OPPO Find X at the Louvre: The Most Ambitious Smartphone Design of the Decade

June 19, 2018. OPPO just launched its new flagship at the Louvre in Paris, and the Find X is the most visually ambitious smartphone design since the original iPhone removed the keyboard. The motorized slider mechanism that hides the front and rear cameras, the 3D face scanning array, and the fingerprint sensor inside the body when not in use allows OPPO to achieve a 93.8% screen-to-body ratio on the 6.42-inch AMOLED display. There is no notch. There is no chin. There is almost nothing but screen on the front of this device, because everything that would interrupt the screen has been moved inside a mechanical housing that emerges from the top of the phone when needed.

I need to explain what “launched at the Louvre” means as a strategic decision, because it is not incidental. OPPO chose the most famous museum in France, in the country most associated globally with design and artistic prestige, for its first major Western market launch event. This is also OPPO’s first phone to officially enter the French market, the UK market, and the broader European consumer market. The Louvre is not a venue. It is a positioning statement: this company belongs in the same conversation as the objects displayed in this building.

What makes the Find X technically significant

Snapdragon 845. 8GB of RAM. 256GB of storage. OPPO’s Super VOOC charging at 50W on the Lamborghini Edition, the fastest charging available on any consumer smartphone in June 2018. The standard Find X charges at 25W VOOC. Both implementations are faster than anything Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0 produces in real-world thermal conditions. The pop-up mechanism covers a 25MP front camera and dual 16MP and 20MP rear cameras, plus the structured light 3D facial recognition array that OPPO is comparing to Apple’s Face ID in the launch materials. The 0.5-second deployment time for the slider is, in June 2018 demonstrations, genuinely fast enough not to feel like a compromise.

The durability concern is real and I am not dismissing it. A mechanical slider adds a failure mode that flat-glass phones do not have. OPPO rates the mechanism for 300,000 open-close cycles, which is roughly 200 unlocks per day for four years. Whether real-world usage matches that rating is a question that will be answered by the community over the next six months. Today, the engineering is impressive, the concern is legitimate, and the tradeoff (no notch, no compromise bezel, mechanical risk) is one OPPO has made deliberately and is asking the market to evaluate.

France, OPPO, and what this launch means personally

I am French. I was in France in June 2018 watching this launch with a specific kind of attention. OPPO had been a brand I knew through Chinese tech coverage and through Pete Lau’s OPPO history as the context for OnePlus. The Find X at the Louvre is OPPO announcing to the French consumer electronics market, my market historically, that it is here and serious. The Find X will be available in France through Amazon and select retailers from August 2018. This is the first time a mainstream French consumer can walk into a French conversation about “what phone should I buy” and have someone answer “OPPO” without it sounding like a joke. Four years later, OPPO will select me as a Product Ambassador. The Find X at the Louvre is where that story begins.

The Find X is beautiful. It is also not on sale yet. We will know whether the mechanism holds up and whether the cameras deliver on their promise when retail units ship in August. What is not in question today is the ambition. OPPO launched a phone at the Louvre. Whatever comes next, nobody can say they did not take the Western market seriously.

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