I've been sitting on my review
of the Oppo Find X for weeks now.
Not because I didn't wanna do it,
but because I've actually, in my opinion,
very patiently been waiting for them to fix
a game-breaking bug that has made the phone infuriating
for me to use as a daily driver.
Well, it's still not fixed, but the clock's run out
and we're just gonna have to go ahead with this.
Is the phone with arguably the world's sexiest design
actually any good?
Or are we just being expected to spend
a thousand US dollars for a fashion statement?
One of the first things I do with any new device
that isn't an iPhone with Apple's Taptic Engine
is turn off the haptic feedback.
Android devices suck at this basically across the board,
but the Find X's is particularly bad given the price point.
And you guys are probably sitting there thinking,
wow, that's an awfully nitpicky thing to open with
on a device review, but it kind of sets the stage
for my overall impressions of the Find X.
More on that later though.
First, let's get to the good stuff.
Nothing, nothing I've ever touched feels quite as premium
as the Find X.
Oppo and by extension, their subsidiary OnePlus
have spent years playing catch up to the Samsungs
and the Apples of the world,
but the Find X is clearly a statement piece
that stands entirely on its own.
The gentle notch on the back,
and the way that the rear cover accent color shifts
from subtle to bold depending on the angle
gives it a truly distinctive look.
And furthermore, the form factor,
not to mention the balance of this thing
is damn near perfect.
With gently curved Gorilla Glass 5
on both the front and back
that tapers to a nearly seamless transition to the chassis
that manages to fit comfortably in your hand
pretty much no matter how you want to hold it.
That is,
assuming of course that you can keep a handle on it at all.
This is an exceptionally slippery phone.
My unit actually ended up falling off of a surface
that was only very gently inclined
minutes after I had placed it there
because of subtle vibrations from a nearby speaker.
Fortunately, there was no damage,
which was a bit surprising,
especially given the engineering marvel
that is Oppo's front camera and facial recognition system.
Simply swipe the lock screen or open up the camera app,
and you'll be greeted with a competent little selfie camera
and a sophisticated facial scanning array
that managed to match the speed of the iPhone 10
in my testing.
And actually the good news keeps rolling here.
The specs of the Find X are right on par
with any other flagship phone on the market,
meaning that you'll be enjoying the best experience
that Android has to offer,
and you'll look good doing it,
at least until Snapdragon 855 shows up
in the next few months.
And, wait, hold on a second.
Sorry, did I say the best Android has to offer?
No, it's not that.
It might be the best that Oppo's ColorOS has to offer,
but ColorOS is quite frankly,
not representative of the best that Android has to offer.
There are just so many usability issues here.
I mean, first up was the impossibility
of setting up an Oppo account for recovery purposes.
Long story short,
I finally thought through the steps
of multiple instances of verification
with no copy paste allowed for whatever reason,
and got to this Chinese site
that according to my in-laws
said something about being verified.
And then I tried to log in
only to be told the account isn't active,
and it's still not active apparently.
Then I was really impressed
by the way that Oppo handles junkware installation,
giving you the option on first boot to nuke it.
That is until I realized that there's lots of things
that Oppo can do.
There's lots of stuff still on the phone,
and there is no way to switch
to an app drawer style home screen with the stock launcher.
So what that means is that anyone who's not a power user
is gonna end up with a useless junk folder,
like on the iPhone.
Let's continue.
I'm not really one to complain
about the visual style of an Android skin in general,
and ColorOS mostly seems fine to me,
but, and this one might actually be a first for me,
the system font,
really grinds my gears and not for like artsy reasons.
I just have a much harder time telling at a glance
if my messages are unread in my Gmail app, for example.
Now to Oppo's credit, the Find X has great battery life,
but I was pretty annoyed
when I found out one of the reasons why.
It turns out it's been putting my Hangouts app
to sleep entirely without asking me
if I wanted that behavior.
Go ahead, David, send me a Hangout right now.
So what happens is I just don't get my notifications
until I open up the app manually,
at which point I will get spammed
by everyone who's been trying to reach me for the last hour.
This is the thing I reported to Oppo three weeks ago.
There's the ping.
That currently has no ETA for a fix.
Then buggy behavior in Chrome and that usual nonsense
where Netflix has to be installed manually with an APK,
instead of through the Play Store on some Chinese phones.
It's just icing on the cake.
I mean, yeah, every one of those things,
except the Hangouts thing, that's really stupid.
Every one of those things is a pretty minor issue
on the surface.
But the long and the short of it is a phone is,
it's like your daily companion.
You take it with you everywhere.
It's about the experience.
And I didn't like using this phone.
It just cuts a lot of little corners
for the sake of being sexy.
Like that crummy vibration motor
that I mentioned earlier.
And it just doesn't do enough to redeem itself in my eyes.
The camera launches quickly,
but it can't be triggered with a double tap
of the lock screen.
And it is decent at best, especially given the price.
And this pain train is just leaving the station, folks.
The Find X lacks NFC,
making two-factor authentication more of a chore.
It's not waterproof or even water resistant,
presumably due to the sliding camera mechanism.
It doesn't have wireless charging.
It doesn't have a micro SD slot for expansion.
It doesn't have a headphone jack.
It doesn't have an always on display
or even wake on lift,
meaning that you will need to unlock the screen
and swipe it to activate their facial recognition
every time you want to turn it on.
And the display isn't HDR certified for Netflix,
which results in noticeably worse image quality
to go along with the degraded
mono speaker listening experience.
Bottom line,
considering buying the Find X, get a Note 9.
It's better in every measurable way.
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