On the Find X9 Ultra, the primary camera has a 200-megapixel 1/1.28-inch sensor. With a low f/1.5 aperture, this is an incredibly versatile camera, built to capture light and work well even in difficult shooting conditions. There are also a pair of telephoto cameras. The first has a 200MP sensor and can zoom up to 3x (70mm equivalent) for portrait photos and general purpose shots, while the showstopper is an ‘ultra’ telephoto, capable of 10x zoom at 50MP.
It’s rare, but we’ve seen 10x zoom in smartphones, including, briefly, Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra. However, they were not paired with such high-resolution sensors. This provides more detail in shots, as well as the ability to digitally crop to get even closer to the subject – although you won’t need this often. The Find X9 Ultra also has a 50MP ultra-wide camera and a 3.2MP multispectral sensor to strengthen white balance and color accuracy.
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However, Oppo’s innovative 10x telephoto is the most exciting part of the phone’s penta camera setup. The 10x optical zoom also opens up the possibility of 20x lossless zoom, before we even start attaching Oppo’s teleconverter lens. It also has sensor-shift stabilization to improve clarity and reduce the chance of blur. (Vivo has its own solution, which we’ll get to in a minute.)
The 3x telephoto camera is a convenient midpoint between the main camera and its massive sensor and the incredible range of the 10x telephoto. However, Oppo is a little too eager to promote computational photography here and I often get shots with ghostly outlines, especially of human subjects. Overly aggressive digital sharpening made some images look unnatural.
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Within the camera app (and arguably plenty of shooting modes), Oppo’s collaboration with Hasselblad gives shooters a Master Mode that blissfully removes computational AI tricks and enhancements. This means that while you won’t find AI nip-tucks on telephoto shots, you also won’t find nightmarish low-resolution faces or scattered alien characters. I largely liked it, though I sometimes missed the better low-light performance of the AI-boosted basic photo mode.
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The Vivo Its aperture can go as low as f/1.85, which again loses out to its Oppo rival.
However, the X300 Ultra ultrawide camera performs above the Find X9 Ultra version. Unlike most smartphone ultra-wide cameras, which I see as a lazy attempt by companies to add another camera to their smartphones, Vivo went to town. For starters, Vivo added optical image stabilization (OIS), which is rare for this focal length. This, combined with the 50MP sensor, means images look sharper and more detailed than rival devices, which typically use lower-resolution sensors.
To Oppo’s credit, its ultrawide camera isn’t bad. The Find X9 Ultra also has a 50MP camera sensor and a lower f/2.0 lens. However, the sensor isn’t as large (the X300 Ultra’s 1/1.28-inch sensor is almost double the physical size of the Find X9 Ultra’s 1/1.95-inch sensor) and it lacks built-in OIS. The Vivo phone also has very little lens flare at light sources, likely due to Zeiss’s anti-reflective lens treatment.
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The X300 Ultra’s telephoto (another 200MP sensor) maxes out at 3.7x zoom without a teleconverter and while you can crop out of that for more ‘zoom’, it loses a lot of detail and adds a lot of artifacts in the process. Luckily, for those who want to go further, Vivo has you covered.
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