December 2012. OPPO has just announced the Find 5, and it carries a 1080p display at a moment when no mass-market smartphone at retail offers one. The HTC Droid DNA beat OPPO to the 1080p announcement by days, but the DNA is a US carrier exclusive. The Find 5 ships globally, through OPPO’s online direct channels, to buyers in Europe, North America, and Asia who can order it without a carrier contract. For the first time, OPPO has made something that the international tech press genuinely needs to cover.

The hardware: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core, 2GB of RAM, 5-inch 1080p IPS LCD at 441 pixels per inch, 13MP rear camera, 1800mAh battery. At $499 at launch, it is priced at the premium tier it is competing in. The price is high for a brand with limited Western retail presence, but the specifications justify it against anything on the market in December 2012. The display alone, at 441 PPI, is sharper than the iPhone 5’s Retina display at 326 PPI. OPPO is not apologizing for the comparison. It is inviting it.

Why 1080p mattered in December 2012

The 1080p display specification in late 2012 is not just a hardware number. It is a positioning statement. Samsung’s Galaxy S3, the dominant Android flagship of 2012, runs a 720p display. HTC’s One X runs 720p. Sony’s Xperia Z has not shipped yet. The only smartphone with a 1080p display at retail in December 2012 is the Droid DNA, sold exclusively through Verizon, unavailable outside the US. OPPO has beaten every major manufacturer — Samsung, HTC, Sony, LG — to a globally available 1080p smartphone. For a brand that the Western tech press has largely ignored since the Finder’s thinnest-phone moment in July, the Find 5 is the product that forces a rethink.

Tom’s Hardware reviewed the Find 5 in February 2013 when OPPO made international units available for evaluation. The review notes the display quality as genuinely exceptional and the ColorOS software as unfamiliar but competent. The framing is “you probably haven’t heard of this company” mixed with “but the hardware is serious.” That framing will repeat for OPPO in Western tech media for the next decade, but the Find 5 is where it starts.

ColorOS launches and what it signals

The Find 5 launches alongside the formal announcement of ColorOS, OPPO’s branded Android skin. The software that has been in development since the Finder now has a name, a visual identity, and a stated design philosophy: OPPO calls it an “HSS platform” — Hardware, Software, Services — acknowledging that the software layer is as strategic as the device itself. ColorOS 1.0 is not a minimalist experience. It is feature-dense, visually distinct from stock Android, and built for a Chinese market that expects heavy customization as a baseline.

The gap between ColorOS and what the international enthusiast community wants from Android software is real and visible in the Find 5 reviews. Pete Lau, who is running OPPO’s product strategy from within the company and will leave to found OnePlus eleven months from now, is watching this gap closely. The argument he will make when founding OnePlus — that the right Android software for international enthusiasts requires starting from stock rather than from ColorOS — is being validated in real time by the Find 5’s international reception. The hardware earns a “genuinely impressive” verdict. The software earns a “takes getting used to” qualifier. That qualifier is the market gap OnePlus will enter.

The Find 5 is available now. If you are willing to import and willing to live with ColorOS, you have the sharpest display of any Android phone on the planet. That is not nothing.

Part of OPPO: The Complete Story, my full history of OPPO from DVD players to the BBK empire.