Oppo Find X9 Pro review

Smartphone cameras have become incredibly competent at producing visually pleasing images. But in that pursuit of visual appeal, most phones drift away from what is real. The Oppo Find X9 Pro seems to be doing the opposite. It doesn’t try to beautify every moment. It tries to understand it.

We’ve used this phone for a full week, not in staged review settings, but in places where cameras don’t usually perform at their best. In low-lit indoor settings, during fast-moving local train rides, and on one early morning at the chaotic Dadar Flower Market. And it consistently surprised us.

It’s not just the optics, the phone, as a whole, chases refinement. All of this costs a pretty penny though (especially if you want to nab the Rs 30,000 teleconverter kit too), so let’s dive into our Oppo Find X9 Pro review to find out if it’s worth its asking price.

Oppo Find X9 Pro build and design

Oppo has walked away from the stylised, almost theatrical design language of past Find-series flagships. The X9 Pro is noticeably more restrained with flat glass on both sides, a satin-finished aluminium alloy frame, muted colour variants, and a shape that feels more intentional than ornamental.

At 224 grams, it is on the heavier side, but the weight feels pretty anchored and evenly distributed. You don’t feel top-heaviness when composing shots vertically, nor do you feel the slippery imbalance that curved-glass phones often suffer from.

The camera module is situated on the top left, which is a huge visual shift from the centred camera module of the Oppo Find X8 Pro. Not only does this look classier, but it’s also easier to grip in the horizontal orientation. Even when you’re clicking portraits, your fingers naturally avoid the lenses, which is rarely the case with centrally placed camera islands.

One design element that will go unnoticed at first glance, but matters in real use, is the IP69 rating. While several premium phones are IP68 certified, IP69 adds high-pressure water resistance, dustproofing, and thermal endurance, which is a win for folks who use their phones for years before upgrading.

Oppo Find X9 Pro display

The Find X9 Pro houses a 6.78-inch flat LTPO AMOLED display with a 1.5K resolution, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support, and variable refresh ranging from 1Hz to 120Hz.

Brightness peaks at 1,800 nits, which is comfortably visible under afternoon sunlight, and the uniform bezels give the phone a clean, symmetrical aesthetic. The colour calibration leans away from oversaturation, producing more natural tones, particularly noticeable when watching HDR content. Streaming Netflix, Prime Video or YouTube HDR, you get cinematic, well-toned visuals without the hyper-vivid exaggeration some flagship displays default to.

The LTPO behaviour is subtle but effective. You don’t see it switching from 120Hz to 1Hz, you just notice that scrolling feels smooth while idle battery drain stays lower than expected.

Oppo Find X9 Pro performance and software

On paper, the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 that powers the Find X9 Pro sits slightly behind Qualcomm’s top-tier Snapdragon chip in benchmark numbers. In daily use however, it never felt like a step behind. What stood out was stability, especially while using the camera, running background image processing, and switching between editing, messaging, and social workflows.

Oppo’s Luminous Rendering Engine plays a significant role in how the interface feels. It makes ColorOS feel exceptionally fluid, and the difference is noticeable, especially when navigating quickly while apps are active in the background.

Gaming performance is stellar too. Genshin Impact holds steady at 60fps at high settings, while Call of Duty Mobile comfortably reaches 120fps with relative ease. And after about 30 minutes of gaming, temperature rise is controlled, with no visible throttling.

ColorOS 16 continues to evolve. Yes, some of its visual inspiration clearly comes from iOS, particularly in typography, translucency effects and widget structure, but it still retains its own identity.

Features like Snap Key, which launches apps or custom actions, feel genuinely useful. Mind Space functions as a rolling archive of screenshots, notes and snippets, making it surprisingly relevant for students, journalists or those who research on the go. It is still a heavily customised interface, but this year, more of it truly feels purposeful than performative.

Oppo Find X9 Pro cameras and optics

This is where the phone really starts to distance itself from other flagships. The Find X9 Pro is a true masterclass in optics. The camera system consists of a 50MP primary (Sony LYT-900) with OIS, a 50MP ultrawide lens, and a 200MP periscope telephoto with 3.8x optical zoom capable of up to 120x hybrid reach. There is also a 50MP front camera, with autofocus support.

The primary camera delivers images that are subtle rather than dramatic. It preserves micro-contrast instead of flattening it. Shadows retain texture, and highlights don’t bloom unless pushed. Skin tones in portraits feel particularly natural, without the brightening and smoothing that many flagship phones insist on applying.

The ultrawide lens is among the most optically disciplined we’ve used on a phone. In daylight, it produces nearly zero edge distortion, and exposure handling is consistent with the main lens. Indoors, it loses sharpness slightly, but exposure remains composed, preserving the ambience of warm café lighting or shadowed indoor spaces.

The telephoto module is the star here. From 3X to 10X, the images maintain exceptional spatial accuracy and sharpness. At higher zoom levels, computational enhancement begins to take over, but with a key difference, Oppo gives the user the option to turn off image reconstruction. That kind of transparency is rare.

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And then, there is the Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit. This accessory mounts directly onto the periscope lens, physically blocking the other camera modules. And the kind of optical compression, real bokeh, and depth behaviour you get out of this is unreal. It truly cannot be replicated through software.

When used patiently, it can produce a kind of smartphone photograph that doesn’t look anything like one. You can see the results for yourself above.

Oppo Find X9 Pro battery and charging

The Find X9 Pro is powered by a 7,500mAh silicon-carbon battery, paired with 80W wired SuperVOOC charging and 50W wireless AirVOOC.

Across a full week of varied use which included camera-heavy days, navigation, 4K recording, gaming, photo editing, and social media, we almost always ended the day between 35 and 40 percent. On lighter usage days, it comfortably stretched into the second day without triggering battery anxiety. It is not just good battery life for a flagship. It is one of the most consistent battery experiences we’ve had in a high-end camera phone.

ALSO READ: Oppo Find X9, Find X9 Pro arrive in India with pro-grade cameras, massive batteries, and new design

Charging is pretty efficient too. From empty, it reaches around 50 per cent in half an hour and a full charge in about 1 hour 36 minutes.

Unboxed Take: Who should buy the Oppo Find X9 Pro?

The Oppo Find X9 Pro isn’t trying to be the sharpest, most aggressive, or the most software-driven smartphone camera. It is trying to be an honest one. And that’s precisely what makes it stand out.

In a segment where most phones compete to beautify every frame, the Find X9 Pro sometimes chooses restraint, preserving a true-to-life look almost to a fault. Some of the shots it produces, especially when paired with the Hasselblad teleconverter, are among the most cinematic and DSLR-like images we’ve seen from a smartphone.

But don’t just think this is a one-trick pony. The phone, as a whole, delivers in spades too. The display is genuinely immersive, the performance feels effortlessly tuned, and the battery carries you comfortably through days of light use.

But its biggest flex remains the camera, not just for what it captures, but for how it interprets light, tone, and atmosphere with a lens-first sensibility. For these reasons, it earns a confident 4.5/5.

What do you think of this optics-obsessed flagship? Drop your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned to Unboxed by Croma for more in-depth reviews.