Many high-end phones these days could claim to be a camera with a computer screen attached to them that occasionally is used to make voice calls. From the iPhone 17 Pro’s adverts claiming it can be used to film in extreme conditions to Samsung’s quadruple lenses on the Galaxy S25 Ultra including two telephoto zoom lenses, premium phones in 2025 are sold on their photography chops.

But I think I’ve found a phone that is a pure camera through and through, and could claim to be a camera more than it is a phone – especially when you add in a pricey accessory that makes it obvious where this phone’s best features lie.

That phone is the Oppo Find X9 Pro. I attended the launch event of the original Oppo Find X in 2018, the first phone in the range, discovering an ambitious device with a physically moving pop-up camera mechanism but flawed software and an unfinished feeling.

Since then I’ve used or reviewed the Find X2 Pro, Find X3 Pro, Find X5 Pro, Find X7 Ultra and last year’s Find X8 Pro. All have presented themselves as camera-first Android flagships, but the Find X9 Pro is a different beast altogether.

The first big change is the device’s design, which borrows from Apple, Samsung and Google and goes with flat edges and a flat screen. I personally prefer the curved screen and edges of the X8 Pro (and other phones like the OnePlus 13), but in Oppo’s instance, the flat design makes sense.

That’s down to the straight lines required to attach the optional Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit, a €499 telephoto lens attachment – available only in Europe via Italy, unfortunately – that comes with a special phone case and mount to affix it to the phone. It extends the X9 Pro’s already excellent 200MP 3x optical zoom lens to offer an even longer reach, with better quality than the digital zoom of the phone alone.

I’ve been testing the Kit with the X9 Pro and it’s a supremely capable camera set up. I’ve taken photos I’d never manage with this, or any, phone on its own. The longer range afforded to you is an approximation of buying a lens to add on to your DSLR camera, with a natural depth of field as well as long reach. But here you are paying a premium price for a phone accessory that in the end won’t give better shots than a cheaper DSLR set up.

That’s because this phone costs £1,099 in the UK. That’s a lot of money to pay for a phone, but this is also the best Oppo phone yet. The firm, which is owned by the same company that owns OnePlus, has worked hard since 2018 to refine, refine, refine the formula of a camera-first smartphone, and nailed it with this one.

The main improvements over previous generations are the assured design, much-improved, mature ColorOS software, and battery life. Amazing battery life. The Find X9 Pro has a 7,500mAh cell, which is a silicon-carbon battery, as opposed to older lithium-ion tech. It’s denser, meaning it’s possible to fit a higher capacity compared to other phones. The Oppo easily lasts me two days of normal use, which is not something I can say for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or iPhone 16, both of which have lithium-ion batteries with 5,000mAh and 3,561mAh respectively.

All that juice means you can shoot all day long with the amazing cameras on this phone and not worry about your battery. Until now, the very best phone cameras I’d ever used were the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and Vivo X200 Pro, phones that are comfortably head and shoulders above Apple, Samsung and Google in the imaging department but much less popular with buyers (I lament that you can’t buy Vivo phones in the UK). The Oppo Find X9 Pro is good enough to join the top table, with superb dynamic range, control of light, sharpness, lack of noise and beautiful processing. In part we can thank Oppo’s ongoing partnership with Hasselblad, which lends its expertise to the output and has its ‘H’ logo subtly adorn the back of the phone.

Along with the 200MP telephoto that’s perfect for street photography shots, the main 50MP is no slouch either, with a large 1/1.28-inch sensor. I don’t much use the ultra-wide lenses on phone cameras, but this one is a handy 50MP that gives decent results. A 50MP selfie camera rounds things off.

Shooting with the X9 Pro on holiday in Italy, I feel I was able to really put the Find X9 Pro to the test. Here are the photos I’m most pleased with:

Despite the premise of this review, a phone is also a phone and this one does all the other phone things excellently.

It’s built like a tank – even when I accidentally dropped it without a case onto tiled floor, the screen stayed intact and the frame only has a couple of minor nicks to show for it. The display is gorgeous and gets very bright when you need it in direct sunlight, plus Oppo’s ColorOS software based on Android 16 has come a long way since that first Find X all those years ago.

Android fans might not like how much ColorOS looks like Apple’s iOS for the iPhone, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. This is a very mature operating system with a lot of polish and no rough edges. Everything zips by quickly and, just like on other phones, I enjoy ignoring all the AI. It does come with some pre-installed app bloatware, which I don’t like to see at this price, but you can uninstall them all. Oppo is promising five years of Android OS updates and six years of security updates till 2031. That’s pretty good, but a tad behind Google and Samsung’s promise of seven on some of those firms’ phones.

And yes, £1,099 is a lot to pay for a phone. But if I had that chunk of cash to spend on my next phone it would currently be very near the top of the list, and that’s largely because the Find X9 Pro is such an excellent camera, even without the optional lens.

The phone is available from Oppo in the UK and also on contract from EE and Carphone Warehouse.