Best file manager apps for Android in 2023
OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: The Most Versatile Camera Smartphone In The World
The OPPO Find X7 Ultra is the company's latest flagship smartphone. This handset is a direct successor to the OPPO Find X6 Pro, as the company decided to ditch the 'Pro' name this year. The 'Ultra' name seems to have more appeal these days, and just looking at this phone and its spec sheet, that name is appropriate. Does the device meet our expectations, however? Well, you'll have to read the entire OPPO Find X7 Ultra review below to get the details, but… spoiler alert… it does, very much so.
This smartphone builds upon what the OPPO Find X6 Pro delivered, with various improvements. That relates to the phone's design, camera performance, and even software. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra is a well-rounded package and it was a pleasure reviewing it, that's for sure. In any case, let's get down to it, starting with the phone's design.
Table of contents OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: Hardware / DesignThe moment you lay your eyes on this phone you'll realize it's related to the OPPO Find X6 Pro. There's that bold camera oreo on the back, that protrudes quite a bit. There's a good reason for that, but we'll get to it in the camera section. There are four cameras in there, and also a noticeable Hasselblad logo. Around the camera oreo there's this ribbed etching that reminds us of some old-school cameras.
You'll notice that the back side of the phone is split into two parts. The lower two-thirds of the back is covered by vegan leather. In our particular case, it's the brown vegan leather, but blue and black models are also available. The top third of the phone's back is taken by the camera oreo, and glass that looks like metal (on purpose). The camera oreo actually cuts into the vegan leather at some point, which creates this nice arch design, which looks great to me personally.
Vegan leather not only looks great, but it has a practical purpose
The vegan leather on the back does have a practical purpose too, grip. If OPPO used only glass, the phone would be even more slippery, which is not the best combination. This way you can use it without a case if you want. And those of you who are brave enough should, it's a real shame to cover this design. The camera oreo is also useful, as it's an anchor for your index finger when you're holding the device. I've noticed that with the OPPO Find N3 as well. It's a feature, in a way, and I actually appreciate this.
If we flip the phone around, you'll see a big, beautiful display, that is curved. There is a centered display camera hole located at the top, and the bezels are immensely thin. They're still not uniform, though, unfortunately. The top and bottom bezels are a smidge thicker than the side bezels, it's not as easy to notice.
The top and bottom sides of the phone are flat, but with curved edges, which makes the phone much more comfortable to hold. The sides are also nicely brushed and they fit with the curved display seamlessly. A SIM card tray sits at the bottom, along with a Type-C port, the main speaker, and one of the microphones. At the top, you'll find the other speaker, an IR blaster, and a noise-canceling microphone.
There is an alert slider on the left-hand sideOn the left side of the phone sits an alert slider. This is a three-step slider, and it's really well-balanced and clicks into place with authority. It's not too difficult to move either. It's a perfect balance, basically. The top position activates the mute status, the middle one is for vibrate mode, and the bottom one will set your phone to 'Ring' mode. On the right side, you'll find a power/lock button, and above it sit the volume rocker buttons. All those keys are nice and clicky.
This smartphone does come with an IP68 certification for water and dust resistance too, in case you were wondering. Overall, this is a rather beautiful package, that's hard to deny, even though it may not appeal to everyone, of course. The phone screams 'premium', and it's very comfortable to hold and use.
A case is includedThe OPPO Find X7 Ultra does come with a case in the box. Considering that we reviewed the brown version of the phone, there was an orange-brown case included. This is your regular rubber case, there's really nothing special about it. The thing is, it does offer plenty of protection. So, it'll do a great job until you find something more premium that suits your needs. In fact, it'll do a great job in general, if you like using rubber cases. It's not particularly grippy, but it offers plenty of protection for the display and the cameras.
OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: DisplayThe OPPO Find X7 Ultra has a gorgeous 6.82-inch display. This is an LTPO AMOLED panel, and it can project up to 1 billion colors. Its refresh rate goes from 1 to 120Hz, as it's adaptive. This panel does support HDR10+ content, it has Dolby Vision support, and the resolution you're getting is 3168 x 1440. On top of all that, the panel does get immensely bright. Its theoretical max brightness is 4,500 nits. You won't really get that high, as you'll get up to 1,600 nits in regular use, and up to 2,600 nits with HDR content. The panel is protected by the Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
This display is simply put… outstandingThese are some impressive specs, but what about real-life use/experience? This display is outstanding in basically every way. We have to start somewhere, though, so let me talk about brightness first. That's not something you should worry about, as the display is plenty bright, even outside in direct sunlight. In these winter months, some sun did creep up, and I really never felt the need for this display to be brighter, not even close to that. The touch response of the panel was great. It felt extremely responsive and was very snappy to pick up my inputs. Once it did, everything ran very smoothly thanks to the high refresh rate. OPPO did a great job adapting everything here.
Needless to say, this display is also quite sharp, immensely sharp, actually. It has plenty of resolution to go around, so that's not an issue either. The colors really do pop on it, and the blacks are as deep as you'd expect them to be. It also seemed quite color-accurate to me, and HDR content in particular looked outstanding. The viewing angles are also great here. Do note that the panel is curved, though. We're not looking at extreme curvature here, but it's noticeable. A centered display camera hole sits up top, while the bezels are extremely thin all around this panel. Do note that they're not uniform, however. The top and bottom bezels are ever so slightly thicker than the side bezels, though many people may not even notice. The screen-to-body ratio here does go over 90%, slightly though.
That's pretty much it. This display is great in pretty much every way. I did not spot anything worth criticizing and had a great time using the panel. I didn't even have accidental presses or anything of the sort, so that's always a plus. This is one of the best displays around at the moment.
OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: PerformanceThe OPPO Find X7 Ultra is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, Qualcomm's most powerful processor at the moment. The variant we reviewed also has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. Do note that OPPO also released a 12GB RAM model and a 16GB RAM model with less storage (256GB in both). The company used LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 flash storage in all variants. With that in mind, the performance of the OPPO Find X7 Ultra is second-to-none. It was impressive throughout my usage, in all scenarios. I never experienced lag, well, not even while gaming. This thing was able to blast through Genshin Impact without a problem, which is what I expected.
The performance is smooth in every way, shape & formSome phones do end up having issues with more trivial tasks, but that was not the issue here. The multitasking was very smooth, the phone launched apps quickly, while various other everyday tasks were not a problem either. I'll talk about the software itself in a different section entirely, but in terms of sheer performance, the phone did a great job. It also didn't get hot at any point, It did get very warm when I was testing out Genshin Impact and several other more intensive games, but as soon as I fired up chess, things changed. When I say "warm", I do mean that you'll feel the heat, but it's not uncomfortable or anything like that. Most importantly, it did not affect the performance at all.
I'm not a fan of running benchmarks on any device. They're never the best indicator of what the phone's performance is, but at least they do give you a general idea of how powerful the device is. Below, you'll find three different benchmarks. The first one is Geekbench, which gives you a general idea of how powerful the phone is, and the OPPO Find X7 Ultra performance here is interesting. It scored noticeably lower than the Galaxy S24 Ultra in the single-core and multi-core sections, but it confidently beat it in the GPU department. It's possible OPPO's software is doing its thing here, and pulls more power from the GPU when the benchmarks are running.
The second benchmark is the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This one is more useful, as it's supposed to simulate using the phone. It runs continuous loops of simulated usage, 20 of them, putting the phone through hell, basically. You can see how well the phone performed on average, what's the best loop it had, and how stable was it throughout the test.
The last benchmark has to do with video exporting. That's also something we do on the phones we review. We use CapCut and export video in full HD resolution at 30 FPS. The video in its original form is a lot sharper, though. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra did really well here.
Geekbench 6
The OPPO Find X7 Ultra comes with a 5,000mAh battery. That's basically a standard for large flagship smartphones these days. It's the same battery capacity that the OPPO Find X6 Pro offers. The chipset inside the OPPO Find X7 Ultra should be more power efficient. Is that noticeable here? Well, truth be said, we've seen rather similar battery life to the OPPO Find X6 Pro, but that's not a bad thing at all.
I was able to get over 8 hours of screen-on timeDuring my regular, everyday usage, I was able to pull out over 8 hours of screen-on-time from the OPPO Find X7 Ultra. Some days were a bit strange in terms of battery life, but those were only the initial days. Since then, getting over 8 hours of screen-on-time on a daily basis is not a problem. I can, of course, kill it faster than that by firing up some demanding games, pushing the screen brightness to the max, etc. I'm talking about my usage here, my standard usage. So if you like running your brightness at 100%, playing games, and so on, you'll get noticeably worse results than these.
Switching from Wi-Fi to 5G didn't impact battery life muchIt is worth noting that I've been spending most of my days on Wi-Fi, though there were two days where 5G was in use 90% of the time, and I didn't notice a significant impact on battery life, which is great. I've been processing images and videos, browsing, consuming multimedia via YouTube, taking plenty of pictures, streaming music from YouTube Music, and much more. Not a single action that I've listed had a significant impact on battery life. If an app drains your battery life too fast, the phone will warn you and offer to optimize it.
It can be fully charged in less than half an hourWhat about charging? Well, getting to a full charge here is a piece of cake. You can reach 100% in 26 minutes, based on my testing. I'm talking about 120W charging with the included adapter here. Wireless charging is also very fast, at 50W. That's not something I've tested, but I'm sure it's plenty fast too, and capable of charging the phone in considerably less than an hour. You do also get reverse wireless charging at 5W, in case you need to charge up your wireless earbuds or something like that.
OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: CameraThis is probably a section that many of you are most interested in. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra is, after all, a camera-centric smartphone. OPPO refers to this handset as a 'Quad Main Camera' smartphone. Why? Well, the company wanted to provide an excellent experience from all four cameras and mainly focused on 0.6-10x zoom ranges. OPPO wants you to be as confident taking the shot with 6x zoom (second periscope camera) as you are with 1x (main camera). The whole point is not to lose much quality in the process, of course. Is that achieved here? Well, we'll get to that, let's go over the camera hardware first.
There are four 50MP cameras on the back here, and all of them are extremely capableThe OPPO Find X7 Ultra is equipped with four 50-megapixel cameras on the back. Do note that this is the first smartphone in the market that utilizes Sony's new LYT-900 camera sensor. It's also the first smartphone that has two periscope telephoto cameras. Having said that, the main camera on the phone is a 50-megapixel unit with a 1-inch camera sensor (Sony LYT-900). It has an f/1.8 aperture lens and OIS support. OPPO also claims you'll get 50% less lens reflection here compared to the previous model (OPPO Find X6 Pro). We're looking at a focal length of 23mm here.
A 50-megapixel ultrawide camera utilizes Sony's LYT-600 sensor. That camera has a 14mm equivalent focal length, and that's a 1.95-inch sensor we're looking at. An f/2.0 aperture lens is in use, and this camera also has a focus distance of up to 4cm, so it can shoot macro too. The first tele camera is a 50-megapixel unit with Sony's IMX890 sensor. That is a 1.56-inch sensor, and we're looking at a 65mm focal length here. This camera offers 3x optical zoom. This camera has a 25cm focus distance and an f/2.6 aperture with Prism OIS. The last camera is another 50-megapixel tele camera, this one offers 6x optical zoom. It's a 2.51-inch Sony IMX858 sensor, and we're looking at a 135mm focal length here. This camera has a focus distance of 35cm, and an f/4.3 aperture lens with Prism OIS.
OPPO's HyperTone processing is making a differenceOPPO focused a lot on "good computational photography" with these cameras. The company wanted for these cameras to show proper highlights and shadows while keeping rich mid-tones. That's not an easy task, especially if you want quality images as a result. That is why OPPO threw something called 'HyperTone' in the mix. That's basically the company image-processing software, though some of relies on hardware too, of course. This is an area where the OPPO Find X6 Pro did fall short at times, and OPPO wanted to fix that. Did it succeed? Well, from what I've seen in my testing, yes, definitely. HyperTone difference is easily noticeable, and this phone is… outstanding for photography. Let's get into it.
During my testing, I took over 400 pictures with the OPPO Find X7 Ultra. You won't see all of them in this review, of course, as that would simply be overbearing. Still, I've included plenty of images below for you to check out. My initial takeaway was that the phone does a great job of balancing the color scheme between sensors. That's an area where many phones fall short. More often than not, images taken with the main camera and the ultrawide camera did look like they came from the same device, the same goes for the other two cameras, actually.
Night mode activates on its own, but you can disable itBefore I get to talk about each of the cameras separately, it's also worth saying that the phone determines low-light situations on its own, there's no dedicated mode that you can manually activate. Once the phone recognizes low light mode, however, you can disable it on the viewfinder. You can do the same for macro photography too, as the OPPO Find X7 Ultra can jump the gun on that, and activate macro photography when it's not needed. In terms of low light, however, it does a great job of recognizing when it's needed. The camera shutter is very fast, though I still feel it could be a split second faster. This is some major camera hardware the phone has to work with, so… keep that in mind. There's also Hasselblad's 'Master' mode in the camera, though I didn't use it much. It makes the images darker and adds some vignetting to them. If you need some extra moody shots, though, this can be useful.
When it comes to the main camera, the photos look outstanding. These are some of the best shots I took with any camera. That actually goes for both good and bad lighting, in all honesty. The photos look rich, with great colors, without being overexposed or oversaturated. Even when the light was very dim, indoors, the phone did a fantastic job of capturing photos of my dog and cat, which is a chore for many smartphones due to their hair… especially when there's not plenty of light around. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra not only did a great job in that aspect, but it did a great job in Portrait mode too. It tends to keep photos look more realistic by keeping them darker if they're darker in real life, it won't try to brighten up the scene to the point it looks extremely unrealistic.
The phone's ultrawide camera does a great job of keeping the colors on the same level as the main camera, most of the time. I managed to fool it a couple of times in low light when there were a lot of neon signs around, and during the day when the sun was hitting the camera at a weird angle. It can't be perfect, though, so… yeah. The photos from the ultrawide camera do look great, though, even in low light.
Dual periscope telephoto cameras provide all the versatility you'll need
I had great expectations from this smartphone, but I thought that the 3x and 6x cameras wouldn't do as great as they did. I actually managed to capture some great photos and portraits with both of those cameras… in low light. Only a night light was around, and the TV was on. That's it, and the cameras did an outstanding job. I never captured a 6x portrait in low light conditions that I was ready to use as it is, without tinkering… until now. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra does an outstanding job of balancing those shots, as you can see in the samples provided below. I've separated them into several galleries. Even at 10x the phone was able to keep things great in low light conditions, while anything over that is weaker in quality in such conditions, but can still be usable. In regards to 20x and 30x shots, they can be quite usable during the day. The artificial look is a lot less noticeable than on the OPPO Find X6 Pro. The phone can zoom up to 120x, but those shots are… not worth mentioning, as is the case on every other phone.
The skin colors were also consistent regardless of which camera I used, and in what lighting conditions. The phone also includes a live HDR preview, not many phones offer. It's also worth saying that you won't get a delay in many low-light situations when you're shooting with the main camera. That sensor is extremely large and it can capture plenty of light. Even with its other cameras, the phone is very fast to take images in low light.
Main camera samples (day & night): Various zoom ranges (day): Various zoom ranges (night): OPPO Find X7 Ultra Review: SoftwareThe OPPO Find X7 Ultra comes with Android 14 out of the box. On top of it, you'll find OPPO's ColorOS 14, which is very similar to OnePlus' OxygenOS. ColorOS 14 is actually really great overall, as was ColorOS 13. I would have preferred to have used the global version of it, to avoid a number of Chinese apps and services, but this device launched only in China thus far, so… there you have it. The good news is that you can choose what you want to install when you set up the phone. So you can avoid the vast majority of those apps from the get-go. Unfortunately, chances are you'll still stumble upon a menu or two in Chinese while you're using the phone.
You'll need to install the Google Play Store manually, but after that everything runs greatOnce you get everything set up, however, the software works great. This phone does support Google Play Services, though you may have to install the Google Play Store manually, depending on where you get the phone from. If it's not already installed, you'll need to go to one of the APK repositories, grab the APK, install it, and then it's business as usual. You simply install apps you want from the Google Play Store, and that's it. There is one big caveat when it comes to the Chinese version of ColorOS, however… it has a limitation for background push services. There's no such thing on the global version.
If this sounds a bit confusing, let me explain. Navigate to Settings -> Apps -> Auto launch menu, and you'll see the apps that the phone figured out need Auto launch. If the software figured out that, then that's great. Those apps have been recognized to need auto-launch in order to provide prompt notifications. If an app hasn't been recognized, however, then it ends up in a separate section of that menu. The section is called "Turning off the options below will save power". The thing is, all the apps that are in that menu are set to 'off' position by default, and you can flip the switch on a maximum of five of them. For example, Google Drive, Gmail, Huawei Health (for my smartwatch), Google Keep, Google Meet, my banking app, Slack, Google Tasks, and a number of other apps are disabled by default. I can enable a maximum of 5 of those apps, which means I'll mix on prompt notifications for some of them.
Do note that there is a so-called 'Associated launch' menu that works in a similar fashion, but for different purposes, and you can also lock individual apps in multitasking. That number is also limited. All in all, if you need a ton of non-messaging apps to have access to push notifications and run readily in the background, a Chinese version of ColorOS may present a problem. The global variant is way more lenient when it comes to that, as I've been able to experience on the OPPO Find N3. Granted, that phone still runs Android 13 with ColorOS 13.2, but the experience is pretty much the same in this regard.
Animations are great, but I had to speed them up a bitNow that we got that out of the way, it's worth saying that the software works great otherwise. Once you set it up, it'll serve you well, to say the least. It's immensely fluid on this phone, and the animations are great. They were a bit too slow for my taste, as they are on pretty much every phone I used, so I decided to speed them up a bit via the Developer Options. Even then, the animations look great.
ColorOS 14 allows you to place your apps inside the app drawer, or have them all on the screen (which is the default option). The notification shade and quick toggles are not separated into different sections, which is something I appreciate. The software looks consistent throughout in terms of the design, and there are a ton of options you can choose from here. All the standard ones are available. You can take advantage of a double tap to lock the screen or light up the screen. Raise to wake is available, split-screen works as expected, and you can even fire it up via gestures, and so on.
There are plenty of visual customization options included here
The 'Wallpapers & style' menu offers a number of customization options. You can allow the phone to pick up the colors for UI elements from your wallpaper, which is an Android feature. You can also change the font here, the icons, choose a different theme, utilize the Always-On Display and its customizations, change the fingerprint animations, and even change the shapes of UI elements. There are more customization options available, but these are the main ones. ColorOS 14 also allows you to change the grid of your home screen if you want, and you can swipe across the screen (top to bottom) to open up the notification shade.
Much like previous versions of ColorOS, this one does offer the 'Smart Sidebar'. If you swipe from the right edge towards the center of the screen, on any screen, you'll call up the Smart Sidebar. This menu shows you a bunch of apps (it's customizable), and from there you can either fire up an app window or utilize split screen functionality. It's readily available and quite useful. There's also the 'SImple mode' that you can utilize here, for people who have troubles with their eyesight and hearing, and then there's the 'Flexible Window' and 'Split View' settings too. Those are for the small app windows and split screen, basically. There's even a Driving mode available here.
ColorOS 14 is also packed with security & privacy features
There are a ton of security and privacy features available within ColorOS 14 too. OPPO's default gallery has a ton of editing options, and it even has a special ability to cut out people, animals, and various items from images. All you have to do is hold your finger on an object in an image, and the software will do its thing. This works really well, actually. It works just as well as I've experienced on Samsung's and Apple's devices. It's not a new feature, but it'll sure be useful for some of you.
There's not much to dislike when it comes to ColorOS. People like to hate it because it's different than stock Android, but it's actually much closer to it now than it was a couple of years back. Even the notification shade looks great now, and everything is separated really well. I still don't like that the Quick Toggles take up half the screen when you're checking out your notifications. Also, the fact that slow swipe down across notification bundles doesn't always do what you'd expect is also annoying. There are a number of other tiny things that are different from what I'm used to. Those are just tiny differences that won't bother most of you.
It's a shame a global version is not available, but this one works extremely wellAs a whole, ColorOS has matured as an Android OS, and it's definitely worth checking out if you haven't used it. A global version is preferable, of course, but this one works great too once you set it up. Just keep in mind that you may be a bit limited when it comes to auto-launching apps.
OPPO Find X7 Ultra: Should you buy it?Should you get the OPPO Find X7 Ultra? Well, the answer to that question would be a lot different if the phone would get a global variant. This way you do need to import it, plus there's the Chinese version of ColorOS on it. The experience would certainly be better on the global version. Even this way, however, this phone is truly unique, and it may be worth importing if you can. It shines in pretty much every way. It's an outstanding camera smartphone, one of the best. It covers everything from 0.6 to 10x zoom levels with utmost excellence. It looks premium, and it feels premium in the hand, not to mention that it looks great too. The battery life is great, the charging is extremely fast, and so on. There's just so much to like here, I cannot emphasize that enough. The OPPO Find X7 Ultra is a contender for the best smartphone of the year, without a doubt. OPPO said it doesn't have plans to launch it globally, but we really do hope that the company will change its mind. It would be a real shame not to share this smartphone with the world.
…love its unique design, and vegan leather accents…don't mind the large camera bump on the back…want one of the most capable camera smartphones in the market…need great battery life and fast wired & wireless charging…don't want to buy a charger separately…like ColorOS and its features…appreciate outstanding smartphone displays…need water and dust resistance
You shouldn't buy the OPPO Find X7 Ultra if you:…don't want to deal with a Chinese version of ColorOS…don't mind importing the device, as it's not available outside of China
Upgrade Envy? Here Are The Top Android Phones To Conquer In 2024
The "best" Android phone for you in 2024 will depend on your individual needs and preferences. However, here are some top contenders in different categories:
Other factors to consider:
Oppo Reaches Licensing Deal With Nokia After Halting Sales In Parts Of Europe
Over the past couple of years, a patent dispute between Oppo and Nokia has led to smartphones from Oppo and OnePlus leaving Europe. That may soon change, though, as a licensing deal has been reached.
In 2022, both Oppo and OnePlus were forced to cease sales in Germany, with other departures later on. There were rumors in early 2023 that the two brands would depart Europe entirely, as well as evidence that Oppo was moving away from France too. But now, things are finally looking up. Oppo and Nokia has today announced a new global licensing deal. The deal seems to cover the issues that Nokia challenged with Oppo in court in Europe, which is what led to Oppo being forced to halt sales in Germany. There's no word on when Oppo will fully return to the affected markets, but this is certainly great news for the company. Notably, Reuters points out that under the new deal, Oppo will make "catch-up payments to cover the periods of non-payment." Nokia also directly said that the deal "resolves all pending patent litigation between the parties, in all jurisdictions." Oppo's Feng Ying says in a press release: We are pleased to have reached this global patent cross-license agreement with Nokia, which includes cross-licensing for 5G standard-essential patents. This agreement reflects the mutual recognition and respect for each other's intellectual property and lays the foundation for future collaboration between OPPO and Nokia. OPPO continues to advocate for reasonable royalty fees and a long-term approach to intellectual property that supports the resolution of disputes through amicable negotiations and mutual respect for the value of all intellectual property. Follow Ben: Twitter/X, Threads, and Instagram FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
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