Things are indeed getting very serious. Android flagships for 2026 are beginning to walk through the door already, which signifies how phone makers don’t want to waste any time at all in getting things going. OnePlus 15, which is in a way a sibling, has already played its cards. But do not for a moment assume the incoming Oppo Find X9 Pro is just the same wine in a different bottle. Within the family, there has been some realignment which now gives the Find X9 Pro some exclusivity with the Hasselblad camera partnership amid some useful smarts across the generationally newer hardware and software combination.
The Find X9 Pro gets just one variant in India, that is 16GB memory and 512GB storage, albeit in Silk White and Titanium Charcoal colours. This is priced at ₹1,09,999 and that is a slight increment over the launch price of last year’s Find X8 Pro. Simplification of the portfolio is always a good path to walk, particularly when the only choice doesn’t compromise either on memory available, or storage. Longevity, therefore, is well ticked off on the Find X9 Pro checklist. There is something to be said about what is undoubtedly a nice design to go with a refreshed personality, but perhaps the flat slab look with equally flat sides does sit well in the palm whilst looking somewhat dull nevertheless. There’s a customisable Snap Key (can be used to quickly invoke the flashlight, camera, voice recorder, alter sound profiles and so on) and also a quick button for the camera in case the camera app’s on-screen methodology doesn’t work for you.
It’s a 6.78-inch AMOLED display, which is par for course in terms of size, with a thin bezel to go with it. There is a liveliness to this screen that many Android phones aren’t able to replicate, and it has a lot to do with the image tuning. Can go really bright too, and still retains a level of richness with detail which doesn’t get sacrificed at the altar of artificial boosting. There is of course a significant layering of AI within ColorOS 16, and that’s to be expected. Most of this is at par with Android phones in general, including Gemini Live and Circle to Search, voice notes transcription, translation and of course, editing tools in the gallery app. There is also Oppo’s Mind Space, something that is now increasingly finding its way into Android phones — Nothing has it, OnePlus has it, and I’m yet to become a fan of this scrapbook method of storing anything related to my day.
The fact that Oppo has retained the Hasselblad camera tuning as well as optimisations with the Find X9 Pro, gives it definitive leverage as an elite photography phone. And that’s exactly what the Find X9 Pro is, an elite photography focused Android flagship that delivers with cold-heated swagger. A 50-megapixel wide, a 50-megapixel ultra wide and a 200-megapixel telephoto make for a solid troika, and that hardware has been backed up brilliantly by absolutely pristine image processing algorithms. Needless to say, I’ve come away more than impressed with the Find X9 Pro’s camera capabilities, across photography and lighting scenarios. Mind you, there aren’t better phones to shoot out of the window of an Airbus A380 as it flies over the Middle East and rapidly heads towards the Bering Sea and then descends over the Canadian landscape before landing into Los Angeles.
You’ll notice that the main camera delivers just the right balance between colour separation, liveliness while retaining realism, and a dynamic range that’s nicely done. Shadows are reproduced nicely, and a sense of moment of when the photo was clicked, remains represented well. There is no over saturation for the sake of it, which is good (and one hopes it stays that way with future updates as well). Even in low light, the Find X9 Pro works hard to work with as much light as possible, and that doubly means it is simpler to eliminate any distortion or image noise in the processing stage. The result is, lively nighttime photos, and if there is a hint of the inky blackness of the sky overlayed by even darker clouds, you’ll see them in the photo as your eye saw them at that moment.
That said, the Find X9 Pro does have the habit of over processing certain photos (there’s no specific trend that I can point to here — you’ll notice this either with extra sharpening of distant elements in a landscape photo for instance, or a tad too much attempted noise reduction which often softens certain parts of the photo a tad too much. But as I said, this is an occasional trend, which I expect will be ironed out with subsequent updates. In terms of zoom levels, the claims of usable 120x may be a bit far-fetched in real world scenarios for most users, but the reality is Oppo’s optimised things beautifully for anything up to 6x hybrid zoom. A bit more if you’ve really steady hands, but even 6x gets you really close to distant subjects.
The thing is, Oppo has left almost no cards on the table in perceiving and delivering this flagship phone, and therefore the experience. The chip that’s the beating heart of the Find X9 Pro is the very capable MediaTek Dimensity 9500, which in this guise, is paired with 16GB memory to work with. This is a flagship chip in a flagship phone, performance and experience comparable to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and the phones that it powers. The fact that this chip runs extremely cool even when stretched, underlines generational improvements and a stark contrast to flagship chips from a couple of years ago.
The age of big battery phones too is upon us, and the Find X9 Pro with the 7500mAh silicon carbon composition allows for a denser construction and hence the higher capacity in a flagship that’s somewhat compact, and none the heavier or thicker than anything that preceded it. That said, you’ll notice the back heat up quite a bit in the first few minutes of this being plugged in for fast charging — speaking of which, that’s 80-watt wired and 50-watt wireless. Streaming a complete F1 US GP on the phone, dropped the charge from 100% to 91% (and that would be an hour and 30 minutes of approximate runtime). It should give you a fair idea of impressive stamina levels.
The ₹1,00,000 mark has been well and truly breached, if you are to splurge on Oppo’s newest Android flagship phone. The reasoning will find some weightage in components becoming more expensive, and the thing is, Oppo hasn’t compromised on any aspect. That observation spans across the new LUMO Image Engine, an advanced vapour cooling chamber architecture, as well as smarter link boosting that should help with better mobile data coverage in regions which don’t have the best reception. This year feels like a new page has been turned as far as Android flagship phones are being perceived, and value as well as experience hold equal weightage. It is no longer about just the best specs, and it is a worthy course correction. The Oppo Find X9 Pro simply delivers top notch experience, as a phone, as a camera, and everything else you’d use it for. The only real complaint I have, this feels slightly heavier in hand than an Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max, even though it isn’t.
