First of all, I would like to thank Oppo Singapore for providing the loan for Oppo Find X3 Pro. The unit was loaned and had returned back to them. All the shots shown here are taken by me and some shots were edited with minor adjustments in the photo itself.
In this review, I am purely sharing my experience with this phone and its camera functions. Nothing much about the hardware and Android side of the phone, etc. I will leave the full review of the phones to expert reviewers.
Overview
The model that I received is Gloss Black. The reflective chrome design is very sexy and appealing to me and so does my finger prints. It equips with 6.7 inch 10-bit OLED screen which also spell out that it is not a small phone. Fortunately, I still feel good to hold with my big hands. It also equip with 5 cameras, 4 at the back and 1 selfie camera. And that is the main topic of this review.
10-bit
This is the first camera in the mobile industry that provides 10-bit image quality which means it is able to display approximately 1 billion colors (as compare to the competitors at 8-bit 16 million colors). This also means that the colours represented in the photos are far much richer and more color depth. And it save in HEIF format. I think this is the second mobile phone manufacturer supporting HEIF beside Apple.
However, when I upload the 10-bit photos to instagram or other social media platforms, it actually compress to 8 bit before uploading.
Main lenses
There are 2 primary lenses, one at 26mm F1.8 wide lens comes with OIS and the other one is 15mm F2.2 ultra-wide lens. Both equip with Sony IMX 766 50MP Quad Bayer sensor. The result from this lens is pretty impressive. The 50MP gives pretty decent and usable image quality. The color results give punchy, rich and high details. am not a person who love to crop my photos away, but with the resolution it offers, it is okay to crop a bit without losing details in the images. When you select 50MP options in your camera, you will not have the capability to shoot with the telephoto because of different resolution that it offers.
These 2 lenses are the only lenses that is capable of shooting 10-bits colors. When you select this mode, your photos are actually downsize to 12.5 MP. According to the official that explains to me, they think that 50MP 10-bit file size is too huge for consumer to use and hence they decide that 12.5mp is the sweet spot for 10-bit shooting. Logically, I accept their explanation but as a photographer, I wish to have the option to harness the power of 50MP 10-bit raw files.
Telephoto lens
It is a 52mm F2.4 telephoto lens. What make is different is it can only shoot at 13MP but it offers up to 5x hybrid zoom. Unfortunately, there is no official statement on what sensor it is using. The results of the 5x hybrid zoom is above average while the 2x zoom is consider relatively good. The sensor able to preserve much of the details and loses minor contrast in the image. It is also quite comparable to the 2 main lenses at 12.5mp.
Microscope lens
This is probably one of the interesting feature that Oppo has offers so far. It can shoot at 60x magnification with between 1mm to 3mm distance off the subject. While many claims it comes with auto-focus, I am unable to tell if the auto-focus is actually focusing. I feel like it is more like a fixed-focus lens. Although it can only snap 3MP and in only square format (1:1 aspect), it is a very fun application to see the world differently. It has the always-on ring-LED flash since we are focusing at 1mm to 3mm distance. I would love to see Oppo will improve this lens to a higher and usable megapixels and brighter LEDs light.
Selfie lens
32MP lens at 26mm wide. Again it is equip with an unknown Quad-Bayer color filter sensor. The overall image is considerably usable with a little bit of softness. Color and contrast are within the average range. Unfortunately, I have lost the selfie shots. I have no idea why it is not save in my hard drive before I returns the unit. Careless me.
Expert mode
Oppo provides Expert mode for user to control the camera function. They allow user to control ISO, shutter speed, exposure compensation and manual focus. But they do not allow user to control the aperture value. I have no idea why. I also asked the Oppo official staffs and no one can explains why. Oppo not providing such function. I hope they can allow it someday via OTP software upgrade or in its successor.
Overall
The shots taken with using the main camera and telephoto camera to shoot in portrait mode is something that I do not like. The result dent to be over beautify and bokeh background is too heavy and strong. It is not natural to my eyes. As for night shots, most camera phones suffer from loss of details and contrast, this camera is no exceptional but I can still accept it. Beside all these, I love this camera phone for overall shooting experience. It has the image quality of what this era of camera phone should have and one step ahead of every competitor has to offer.
Something to take note of if you want to be one of the pioneers of having 10-bit photos in your pocket, you can only enjoy the full 10-bit colors on this phone and some monitors that support 10-bit colors. Beside that, I notice there is a downscale from 10-bits color to 8-bits color when you share your photos to the social media platforms.
Nevertheless, it has the typical focal lengths of what I need to shoot for my daily life. I am a person who is not fancy about the ultra zoom like 50x, etc. I prefer not to sacrifice image quality over long focal length. If you are looking for a new flagship camera phone and not going to change in the next 2-3 years, I think you can consider visiting one of the flagship stores in your country to experience it and try it out.
Alwin Kok 