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The Oppo Find X3 Pro.
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The front.
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The microscope lens is here on the left, with a large silver ring all around.
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An exploded view of a camera.
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The back is very interesting. The camera’s bulge is shaped at the back, and in addition to circular cutouts for the cameras, the back is a single piece of glass.
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The rear glass panel minus color and all the phone pieces. This is one piece!
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A full shot from the back.
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The top and bottom.
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A breakdown delivers.
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Modern smartphones have a bunch of extra cameras. We’ve seen wide angle cameras, telephoto cameras, depth cameras, macro cameras, and now … a microscope camera? The new Oppo Find X3 Pro has a “microlens sensor with up to 60x zoom” that can take interesting super-close-ups.
We like the macro cameras that have appeared on some phones, mainly from Oppo’s sister company OnePlus. Oppo’s microcamera sounds like a next generation of the same idea. We are not going to rely on professionally produced sample photos from a manufacturer, but some third parties like Android Police got their hands on the phone and showed some impressive photos that have never been possible from a smartphone.
As you would expect, the sample photos all have a very shallow depth of field, and it seems like a challenge to focus on. However, this also applies to ordinary macro photography. Most people make hand recordings, and a complete set of tripod style will probably help a lot. The “Micro” camera sensor is only 3 MP, but unlike some of the useless “decorative” 2 MP cameras we see on cheaper phones, it seems enough to make a close-up.
For specs, we get a fairly standard 2021 flagship: a 6.7-inch, 120 Hz, 3216 × 1440 OLED screen; a Snapdragon 888 SoC; 12 GB RAM; 256 GB storage; and a 4500 mAh battery. There is 65 W wireless charging, 30 W wireless charging, an on-screen fingerprint reader, NFC and a USB-C port. For software, there is Android 11 with the Android skin of ‘Color’ from Oppo.
The other interesting design element of the phone is the camera bump from Oppo. Instead of slapping on a large rectangle with 90-degree sides that creates a step in the camera module, Oppo shaped the glass to slide in one smooth, continuous shape on the camera slope. Even the top of the camera bump is still the same piece of glass, with individual cutouts for each lens. Oppo says it takes 40 hours to make the glass panel.
Oppo usually does not launch phones in the US, so we will have to hope that something like this will one day appear on a OnePlus phone. The phone will be launched in Europe on March 30 for € 1,149 ($ 1,377).