's also a 3,730mAh battery that supports a quick-charge system similar to OnePlus (Oppo and OnePlus are basically the same company.) You'll find 20- and 16-megapixel rear cameras on the back with depth-of-field effects and AI-based scene recognition. The phone doesn't support wireless charging, however, and there's no headphone jack. On the software side, you're getting Android 8.1 Oreo with Oppo's Color OS interface.

Oppo is a huge vendor, but its influence is mainly tied to Asia. The Find X, though, will be the first phone that the company officially sells in North America and Europe. That's a big deal, though it will need carrier partnerships -- or some aggressive pricing, similar to OnePlus -- to stand out. The slide-out camera is novel, but I suspect it won't be for everyone. It's not the most discreet system, for instance, and when it's visible the phone's design looks a tad unbalanced. Still, it's a neat workaround, and one that feels similar to the Vivo Nex's pop-up camera.

Jon Fingas contributed to this post.