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00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here.
00:20It's always fascinating to see how companies will try new things to separate themselves
00:24from the pack.
00:25Like, there's a lot of great smartphones out there.
00:27There's the Samsungs and the Apples and the Xiaomi's and OnePlus's of the world.
00:32They all have great performance.
00:34They all have pretty solid batteries and overall nice designs and build quality and some solid
00:39cameras.
00:40But all these companies, they all know how steep the competition is.
00:42And so they need to find one more thing to give you a reason to buy their phone over
00:47the rest.
00:48And so that's where I get into the classic feature versus gimmick debate.
00:52So there's the high-end flagship smartphone that also zooms in 100 times, gimmick or feature?
00:58The high-end flagship phone that also has a stylus, gimmick or feature?
01:03Maybe the high-end flagship phone that also has extra buttons for high-end gaming, gimmick
01:08or feature?
01:09A lot of the stuff is just up to you to decide.
01:10But now enter the Oppo Find X3 Pro.
01:15The flagship phone with a microscope?
01:20This isn't a review, but this has been now turning a lot of the same gears in my head
01:23as I've been playing with this phone about what really makes a gimmick versus a feature.
01:28So the Find X3 Pro is absolutely a flagship phone in every measurable way.
01:32It's got the Snapdragon 888 chip, 12 gigs of RAM.
01:36There's 256 gigs of fast storage inside, and you've got a pretty decent size 4,500 milliamp
01:41hour battery.
01:42And it's all packed in an impressive design.
01:45So this entire back of the phone is one seamless single piece of glass, which is curved up
01:51into this camera module.
01:53It's pretty cool.
01:54And Oppo talks a big game about how difficult this is to do.
01:58Something like 40 hours to make a single sheet of glass with this perfect curve.
02:02I'd say it's worth it.
02:03This is the same reason that I like the S21 series designs.
02:06Those phones felt very intentional about embracing the huge set of cameras.
02:11This does the same thing, which is very refreshing versus the typical camera bump that kind of
02:15just looks like it was stapled to the back of a flat piece of glass.
02:18Now this mirror finish, you know, I probably would have gone with something a little more
02:23matte or satin, at least myself.
02:26There is a blue version that is like a silk blue.
02:28Anyway, this whole body is IP68 dust and water resistant, and it's pretty slim, but also
02:34impressively lightweight.
02:35So it actually, it feels sleek in the hand if you're into that.
02:38There's a nice pair of stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support, which is also nice.
02:42Coming up front is a super high-end display, and that's really nice.
02:46So I don't know if you're ready for all these numbers.
02:48We already know Oppo's done some pretty great displays in the past.
02:51See Oppo Find X2 Pro, but this is what a great flagship display looks like now in 2021.
02:57It is a 6.7 inch diagonal with a bit of a curve around the edges.
03:01It's also quad HD plus or 1440p, which lands you at about 525 pixels per inch.
03:07That is super sharp, and it's 120 Hertz LTPO panel, which means it can actively adjust
03:12the refresh rate up to 120 Hertz, which saves you battery when you're just reading a webpage
03:17or an ebook or something like that.
03:18Anything that doesn't need high refresh rate, and it can drop as low as five Hertz.
03:22But when you are actively moving stuff and playing games and scrolling around the UI,
03:26the high refresh rate combined with the 240 Hertz touch sample rate makes things feel
03:32super responsive.
03:33So 6.7 inch, 1440p, 120 Hertz LTPO, oh, by the way, it's an OLED too, and a great one
03:41at that.
03:42So this panel is giving you 1300 nits of peak brightness, one of the brightest on any phone,
03:47and that lands it at 5 million to one contrast ratio.
03:50It's HDR 10 plus certified.
03:52It covers a hundred percent of the DCI P3 color gamut.
03:55It's great.
03:56It checks all the boxes, but let me finish up with the rest of the flagship stuff.
03:59The fingerprint reader is underneath the glass, but it's much lower on this phone for
04:03some reason.
04:04I'm not sure why.
04:05Like every other phone I've seen puts it a few centimeters up from the bottom where it's
04:08more reachable.
04:09This one, like it feels worse.
04:11So it's hard to reach.
04:12So I'm not sure why it's there, but it's there if you want to use it.
04:15And then there is a neat trick in the software.
04:17So a long press on the fingerprint reader can pull up shortcuts to some frequently used
04:21apps.
04:22And I love that.
04:23That is a really good idea for software.
04:25There's a bunch of other nice stuff like that sprinkled here in, as you'd expect Oppo's
04:29ColorOS on top of Android 11.
04:32And I really like what I've been seeing in ColorOS over the past two years.
04:37This might be a hot take, but it's risen to near the top of my favorite versions of Android
04:42to use period.
04:44I think I'd put it right above OnePlus's OxygenOS.
04:47It's come a long way.
04:49And actually a big part of that now is how the animations and overall physics of things
04:53move around.
04:54It's one of those subtle things you notice when you use a lot of different phones, but
04:57it's very snappy and smooth and responsive.
05:01There's also Google feed integration on the home screen and some better Google integration
05:05with some stock apps like the dialer and messaging.
05:08So of course there are still quirks, like there's no quick launch option for the camera,
05:12but other than that, it's actually pretty dope.
05:14And then of course you can't forget the charger included in the box in 2021.
05:19You actually got to say it, but it's a 65 watt fast charger that can get you up to 40%
05:24in 10 minutes, which is pretty sweet.
05:26But like I said, so many other phones are good now.
05:28So sure, this phone is excellent, but that's when you get into the world of unique special
05:35features to try to stand out above the rest of the also excellent phones.
05:40Sometimes it's kind of tough to tell if something is a gimmick or an actually useful feature
05:46or maybe somewhere in between.
05:48We'll let you be the judge of that when you hear about them.
05:50But I think there are two things worth noting with this phone.
05:52So number one, the billion color display.
05:55Okay, so we know Oppo has been putting a lot of care into their displays over the years.
05:59They're calling this the first billion color smartphone, which is a pretty sexy tagline,
06:05but what does it mean?
06:06Well, it means it's a 10 bit display.
06:08What they're really saying behind that billion color tagline is they have a 10 bit display
06:13instead of an eight bit display.
06:14And when you hear that, it might not sound all that impressive, but the math on that
06:18is.
06:19For every single pixel on an eight bit display, there's 256 different color levels.
06:24But in a 10 bit display, it doubles that twice to 1024.
06:29So an eight bit display, which is pretty common in a lot of smartphones can show up to 16.7
06:34million colors, which is awesome.
06:37But a 10 bit display can show up to 1.07 billion colors.
06:43So there you go.
06:44It's a billion color display, but that's not actually the impressive part.
06:47There are other 10 bit displays out there in smartphones.
06:50The impressive part of it all is that they've created a pipeline from image capture from
06:54the cameras all the way through the firmware to the display that preserves that 10 bit
06:59color.
07:00So that extra color information is super useful in some specific environments.
07:03So if you shoot a lot of photos and videos professionally, especially, you'll always
07:07take things like the higher bit depth to reduce banding and crumbling and things in like fades
07:13and gradients.
07:14So if you're going to be doing a lot of high level photo and video capture, and then manipulation
07:19on this smartphone display, this may be something to care about.
07:22But I'm pretty confident there's going to be a lot of people who actually get this phone
07:27who never even noticed this, especially because it is actually turned off by default.
07:30You actually have to go into the display settings and turn this on if you want to take advantage
07:34of the full 10 bit pipeline.
07:36So I think what I'm trying to say here is there are other more noticeable, great things
07:40about this display, like a high refresh rate, like the touch refresh rate, like high brightness
07:46that you'll notice before 10 bit over eight bit.
07:49But if the question is gimmick or feature, I'm going to put it in the feature category.
07:55It's just a very niche feature, just a very, very small sliver of people who will actually
08:00take advantage of that.
08:01Okay.
08:02Then there's the second thing, which is the microscope.
08:06So this camera array on the back of the Find X3 Pro is already pretty powerful.
08:10It's using a new 50 megapixel Sony sensor for both the main camera and the ultra wide.
08:17Love that.
08:18And I think that should be done more often.
08:19There's also a 13 megapixel telephoto 5X hybrid optical zoom, but that's just this little
08:24one in the corner here.
08:26This last big one is a three megapixel macro camera with a ring light around it.
08:32Now, okay.
08:33You know how I feel about macro cameras, but I should clarify, I hate bad macro cameras.
08:39Like when you see a like mid range sort of cheaper phone slap an extra camera in there
08:44to look like the more premium multi-camera systems, but it's just a crappy two megapixel
08:49macro that they could have spent that money on somewhere else in the phone to make a better
08:53difference.
08:54I hate that waste of money.
08:55That's a bad macro camera.
08:56But the idea of a good macro camera, well that, that could be kind of fun.
09:01Now this one is actually a 60 X magnification lens and the macro bit just means you can
09:07get extremely close as far as minimum focus distance.
09:11And so this is less of a macro camera and more of a literal microscope.
09:14So you open the camera app and switch to microscope and it flips over to that camera.
09:19And when you bring that camera one to three millimeters from the subject, basically almost
09:24touching it and it works, it actually gets microscope like images, which means a couple
09:30of things.
09:32The area you're capturing is incredibly small and the depth of field on this lens is super
09:37shallow.
09:38So this is an F3 lens and you're, you're literally almost touching the subject.
09:41So you got to spend some extra effort stabilizing everything to actually get a good shot and
09:45focus.
09:47But the photos you get are crazy.
09:49I actually just made up this game so you can play along.
09:52It's like a game show.
09:53I'm going to show you the super macro photo and then you can try to guess what it's a
09:58picture of.
09:59I'm convinced you're going to get all of them wrong or you probably won't know what I'm
10:01taking a photo of.
10:02But pause it if you need more time.
10:04Let's play a little game.
10:31So how'd you do one or two, right?
10:54Maybe I think the dollar bill one maybe was the one that more people will get than not.
10:59But it's just this.
11:00It's so much fun.
11:01I just did this earlier just for fun to see if I could get it to look at that.
11:04You see the threads on my shirt.
11:07That's crazy.
11:08It's so much fun.
11:09Okay.
11:10So the microscope camera feature or gimmick.
11:15Okay.
11:16So it's still a gimmick, but not all gimmicks are created equal.
11:20And this is one of the most fun gimmicks that I've ever seen in a phone.
11:24It's awesome.
11:25Like microscopes and macro photography are hard to do well.
11:29They're actually kind of expensive to do well.
11:32So when they first started showing up in phones, they were usually so trashed because they
11:34were using a smaller, cheaper sensor and they would get a cheap lens that doesn't let in
11:39very much light.
11:40So you have this poor noise performance and not a lot of detail, pretty bad combination
11:45and macro photos would look like garbage.
11:48But they did that because, well, it's more expensive to make a good macro camera.
11:52If you remember the dope tech video I did about the probe lens, which is another crazy
11:55macro capable lens, that lens had an F14 to F40 aperture range, but you'd strap that
12:02to a much bigger sensor and there's a bright ring light attached to the front of it.
12:07And this is a $1,500 lens.
12:09So this, this microscope camera to me feels like Oppo actually put extra time and effort
12:15and money into making a much better than average experience.
12:19And it shows the F3 aperture is interesting, but obviously the ring light, because you
12:23get so close to your subject, you cast a shadow on it.
12:26So they really thought about a lot of this stuff.
12:27Now if this is going to go from gimmick to feature, one of the biggest differences between
12:33a gimmick and a feature is iterating and keeping going with it and making a new version.
12:38Maybe this can benefit from dual aperture in the future where you have like an F8 version
12:43that gets more in focus, but that's all getting ahead of myself.
12:47This is one of the most fun gimmicks I've ever seen in a phone and I'm glad they did
12:50it.
12:52Either way, that's about it.
12:53Thanks for watching.
12:54Catch you guys in the next one.
12:56Peace.