The Oppo Find X8 Ultra is a fantastic phone that’s near-impossible to buy

The Oppo Find X8 is shaping up to be one of the most impressive camera-focused smartphones to be revealed in 2025 – but you probably won’t be able to buy it, and that’s a real shame.

I went hands-on with the device ahead of its launch at a secret behind-closed-doors event back in March, and let me tell you, it’s an incredible feat of engineering.

Top-end smartphone camera tech

This smartphone is designed to compete with some of the best camera phones around – think Xiaomi 15 Ultra, Vivo X200 Pro, and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. 

The headline feature is the return of the 1-inch sensor we first saw with last year’s hard-to-find Oppo Find X7 Ultra, paired with a 50MP resolution. 

If you’re unfamiliar with smartphone camera hardware, a larger sensor essentially means you’ll be able to capture more light, and that translates to more details, boosted dynamic range and a more natural-looking photo overall. 

That translates well to low-light photography, with a larger sensor able to capture more light than smaller alternatives. It also features an upgraded lens system, sporting a customised 1G7P lens that uses glass as well as plastic – a rarity in the world of phone cameras, which are almost always entirely plastic.

It’s not just focused on the main lens either; accompanying that accomplished sensor is not one but two periscope lenses – one at 3x, the other at 6x – with upgraded 50MP sensors. 

The 3x telephoto lens is built on hardware that many would consider main lens worthy, with a 1/1.56-inch sensor that’s 300% larger than the competing 3x telephoto from the Galaxy S25 Ultra. That’s paired with a wider f/2.1 aperture to boost light intake by an extra 50%, and with a minimum focus distance of 10cm, it can double up as a fairly solid telemacro camera.

It’s a similar story with the 6x periscope; it sports a 1/1.95-inch sensor that’s 30% larger than Samsung’s 5x periscope sensor, making for a whopping 140% boost to light intake compared to the Find X7 Ultra. 

There’s also an accompanying 50MP ultrawide lens, though this one is admittedly nearly identical to its predecessor, albeit with a new coating for reduced lens flaring. 

That’s all powered by Oppo’s upgraded HyperTone Image Engine, which uses what Oppo describes as ‘TrueChrome Camera tech’. According to the company, the upgraded ISP should deliver more accurate colours and greatly improve the ability to capture both warm and cold tones in a single shot. 

HyperRAW, on the other hand, provides better depth and detail in backlit scenes, essentially providing less of a silhouette when the subject is standing in front of a bright source of light like the sun. 

Flagship power in a compact body

It’s not just a camera-focused phone either, with a flagship spec throughout. 

It includes the top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, a change from the MediaTek-powered Find X8 and Find X8 Pro that’ll allow it to compete with some of the most powerful options out there – especially when paired with a vapour chamber cooling system.

The 6.82-inch AMOLED screen is also every bit a flagship panel, with a WQHD+ resolution, an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and impressively slim 1.4mm-thick bezels surrounding it. 

There’s also a huge 6100mAh silicon carbon battery that shouldn’t struggle to last all day – as has been the case with similar capacity phones like the OnePlus 13, which Oppo also owns – and 100W wired charging to boot. Oppo claims that, despite the large capacity, it can go from 0-100% in just 34 minutes.

It also enjoys a smattering of AI features first introduced on the Oppo Find X8 Pro, and it’s the first Oppo device to sport the company’s new multi-function button, essentially Oppo’s take on Apple’s Action Button. 

With all that tech, it wouldn’t be surprising if the Find X8 Ultra was a fairly chunky device. After all, the similarly specced Xiaomi 15 Ultra measures in at 9.25mm thick, with a fairly thick camera bump that extends that further.

However, with what I can only describe as technological wizardry, the Find X8 Ultra measures in at 8.78mm thick, making it the thinnest camera-focused phone around right now. The camera bump does protrude like others, but nowhere near as far as the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and last year’s Find X7 Ultra, despite housing those unusually large sensors. 

But there’s a massive catch

All of this makes the Find X8 Ultra one of the most tempting phones released in 2025. But – and it’s a big but – it’s only available in China. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise considering last year’s X7 Ultra was also a China exclusive, but it doesn’t make it any more frustrating. 

Oppo has built a phone that could easily go toe-to-toe with some of the best phones around, and in some ways even surpass them, but it’s limited to a single market. I get that Oppo might want to cater to its core user base first, but with this level of innovation, it deserves a wider audience. 

In short, the Oppo Find X8 Ultra pushes the boundaries of what you can expect from a camera-focused flagship, but you more than likely won’t ever get to experience it. And that’s a real shame.

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