The New 10X Lens Is Legit And Changes The Game

Oppo will thrive in 2026. Just weeks after launching a nearly perfect foldable phone, it’s back with its top-tier “traditional phone” – the Find X9 Ultra.

Like other Chinese “Ultra” devices, the Find X9 Ultra is a camera-centric device, and to that end, the phone offers a quad-camera main system covering focal lengths from 14mm to 230mm, with the possibility of adding an additional telephoto conversion lens to the camera system to enhance the optical zoom to 300mm. In layman’s smartphone terms, 300mm is roughly equivalent to 13x zoom on the iPhone.

We’ll talk about the additional lens later – it’s purchased separately – but Oppo’s core camera system deserves special attention, as this is the first phone in three years to offer a dedicated 230mm (10X) telephoto lens. Unlike the last time Samsung tried this with its S23 Ultra phone, this 230mm lens has five times more pixels, a larger sensor, and a faster aperture. In other words, this 10X lens is much more practical than the one from Samsung, which abandoned the camera after 2023 in favor of a shorter zoom.

The reason 10x zoom lenses aren’t often tried in the smartphone world is that cramming the required extra optics into a small phone case requires a lot of engineering work. Think of a “real” camera lens – the longer the zoom, the longer the lens. A 200mm zoom lens is usually at least 2-3 times longer than a 50mm lens. So for a smartphone to put the same type of zoom action into a phone body, it has to come up with creative ways to shrink and fold the optical module.

Oppo’s solution is a periscope camera module that reflects light from five prisms before reaching the image sensor. Each prism effectively magnifies the image 2x, while five prisms magnify the image 10x.

Eight years ago, I wrote about Oppo’s attempts to create a “folding optic” to improve zoom capabilities, and this 230mm optic is one of the final results of nearly a decade of engineering by 2026.

Perhaps even more impressive: the 230mm lens’ specs, while impressive, actually pale in comparison to the wide-angle (23mm) and 3X telephoto (70mm) zoom lenses also available in the system. Both cameras feature 200-megapixel cameras, with the wide-angle camera featuring a nearly 1-inch sensor and the 3x telephoto camera featuring a 1/1.28-inch image sensor. In fact, the 3x zoom lens has the largest sensor of any zoom lens currently on a phone, surpassing previous champ Vivo.

I’ve already entered a lot of specs, so let’s cut to the chase and show photo samples. The following images were taken with the Find X9 Ultra without any additional accessories. These images are also taken directly from the camera without any additional editing on my part.

Of course, a phone can’t rely solely on its camera. But don’t worry, the rest of the kit is flagship-grade too. The chip powering everything is the latest and greatest Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5; the display is a gorgeous 144Hz OLED panel wrapped by thin bezels. The battery capacity is 7050 mAh, which is one of the largest batteries in any mobile phone currently. Oppo’s Android 16-based ColorOS software is one of my favorite mobile operating systems because of its countless customization options.

I also like the design of the phone, with a faux leather finish on the back that breaks down in a stylized way, and orange physical buttons that stand out from the metal frame.

Now, let’s talk about the 300mm lens mentioned earlier. Oppo has clearly borrowed this idea from Vivo, and the lens works in much the same way: you have to use a special case with a metal mount that allows the lens to be attached to a 3x telephoto lens. Essentially, this is another magnifying glass that magnifies 70mm to 300mm. The lens is a bit bulky – Vivo’s implementation is thinner and lighter – but the 300mm lens produces legitimate 300mm zoom images and video that look sharp, with realistic background compression and natural bokeh.