February 2022. I received an email two weeks ago that I am still processing. OPPO has selected me as one of twenty Product Ambassadors worldwide for the Find X5 program. Twenty people, different countries, different backgrounds, different relationships with the brand. I am a Frenchman living in Chicago who has never held an OPPO smartphone in his life. I applied on a whim after seeing a tweet from OPPO announcing the program. The email confirming my selection arrived and I stared at it for a while before responding.

The OPPO Product Ambassador Program is the company’s attempt to do at the Find X5 level what OnePlus’s community model did for the OnePlus One: build a group of credible voices outside the company who have hands-on experience with the device and a genuine opinion about it. The difference is that OnePlus built its community before it had a product. OPPO is building an ambassador program around a specific product launch, which is a more controlled and more traditional model. Whether it generates the same kind of authentic community response that OnePlus’s unstructured forum-first approach generated is an open question. What it does generate is twenty people around the world who have access to the Find X5 before retail launch and a specific reason to write about it.

What the selection tells you about OPPO’s global strategy

The twenty ambassadors represent more than ten countries across Asia, Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. The selection criteria, as far as I can determine from my own profile and the profiles of the other ambassadors announced this week, prioritize: technology writing or content creation, genuine interest in mobile photography, regional diversity, and a follower or reader base in markets where OPPO is expanding or wants to expand. I fit the European-to-American angle: a Frenchman with US presence covering tech from a bilingual perspective.

The device arriving is the standard Find X5, not the Pro. I want to be transparent about this because it affects the review. The Find X5 Pro has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, five-axis optical image stabilization, and the f/1.7 aperture on the main camera. The Find X5 has the Snapdragon 888, two-axis OIS, and f/1.8. Both have the MariSilicon X. Both have the Hasselblad tuning. The camera differences are real and meaningful to a careful reviewer. I received the device that puts more of those differences to the test rather than less.

What I am looking for

I have never used ColorOS for more than a demo. I have used OxygenOS on multiple OnePlus devices. I know OPPO’s charging standards well from following the VOOC story since 2014. I know the MariSilicon X announcement from October. What I do not know, and what three weeks of daily use in Chicago in February will tell me, is whether the Find X5 is worth its €999 price tag for a buyer who is not a Chinese consumer buying through OPPO’s offline retail at a lower local price, but a European consumer making a deliberate premium Android purchase against the Pixel 6 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S22.

The full review is coming once I have enough real shooting time, including the night photography that the Chicago winter has so far denied me. For now: I am an OPPO ambassador, I have a Find X5, and I am approaching it the way I approach every device I cover with no prior brand loyalty. Results to follow.

Read the full Find X5 review: OPPO Find X5 Full Review: An Ambassador’s Honest Take.

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