Elbowing for attention alongside Vivo and Xiaomi, Oppo has finally launched its long-teased “ultra” version of its flagship smartphone. The Find X9 Ultra is another camera-first smartphone from Oppo, with an even more impressive spec sheet and a new array of accessories. We’re not even halfway through 2026 and we’ve been spoiled with choices, whether it’s the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (with or without Leica livery) or Vivo’s X300 Ultra.

The Find X9 Pro was already a powerful, capable camera phone. So, what’s changed with the Ultra? We’ve had the base device for over a week, but we’re waiting on the upgraded telephoto converter kit to land before we tackle a more in-depth review.

There are several design changes, starting with the two color options. Canyon Orange looks similar to Oppo’s recent flagship phones, with a subtle etched finish meant to replicate the Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, Hasselblad fans might prefer the other option: a woodland-themed Tundra Umber, inspired by the camera maker’s X2D. Oppo says this colorway channels “Scandinavian minimalism and the raw elegance of glaciers.” Together at last.

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Perhaps due to all the camera hardware, it’s a big, thick phone with the camera unit protruding noticeably from the back. The camera array on the Ultra now has a subtle hexagonal design, apparently a nod to camera history — and that Hasselblad partnership. That area has a circular, metal frame, like many of Oppo’s rivals. The edges of the camera unit are knurled, which helps you to grip the device when taking photos. Unlike Xiaomi’s recent Ultra phone, the ring doesn’t act as a zoom control, but Oppo and Hasselblad’s “Earth Explorer Kit” for the Find X9 Ultra adds a very understated camera grip with a zoom lever.

Putting last year’s Find X9 Pro next to the X9 Ultra, the Ultra model looks more modern, more advanced and more powerful. And it is. The Ultra has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a notable step up from the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip found on last year’s Find 9 Pro.

There’s also a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon battery that supports 100W SUPERVOOC charging. Oppo says it has included the “industry’s first” encapsulated thermal unit to keep temperatures under control when pushing the device hard, such as recording high-resolution video for extended periods. The display screams expensive Android flagship, too. The 6.82-inch 144Hz display can reach up to 3,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and drop to 1 nit in low-lit situations.

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It’s all about the cameras, however. The Find X9 Ultra’s main camera is a 200-megapixel sensor. At 1/1.12 inches, Oppo says it’s the largest 200MP sensor in a phone yet. It has a low f/1.5 aperture, too. This was my ‘main’ camera when I first started taking the X9 Ultra out to shoot sample photos. After all, bigger sensors mean more detail, and more ability to crop for tighter zoomed shots. With a mixture of streetlights, neon signs and more, I was impressed by the color accuracy. Oppo has embedded a new True Color Camera into the Find X9 Ultra’s camera module, which works across stills and video. Still, if you’re demanding punchy, high-contrast images, there’s an array of Hasselblad filters and effects for playing with, too.

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There’s also a 3x Telephoto camera, with another (different!) 200MP sensor and f/2.2 aperture. This is the camera that the new teleconverter lens attaches to. There’s something appealing about having an instant 3x zoom camera, even though it gets a little lost among the cropped focal-length equivalents in the camera app. In fact, Oppo claims that the Find X9 Ultra offers the equivalent of eight focal lengths. Sadly, I noticed some differences in color temperature and light sensitivity as the Find X9 Ultra hopped between all those camera sensors while I tested different zoom levels.

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The next camera is another telephoto, with an impressive 10x zoom with a 50 megapixel sensor. We’ve seen 10x zoom on phones before, like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but never at such high resolution. Oppo added support for its Portrait mode here, even at full zoom. You can also crop in for a 20x zoom, but the results didn’t blow me away in early testing. At 10x zoom, though, I was impressed. That’s a lot of zoom before even thinking about attaching a teleconverter.

Oppo isn’t going quite as hard on video as its rival (and distant corporate relative) Vivo, but the Find X9 Ultra can capture 4K 60 fps video with Dolby Vision. It’s also the first Oppo smartphone capable of recording 8K video at 30 fps. For those looking to dig into video detail, Oppo has launched a new log profile, O-Log2. The company says this will help reveal greater shadow detail and reduce image smearing — it’s something else I’m itching to try once the teleconverter lands.

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Like Vivo's X300 Ultra, Oppo’s newest phone is certified for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), so videographers can integrate its footage into professional workflows. You can also load third-party LUTs (look-up tables) directly onto the device to monitor custom color grades in real time and see how they look in the on-device preview.

As is often the case with Chinese phone makers, there’s a lavish accessory kit to build on the smartphone’s shooting talents. Oppo’s Hasselblad Explorer case adds a two-stage focus button and the aforementioned zoom controls. The case has the same muted black and clay colors as the Tundra Umber edition of the Find X9 Ultra. Then there’s the new Hasselblad 300mm Explorer Teleconverter. The magnification ratio of the teleconverter has been increased from 3.28x on Find X9 Pro to around 4.3x on the Find X9 Ultra. The lens mounts directly onto the 200-megapixel 3x telephoto lens, upgrading it to a heady 13x optical zoom.

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This is also the biggest smartphone telephoto lens yet, dwarfing both the Find X9 Pro’s add-on and Vivo’s not-petite 400mm teleconverter. The companies chose different combinations of camera sensors and lenses, making spec sheet comparisons a little trickier, but Oppo’s latest accessory is certainly the largest thus far. I can’t wait to see how the Find X9 Ultra’s photos fare against images from the Vivo X300 Ultra, though. In the Find X9 Ultra’s favor, it has an iPhone 17 Pro-like touch-sensitive button for quickly launching the camera, something I missed on Vivo’s new flagship.

Unfortunately, there is no cross-compatibility among previous Oppo teleconverters and phones. The company says this is to ensure optimal image quality, but it’ll disappoint faithful Oppo fans hoping to carry over the expensive camera accessories from previous years. The company has learned some lessons from the Find X9 Pro, with a new telephoto adapter that can be left mounted on the phone without obscuring the other camera lenses.

On first impression, the Find X9 Ultra is shaping up to be another powerful camera phone, with another hard-to-actually-buy caveat. The Find X9 Ultra will arrive in parts of Asia and Europe. In the UK, it’s set to launch on May 8th, priced at £1,449 (roughly $1,959). While there’s no US release planned, we’ll update this story when we hear more details on the global launch. Once the telephoto add-on arrives, I’m excited to put it through its paces. I’ve got its rival from Vivo too, so it’s time for the battle of the teleconverters.