What's new in Google's latest update to Android P? Watch Now Vide: What's new in Google's latest update to Android P? Chinese phone maker Oppo has unveiled the Oppo Find X, an Android smartphone with a 6.4-inch OLED display that spans almost its entire front surface. Rather than follow the standard notch answer to edge-to-edge displays, Oppo has gone with a mechanical pop-up camera behind the display, leaving the screen free of any cutouts for the selfie camera and facial-recognition sensors. The Find X's 'stealth 3D camera' will rise up when the camera app is opened and retracts when it is closed. It features a whopping 25-megapixel front-facing camera and a dual 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel rear camera. As noted by CNET, the front-facing 3D face-scanner improves selfies and unlocks the phone. It is similar in design to the one used by the Vivo Nex's pop-up selfie from Vivo, the sibling of Oppo and OnePlus, which are all owned by BKK Electronics. Oppo says the Find X facial recognition uses 3D structure light technology, which Apple used for the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera. SEE: How we learned to talk to computers, and how they learned to answer back (cover story PDF) However, instead of 30,000 dots projected onto a user's face, the Find X projects 15,000 dots. Nonetheless, it claims the Find X's facial recognition is 20 times faster than fingerprint recognition on the rear of the OPPO R15 Pro. The Find X checks all the boxes for the high-end 2018 smartphone, including Qualcomm's top-of-the-line Snapdragon 845 processor, 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of storage, VOOC fast charging, and a 3,730mAh battery. The display stretches from top to bottom and curves around the edges on both sides, giving it a 93.8 percent screen ratio, according to Oppo. The Find X will be available globally in August, with the 256GB option costing €999, which converts to about $1,159. Image: Oppo Previous and related coverage Mid-market battle: Oppo R11s and Sony Xperia XA2 Can a true mid-market phone take it to a more expensive Chinese competitor? Oppo Find X is an all-screen phone with slide-out cameras (CNET) You won't find a notch on this phone. Oppo R9s world's most popular Android smartphone: Strategy Analytics The Oppio R9s smartphone sold 9 million units globally during Q1 2017, the research firm said. Huawei overtakes Oppo as the top smartphone seller in China: IDC Huawei's market share in the region reached 20 percent for Q1 2017, according to the research firm. Samsung, once again, was kept out of the top five. Apple's remarkable China success lost in earnings translation (TechRepublic) Apple has done what virtually no other company has done: figure out how to make money in China. Lots of it. Apple iPhone beware: Huawei, Oppo, BBK are closing gap in smartphone sales China's fast-growing smartphone market is offering favorable conditions for local vendors at the expense of Apple and Samsung.<doc-sep>Oppo showed off its new Find X smartphone with a pop-up camera earlier today, and now the company has announced a partnership with Lamborghini to create a special version of the device. The smartphone maker says the Lamborghini version of the Oppo Find X will cost 1,699 euros ($1,966), and it’s the start of a partnership with the Italian luxury car brand. The special edition smartphone will have Super VOOC charging, which helps it fast charge its 3,400mAh battery from 0 to 100 percent within 35 minutes, according to Oppo. There hasn’t been word on whether the specs will be different from the regular Find X, but we do know that the Lamborghini edition has a carbon fiber texture on the rear with the car brand’s logo. Oppo’s new partnership comes just months after Huawei introduced a Porsche-branded flagship called the Porsche Design Mate RS, which has 512GB of storage. Both partnerships seemed aimed at the segment of society with a heavy taste for luxury. The Find X will be available in August, but a release date for the Lamborghini version hasn’t been announced yet.<doc-sep>The Oppo Find X, the first smartphone from the Chinese electronics company to be sold in Europe and North America, will cost €999 (about $1,155 at current USD conversation rates). The pricing was announced at the tail end of Oppo’s lavish reveal event that was held at the Louvre in Paris today. That price appears to be only for the 256GB configuration, and we don’t know whether the phone will be available for less money. The device is slated to ship in August, though we don’t know yet whether that time frame is for Europe, North America, or both regions. Prior to the Find X, Oppo phones were restricted to China, India, Philippines, and a few other Asian countries. This new model, which features an edge-to-edge display, is Oppo’s attempt to compete with top-tier handset makers like Apple and Samsung. Its most notable feature is a pop-up camera in place of a front-facing module fitted inside a display notch, as is the case on the iPhone X and a number of Android copycat devices. It’s a controversial choice, given that it may make the phone prone to mechanical issues and dust or water damage. But it’s definitely distinctive, and it’s an interesting workaround to incorporating a front-facing camera into a bezel-less display. Oppo is also launching a Lamborghini edition of the Find X phone for €1,699 (about $1,961) with an engraved logo and superior fast charging capability.<doc-sep>Oppo’s Find X and Vivo’s Nex are the two most recent and exciting Android devices of the year. Why exciting? Well, they bring us closer to the dream of a truly bezel-less phone, and they do it in dramatic style. Instead of putting a notched area at the top of the screen, both of these phones hailing from China give us pop-up selfie camera modules. Vivo’s is like a miniature periscope, while Oppo’s elevates the entire top of the phone. Just take a second to appreciate the fluid synchronicity between the on-screen animation when unlocking the Oppo Find X and the physical elevation of its slider. It’s a thing of beauty, hardware engineering meeting software design in a harmonious “whoa” moment: There’s not a soul among The Verge’s staff who wasn’t wowed by this spectacular move. Jaded and bearded veterans of the consumer tech industry were suddenly amazed and amused by the clever mechanics of this new Oppo phone. As a showpiece, as a glamorous bit of brand flair, or a thing to show off to your friends, the Oppo Find X is an instant winner. When it hits store shelves, it’ll also be an immediately easier sale for shop assistants who can nonchalantly flick to unlock the device and then wait for the inevitable “what just happened?” reaction from the prospective buyer. If this was the World Cup, Oppo’s Find X would be a Lionel Messi-like pirouette past three defenders, except it’d be going backward instead of forward. Adding mechanical parts to phones is a retrograde maneuver, which, in all honesty, creates a lot more issues than it solves. As a solution to the notch problem, especially, it is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. What’s wrong with mechanical sliders? I’m glad you asked. The issues are manifold. First, modern smartphones offer varying degrees of water resistance, but when you open up the phone’s innards like the Find X does, you lose that peace of mind. With glass on both the front and back — as Oppo uses on this phone and practically every other flagship smartphone is moving to — most people will want to put a case around their device, and the slider makes that tricky, if not entirely impossible. Dust, lint, sweat, and all sorts of other undesirable particles can get into the slider module. Ideally, you won’t be opening the Find X inside your pocket, but accidents happen, and I imagine that if you drop this phone with its camera slider open, it’ll be less structurally rigid than a unibody one. Then there’s the biggest problem for my camera-loving self: with both the front and rear cameras hidden behind the display and inside the rear shell of the phone, there’s scarcely any space left to include a high-quality camera assembly. The reason the iPhone X and most of its best rivals have camera bumps is simple physics: the best imaging equipment requires depth to fit an array of lenses. Without wishing to sound too cynical, my expectations of the Oppo Find X’s cameras are not very high. Two other factors weigh against the use of any mechanical components in modern phone design. One is power consumption: triggering that pop-up and pop-down motion may be cool as all hell, but it has an associated power cost. And given that there’s no fingerprint sensor on the Oppo Find X, you’re going to be using the selfie camera for face ID a lot during the course of a regular day. And the final matter is simple reliability. As noted designer Philippe Starck remarked back in 2009 when interviewed about the QWERTY slider Nokia N97, anytime you add a mechanical component, no matter how good or impressive, you’re making your product less durable. Apple has been on a mission to eliminate all its mechanical buttons, from iPhones and MacBooks alike, while HTC even went so far as to replace the side buttons on its U12 Plus with haptic-feedback touch keys. I absolutely recognize the fun and superficial appeal of the Oppo Find X’s slider. It exhibits cohesive design that the Vivo Nex and other phones aren’t even close to, and it instantly adds a degree of character and uniqueness in a highly competitive but also homogenous Android flagship market. I don’t underestimate the tactile appeal of a mechanical part that moves in concert with the user’s whims, nor do I think the privacy reassurance of knowing all your cameras are covered up is an unimportant one. And yet, I still see this as the past rather than the future of mobile technology. The smartphone is defined by its convergence of various tools and devices, by its shrinking of what’s necessary, rather than its expansiveness. I think Oppo’s goal was to wow us and pique global attention for its wares, which is why the Find X is so radically different. It’s a fantastic engineering showcase for a company with ambitions beyond its native market of China. The phone’s camera slider is also a cool retort to anyone clinging to the outdated accusation that Android device makers only ever copy the iPhone. But it’s not going to change the world or even the way phones are designed. It’s just a bad idea that’s executed well.<doc-sep>
The Chinese smartphone maker Oppo launched its new Find X phone on Tuesday, along with the Find X Automobili Lamborghini Edition. Oppo says the Find X Lamborghini edition can charge from 0% to 100% in 35 minutes and will cost nearly $2,000. Both versions of the Find X have a nearly edge-to-edge display, a motorized hidden camera, and facial recognition. The Chinese smartphone maker Oppo just announced one of the priciest phones you can buy. At an event in the Louvre Museum in Paris on Tuesday, Oppo announced its new Find X device, a premium smartphone with a nearly edge-to-edge display, a motorized hidden camera, and a beautiful shiny finish. On its own, the Find X is an expensive device — Oppo said it would cost €999 (about $1,160) when it's released in August. But there's another, pricier device on the way. At the event, Oppo also unveiled the Find X Automobili Lamborghini Edition, which has superfast charging; Oppo says it can charge a battery from 0% to 100% in 35 minutes. The Lamborghini edition will cost €1,699, which is about $1,970. The phone will also have 512 GB of storage, a carbon-fiber texture underneath the glass on the back of the device, and an engraved Lamborghini logo. Otherwise, the Lamborghini edition will have specs similar to the standard Find X device, including facial recognition, a 25-megapixel selfie camera, and a screen that covers more than 93% of the front of the phone. Oppo is launching the Find X in Europe this August, but there's no word yet on when the device could come to the US.