OPPO has launched its flagship 5G smartphone in New Zealand now. The OPPO Find X2 Pro is an amazing phone - it is elegant, amazing screen, fast and seriously fast. 

The OPPO Find X2 Pro is a beautiful piece of design and engineering. It laser-cut ceramic back is polished and yet it is not slippery. Its 6.7 inches OLED curved panel offers a smooth 120 Hz refresh rate with 3168 x 1440 pixels QHD+ resolution (513 PPI) and support for HDR10 (one billion colours). This means motion appears so fluid - I mean just scrolling apps up and down from the launcher and you notice the difference. And when you watch HD content (on Netflix, Amazon Prime or YouTube) you can see how vibrant the colours are.

And if the source content is not up to this video quality, the O1 Ultra Vision Engine will work hard to upscale it to HDR quality, with a hardware-accelerated visual processing.

On top of that, you will find the Natural Tone Display feature an interesting addition - the device measures the ambient light and colour and automatically adjusting the screen white balance, making it easier to read for longer periods of time.

But this is not all. OPPO's ColorOS 7.1 (based on Android 10) is really showing the results of years of investment on this platform. Operation is smooth, settings menus are well defined and options are easy to find.

The front camera is located on the top left corner and there's no "notch". It's only a small hole on the display with the notification bar just next to it. Because of this there are no notification LEDs but OPPO has an option here: the "screen light effects" for notifications. When this is active the edges of the screen will light up all around and pulsate slowly. This is in addition to the always-on display option.

In terms of privacy, ColorOS has a few tricks available. The Personal Information Protection option will provide select apps with empty data if said app tries to access call history, contacts, messages and events. Although you can turn on this feature for all supported apps already on your phone, any new app added after you turn Personal Information Protection on will be added as off by default - so keep an eye on these new apps. I know this feature works because I turned it on for all apps before adding my Office 365 account to Outlook. Once I turned on Outlook contact sync I saw a notification saying the app had no access to the Contacts database. I turned the option off for Outlook only and all contacts synchronised automatically.

Also part of the privacy settings is the Payment Protection option. This feature will ensure some financial apps automatically run inside a secure environment - it checks the device is not rooted, not connected via USB and that no malicious apps are installed. In my tests, it correctly selected this secure environment for applications such as ANZ GoMoney, BNZ mobile, Google Pay and Coinbase. It did not cover apps like TransferWise, TenX (a Bitcoin-backed credit card) or Coinbase Wallet - and there's no option to manually add an app to the list.

Another privacy feature is the Secure Keyboard. You can enable the secure keyboard for data entry into those financial apps or when entering password fields. This is a very basic keyboard that is isolated from the rest of the system, to prevent password leakage during app login.

The OPPO Find X2 Pro has an under-screen fingerprint reader that can be used to unlock the device as well as used for authentication with apps - and you can even change the on-screen animation feedback when you scan your fingerprint. You can also use facial recognition to unlock the phone, including an option to turn on the device and scan for faces when lifted or brought up. You can either for unlocking the phone, specific apps or your Private Safe, a file storage that can only be accessed through biometric confirmation.

ColorOS also offers a floating sidebar that allows you to swipe from the edge of the screen and see a list of shortcuts to actions (screenshot, screen recording) or apps. This allows you to quickly access your most-used apps without having to hit the home button first. 

You will also be surprised at data speeds you can achieve with the OPPO Find X2 Pro. For mobile data it supports 5G (up to 4.1 Gbps downloads) - I've tested it with a Vodafone 5G SIM around Wellington finding it a lot faster than the first generation of 5G devices offered by a competitor when 5G was originally launched here. But not only that, out of the box it also supports VoLTE - something my current smartphone (from a different brand and despite all monthly updates and promises) have not yet delivered. Despite supporting all the necessary bands available in New Zealand, the OPPO Find X2 Pro has only one SIM card slot.

For those using WiFi, more surprises: the OPPO Find X2 Pro can connect to two different WiFi networks at the same time. The feature, called Dual WiFi acceleration allows some apps, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Opera browser and a few others to automatically connect to a second WiFi network to speed up things. This means if you have both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz access points at home, the OPPO Find X2 Pro can connect to both of those at the same time.

This is not all in terms of speed. The OPPO Find X2 Pro is powered by a fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Mobile Platform (64 bit octa-core, up to 2.84 GHz) and an Adreno 650 GPU.  But all this speed wouldn't be of much use if not paired with very impressive 12 GB RAM and 512 GB storage - but sorry no external memory support. At about 217g weight it's a marvel really. 

In terms of cameras, the OPPO Find X2 Pro uses three cameras in the rear. The 48 megapixels wide-angle camera is based on the Sony IMX689 sensor (1/1.4" sensor size, f/1.7 aperture, 7P lens), while the  48 ultra wide-angle camera is based on the Sony IMX586 sensor (1/2" sensor size, f/2.2 aperture, 6P lens). This set is complemented by a 13 megapixels periscope telephoto camera (f/3.0 aperture, 5P lens) allowing 10x hybrid zoom and up to 60x digital zoom. This setup supports up to 6000 x 8000 resolution (48 megapixels mode) or 4000 x 3000 pixels for the standard mode. You can also record videos in multiple formats including 4K@60fps/30fps, 1080P@60fps/30fps and 720P@60fps/30fps.

Lastly, the battery - actually a set of two 2130 mAh for a total capacity of 4260 mAh, supported by a 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 Flash Charge - and if you've experienced their chargers you know it's ultra fast. Battery life is good, although you might have to manage apps that you want to always run in the background.

The only thing I could really fault here is the rear camera bump - it is big enough that the phone is not stable when laying on its back. This is minimised if you use the free silicone case that comes with the phone.