You know how your math teacher always said “Go find X”?
Well, I finally found it.
This is one of the coolest phones I've ever seen, and it's actually also the first Oppo
phone I've ever tested.
So I'd like to officially welcome Oppo to my desk and my durability test.
I've performed these tests on over 100 different phones – mostly flagships.
I'm not sure the exact number...it's just probably bordering insanity at this point.
But here we all are.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
The cool thing about this phone is the motorized cameras - not just the front camera, like
the Vivo Nex phone I reviewed and made clear.
This Oppo Find X has a whole motorized top section that contains all the front sensors,
earpiece, and front and rear cameras.
It's a pretty hefty load up top – banking on that motor never failing or getting stuck.
If that motor ever jams or stops working – no more cameras for you.
The motor itself seems okay so far.
If I pull the top out of the phone body while the camera app is not open, it will just pull
itself right back inside.
Kind of fights with you for a little bit.
When the camera app is open though, and the top is fully extended, the whole contraption
has a little bit more play than I expected, jiggling back and forth, front and back...just
kind of moving all over.
Not near as solid as the Vivo Nex's.
Wiggle room is a bad thing.
Wiggle room means there is space for stuff to get caught down inside the moving parts.
Pocket lint is called pocket lint because every pocket has it.
And gunk accumulates in your pockets.
It's not a good thing for a phone with moving parts.
The Find X does come with a high quality screen protector, which is nice of them.
Any protection is good protection, especially when the phone is so expensive.
The back glass has no protective layer, but that's pretty normal.
Let's jump into the scratch test.
As always, this Mohs scale of hardness has different materials on the tip of each tool
to tell the difference between different minerals.
Plastic would be a level 3, glass a level 6, and sapphire would be an 8 or a 9, with
diamonds following at a level 10.
Here we see marks at a 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7.
Pretty normal for a flagship.
This Find X is using Gorilla Glass 5.
Gorilla Glass 6 just got announced and will be fun to check out in the future.
There's not a whole lot more to test here on the front of the phone – it's pretty
much all screen with no visible cameras or sensors, or even buttons on the glass.
It's just one super good looking, wall to wall, no notch display.
Thumbs up for that.
The sides of the phone are metal, which does provide a sense of solidity.
Metal is included on the power button as well.
The top chunk of this phone, the portion that lifts up, is also metal.
Nothing up here to look at except for the little microphone hole.
The far side of the phone has the volume buttons, both metal, but is otherwise bare.
The bottom of the phone has our USB-C port and no headphone jack.
It might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you ask.
I prefer my phones to have one though.
With a motorized opening on a phone like this, obviously there's no hope for water resistance.
But this dual SIM card tray does have it's own little rubber ring around the edge.
So it looks like Oppo has put some thought into liquid protection.
Hopefully we'll find some more protection inside when we do the teardown.
As expected, the back is glass and unscratchable by my razor.
The Oppo and Find X logos are printed on the under side of the glass and won't be rubbing
off, but I'm sure we can make it clear if we need to.
Let's get a closer look at the motorized bits.
The whole area covering the front of the mechanical lift is glass, which means the 25 megapixel
front facing camera and all the high tech sensors for the face scanning feature are
protected against scratching as the mechanism actuates up and down.
So far, so good.
Interestingly enough, this exterior earpiece slot is just a hollow hallway for sound to
pass through from the actual earpiece in the raised bit behind it.
So if that actuating motor does break and stays closed, you'll still be able to make
and hear your phone calls, which is kind of important for a cellphone.
Flipping over the phone for the rear dual cameras, we get 16 and 20 megapixel cameras,
but no telephoto or wide angle.
And that's rather unfortunate having 2 cameras that do the exact same thing is like buying
a Swiss army knife where every single blade is the same.
If you have a spot for multiple cameras, they should accomplish different things – that's
my opinion.
You might be thinking to yourself, 'Hey, yo Jerry, you didn't scratch the fingerprint
scanner.'
And you're right, there's is no fingerprint scanner on this phone, which feels kind of
strange on a 2018 flagship, but Oppo has some major confidence in their facial recognition
system, and they did not include the fingerprint scanner this time around.
Now for the burn test.
It seems only fitting to start this fire right on the weather app since it's so hot outside,
and only getting hotter.
The 6.4 inch 1080p display is AMOLED.
And after 14 seconds we got proof of that with the rather nice white burn mark in the
center of the screen that never recovers.
LCD's usually recover, but AMOLEDs burn white and stay that way.
Now for the bend test.
Bend tests are important because they show how structurally sound a phone is, and gives
us a general idea of how well it'll hold up over time with accidental abuse.
Remember, I've tested over 100 phones and the vast majority of the phones I test survive...even
the previous motorized Vivo Nex.
Commencing the bend on the Oppo Find X, I instantly knew something was wrong with this
phone.
It bent way too far and never locked out or stopped bending like most phones do.
Some parts of the phone can handle the flex, like the metal frame, but one thing that can't
handle the flexing is the rigid and brittle AMOLED display panel.
That display underneath the glass cracks, rendering the screen pretty useless since
the colors now have a mind of their own.
The back panel starts lifting off, and both the front and rear glass shatter into oblivion.
You might be thinking, yeah, of course it broke, you just bent it in half.
But keep in mind that over 90% of the phones I get my hands on are strong enough to withstand
this exact same abuse and go on to live long happy lives, until I harvest their organs
for parts.
You know how it is.
This Oppo Find X is dead.
It's important to never sit on a phone like this, or accidentally step on it after a drop,
or even drop it at all.
Cellphones are probably the most abused pieces of technology on the planet, and the Find
X cannot handle abuse as well as other smartphones.
It's going on the Shelf of Shame.
I love the innovation and direction that Oppo is taking.
This phone is a winner on so many levels – just not with durability.
Let's take a closer look at the inside of that camera mechanism.
It looks like the glass layer has laminate backing, so it will all come off in one piece.
A clear addition would have would have been awesome.
Bending back the fractured glass, we get our first look inside of the phone.
One singular stepper motor with the same lead screw technology we saw in the Find X, except
for this lead screw is pushing up way more weight and is not as stable.
And also has a much more valuable payload since literally every sensor in the phone
depends on that little motor lasting for years.
I have my doubts.
It's putting a lot of trust in something that's wiggly and jiggly.
My intention here is to not crush Oppo into oblivion.
Innovation like this is pretty much the coolest thing ever and Oppo's doing a fantastic job
of leading the market in the direction it should be headed.
The phone looks awesome, but hopefully their next phone is just a bit more durable.
I'll be pulling glass out of my fingers for the next week.
Pulling off the rest of the back glass reveals our weak point in the frame.
There's not a whole lot of metal in here keeping things together.
And pretty much nothing structural at all between the battery and the motherboard – which
is the weakest point in the phone.
It's pretty much the same thing we saw in the Nexus 6P back in the day.
Now, Oppo does include a case in the box, so if you do own this phone, slap that on
as soon as possible.
Any protection helps.
The phone's released this year have been awesome.
The bezel-less high tech motorized phones like the Find X are great, but in the mathematical
quest for the perfect durable smartphone, the Find X is the equivalent of texting your
ex....just don't.
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Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.