The Oppo Find X8 is exactly the smartphone I’ve been waiting for

Thanks to my very weird (and very privileged) job, I get to test virtually every major smartphone release throughout the year. Whether it’s the newest iPhone, Galaxy S, Pixel, or something else, chances are I’ve used it.

2024 has been incredibly kind to us with some truly great smartphone releases, and while I’ve liked (even loved) many of them, I also have bones to pick with all of them. I adore the iPhone 16, but I wish its battery lasted a bit longer and that it charged faster. The Google Pixel 9 Pro is great, but it’s heavier than I’d like and also doesn’t charge fast enough. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is a fantastic phone but far bulkier than I’d prefer.

Of the many phones that have come across my desk this year, one of the latest is the Oppo Find X8. Going into the phone, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. After living with it for a couple of weeks, I think it may be my Goldilocks phone of 2024.

Excellent hardware at the right size

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I started thinking this from the minute I picked up the Oppo Find X8. While the design is a bit bland for my liking, the rest of the hardware is exceptional. The flat aluminum frame with its rounded corners is comfortable to hold, the matte glass back keeps fingerprints to a minimum, and there’s a combo of IP68 and IP69 ratings to ensure maximum protection from dust and water.

What I particularly love is how compact the Find X8 is. It’s not a small phone, but it’s much more manageable than I was expecting. The 6.59-inch display is easily navigated with one hand, and the 193g weight is an excellent middle ground that feels sturdy but not too heavy. It doesn’t match the feather-like design of the 170g iPhone 16, but it’s so much lighter than the 232g Galaxy S24 Ultra. The Find X8 is a very comfortable phone, and that’s something I greatly appreciate.

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Another highlight of the Find X8’s hardware is the display. In addition to being a very manageable size, the quality of the 6.59-inch AMOLED panel is exceptional. The 2760 x 1256 resolution is razor-sharp, and the maximum brightness levels are ridiculous — reaching 1,600 nits in High Brightness Mode and 4,500 nits when watching HDR content.

I also love the 1.45mm symmetrical bezel surrounding the screen, which all but disappears once you start using the Find X8. Combined with great colors, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a highly customizable always-on display, there’s nothing to complain about here.

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Finally, there’s a very fun quirk to the Oppo Find X8’s hardware, and that’s an alert slider. Like the alert slider on the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R, you can flick it up and down to put the phone in ring, vibrate, or silent modes. It feels fantastic on the Find X8, and I was really happy to see it make an appearance here.

All the performance and battery I could ask for

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While the hardware is what immediately caught my attention, I’ve also been thoroughly impressed with the Oppo Find X8’s performance and battery life.

The Find X8 is one of the first phones to use MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 chip, and after using the phone for a couple of weeks, I can confirm that the 9400 is a phenomenal piece of silicon.

Running the Find X8 through Geekbench 6 benchmarks, its numbers are comparable to those of the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Realme GT 7 Pro and a significant leap ahead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip powering the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

Real-world, day-to-day use has been fantastic, too. Apps open immediately and operate without fault. Playing Star Wars: Hunters at Ultra graphics and 60 frames per second, the Find X8 powered through it without issue — and got through a couple of matches while barely heating up.

Almost every modern phone is fast in 2024, but the Find X8 feels noticeably responsive. Part of this is also thanks to Oppo’s ColorOS 15 software, which has the “Luminous Rendering Engine.” It’s a very silly name for how ColorOS processes graphics/animations, but paired with the 9400 chip, there’s a level of smoothness with the Oppo Find X8 that I have genuinely noticed — and it’s great.

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Battery life has been equally killer. The 5630mAh battery inside the Find X8 easily lasts two days with moderate use, and even when you demand more of it, it keeps up swimmingly. On a day with three hours of screen time — mainly consisting of the NFL Fantasy app (it’s that time of year), X, Threads, Telegram, and Instagram — I still had 56% battery remaining at 10:50 p.m. after starting with 100% at 7 a.m.

Also, you know how I complained about slow charging for multiple phones at the start of this article? The Oppo Find X8 doesn’t have that problem at all. Using the same 80W charge speeds as OnePlus’ phones released this year, the Find X8 charges from 0-100% in about 30 minutes. It’s a night and day difference compared to the hour+ charge times required of Apple, Google, and Samsung’s latest flagships, and it adds a huge level of convenience that’s genuinely difficult to live without.

A camera I want to keep shooting with

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The phone I carry with me has to have a good camera. Whether I’m snapping the 1,000th photo of my dog or saving memories from a work trip, I need a camera that’s fast, reliable, and produces images I don’t have to edit to like the end result.

Oppo has taken an interesting approach to the Find X8’s cameras, using 50-megapixel sensors for the primary, ultrawide, and 3x telephoto cameras. Those cameras are packed into an Oreo-like housing on the back of the phone, and similar to other OnePlus and Oppo phones from the last several years, Hasselblad has lent its expertise for the color tuning.

I’ve asked a lot of the Find X8’s camera over the last couple of weeks. It’s been there for endless photos of my pets, 40+ hours of various airplanes and airport lounges, and a week-long trip in India through the streets of New Delhi and the Taj Mahal.

Looking back at all of the photos I took with the Find X8, I find it difficult to find anything that I dislike. I really love how the Find X8 handles colors. Photos are often colorful (but not too much) and aren’t afraid to retain contrast and shadows — things that are dearly missing from some modern camera phones (cough cough Google Pixel cough cough).

The pictures I take with the Oppo Find X8 have a sense of character. They don’t look overly processed or digitally enhanced — they look like photographs. Combined with good lowlight performance and an excellent job capturing moving subjects, it’s a camera I don’t want to stop using.

The right phone at the right time

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2024 has been an outrageously busy year for me, particularly the last few weeks. Because of my work schedule, trips, etc., I’ve needed a phone that checks a lot of boxes.

One that I can use one-handed while walking through airport terminals. One with long battery life to get me through hectic workdays. One with fast charging to give me enough juice when I only have a few minutes in a hotel room before another meeting. One with ample performance and a high-quality screen. One with a camera that captures memories just the way I want them.

The Oppo Find X8 has checked every one of those boxes during my time with it, and as such, it’s become a smartphone that fits into my life perfectly — more so than other phones I’ve used this year. It doesn’t have the biggest display, the most technically impressive camera array, or the most memorable design, but for what I need and want out of a phone, it’s been excellent. If you demand a similar workload from your phone and can buy the Find X8 where you live, I can’t recommend it enough.

The Oppo Find X8 is available in China and other global markets, such as the U.K. and India, for a starting price of around $880. It is not available in the U.S.