You want your telephone had the Oppo Discover X9 Professional’s battery life

Every time I evaluation a telephone, one of many first issues I do after setting it up is cost it to full after which simply… let it run, utilizing it as my solely telephone for so long as I can, resisting each urge to cost it alongside the way in which.

The Oppo Discover X9 Professional lasted for 3 full days. 74 and a half hours, to be somewhat extra precise. I couldn’t fairly imagine it both, so I ran it once more. This time I turned on the power-hungry always-on show, and the telephone ran for 50-odd hours earlier than the battery hit low single digits.

That is the perfect battery lifetime of any telephone I’ve examined in years, and by far the perfect of any flagship. The one actual downside for Oppo is that I believe it’s not distinctive — it’s a part of a brand new wave of Android flagships delivering batteries bigger than 7,000mAh, which may quickly shift expectations on how lengthy a smartphone ought to final.

The spectacular longevity is due to a silicon-carbon battery, a extra energy-dense sort of cell that’s allowed Oppo to suit a 7,500mAh battery right into a telephone that’s nonetheless solely 8.25mm thick — thinner than an iPhone 17 Professional, with nearly double the battery capability, and about the identical value at £1,099 / €1,299. It’s not alone in sheer dimension, although: It matches the 7,500mAh capability of the current Xiaomi 17 Professional Max, and beats the 7,300mAh OnePlus 15 and seven,200mAh Honor Magic 8 Professional.

Because of that battery, the Discover X9 Professional reliably delivers at the least two days of energy, even by demanding evaluation testing that entails spending all day out and in of the digital camera app, one in every of a contemporary telephone’s largest battery drains.

I’ve been ready for this. The most important and finest Android flagships out of China, from the Xiaomi 15 Extremely to Honor’s Magic 7 Professional, have been cruising previous the all-day battery line for years now, however that is the primary time I’ve felt completely snug saying a flagship telephone will final for 2 days, taking you from breakfast at some point to bedtime the subsequent. That’s one thing that Apple, Samsung, and Google merely don’t supply.

When the Discover X9 Professional does run out, it might cost at as much as 80W over Oppo’s proprietary SuperVooc wired charging normal, or 55W on the common USB-PD normal, so that you’ll nonetheless get pretty quick charging with a third-party plug. There’s wi-fi charging too, although we’re nonetheless ready for the subsequent Android OEM to hitch Google in providing magnetic Qi2 help.

When you recover from the battery life, the cameras are the subsequent good purpose to think about the Discover X9 Professional. The triple rear digital camera right here is actually wonderful, with 50-megapixel most important and ultrawide lenses and a 200-megapixel 3x telephoto.

In contrast to its subsidiary OnePlus, Oppo has maintained its partnership with Hasselblad, which has helped with the color-tuning and offered branded filters, professional modes, and an ultra-ultrawide XPan taking pictures choice. None of that’s new to this yr’s telephone, although, and from the surface it stays nearly inconceivable to inform how a lot of the digital camera efficiency is right down to Hasselblad, and the way a lot to Oppo — although at the least all of the Hasselblad orange accent colours within the digital camera app look good.

Now that high-end Android producers have mastered the principle digital camera, telephotos have turn out to be the battleground du jour, and Oppo’s newest is spectacular. The excessive decision is the headline grabber, however it’s the big 1/1.56-inch sensor and quick f/2.1 aperture that actually make the distinction. The large sensor makes it simple to take photographs with stunning bokeh and depth. They give the impression of being nice on the default 3x zoom, with little perceptible drop-off as much as 6x, which justifies Oppo’s choice to stay to at least one telephoto, moderately than the 2 discovered on the Discover X8 Professional.

The principle digital camera nonetheless does higher than the telephoto with dim mild and fast-moving topics like cats or youngsters, although the distinction is smaller than you may suppose — the principle lens’s benefit largely comes down to higher shade correction when taking pictures underneath particularly heat or colourful mild. Since I usually favor the framing the telephoto gives, I’ve taken to taking pictures with it most of the time, and haven’t notably missed the extra highly effective periscopes of telephones just like the Vivo X200 Extremely.

That’s helped by one factor the Discover X9 Professional has in frequent with that telephone: an non-obligatory add-on telephoto lens that provides you 10x zoom when you connect it onto the telephone with the devoted case and mount. It prices a large €499 although — nearly half the telephone’s value once more — and after I requested, Oppo wouldn’t verify which European markets it’ll really go on sale in. If you will discover one, it’s a good way to get even additional zoom out of a telephone (and at about the identical dimension as a bathroom paper tube, it’s compact sufficient to sneak into concert events and sports activities video games that wouldn’t enable a mirrorless or DSLR), although as soon as the novelty subsides it’s not one thing I discover myself reaching for all too usually. What a novelty, although!

A design revamp strikes away from a central, round digital camera and towards a considerably extra engaging rounded circle in a single nook. The opposite massive design change year-on-year is the transfer to thoroughly flat edges on the 6.78-inch OLED show, in one other industry-wide development. This one’s a disgrace, although — whereas I’m joyful to be rid of the intense curves that dominated flagships for a couple of years, the delicate micro-curves of the Discover X8 Professional made that telephone extra snug to carry, and I’ll miss them.

The Discover X9 Professional options a few further buttons that may sound acquainted in the event you’ve used the Motion button or Digicam Management on some current iPhones. The highest left of the body holds the Snap Key, which might be set to a variety of choices together with toggling ring / vibrate settings, recording audio, and saving screenshots or notes to Oppo’s AI-based Thoughts House, which may then analyze them to create reminders or calendar occasions. On the telephone’s reverse nook, a touch-sensitive management serves as a shortcut to open the digital camera, a shutter button, and a zoom dial — although similar to final yr, and as on most iPhones, it’s positioned too far up the telephone’s physique to be a really snug digital camera shutter.

A Dimensity 9500 runs the present underneath the hood — basically MediaTek’s flagship equal to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — along with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage on the mannequin launching worldwide. Unsurprisingly that ends in snappy efficiency all through, although that must be a given at this value.

The telephone launches operating the most recent model of ColorOS based mostly on Android 16, with the identical updates present in OnePlus’ new OxygenOS. Gemini integration to Thoughts House is the most important change, permitting you to ask Google’s AI questions based mostly on photographs and voice memos you’ve saved there. Oppo has additionally continued to enhance its Join Plus software program, which lets you switch recordsdata between the telephone and a Mac or PC, and even take management of the pc from the telephone, together with restricted help for the Apple Watch. Lastly, a extra customizable lockscreen nonetheless falls wanting Apple’s iPhone providing, however does now assist you to use brief movies or movement images as wallpapers.

Oppo is the primary of the foremost Chinese language gamers to get this era of flagship telephones out in Europe, however it received’t be alone for lengthy — current Chinese language releases from Xiaomi, Vivo, and Honor may observe the Discover X9 Professional into worldwide markets earlier than the yr is out. I haven’t tried these rivals but, however on paper I’d be shocked if I favor any to this. It doesn’t have the distraction of a second display screen just like the Xiaomi 17 Professional, its battery is greater than Vivo’s X300 Professional, and I’m assured its cameras will outclass the Honor Magic 8 Professional’s.

The Discover X9 Professional is my sort of telephone. It’s class-leading within the two areas I care about essentially the most — digital camera and battery life — and doesn’t compromise a lot wherever else to make that doable. Throw in Qi2, and it’d be nearly good.

Images by Dominic Preston / The Verge