Pat Pilcher
A growing number of manufacturers are incorporating a screen notch into their smartphone designs. It started with the Essential Phone and then became a mainstream thing thanks to Apple’s iPhone X. If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, it’s that a notch – a section cut into the top portion of the display – means phones can have an all-screen as the notch can accommodate a front-facing camera, and other front-facing components.
They may be on trend right now, but for many, it’s an abomination and an annoyance when watching videos on your phone. Regardless of how you feel about the notch, the reality is that if you want facial recognition and selfies, you need a notch, and that’s that. At least that used to be the case until Oppo announced the Find X. It comes with a gorgeous edge-to-edge screen and no notch. The secret sauce is a pop-up camera.
Being a flagship Android smartphone, it sports some reasonably powerful specs. These include a Snapdragon 845 CPU, a generous 8GB of RAM and a whopping 256GB of storage, plus a massive 3730mAh battery. Being an Oppo device, it is also fair to assume that it’ll have Vooc, Oppo’s super-fast charging tech. Rounding things out is a front-facing 3D face scanner and dual-SIM support.
Without a doubt, the most exciting feature of the Find X is its stealthy front-facing selfie camera. It’s motorised and only pops up when you fire up the camera app and choose the 25-megapixel front-facing camera.
Looks-wise, the Find X’s claim to fame is its bezel-free display. There are no ugly bezels gobbling up scarce screen real-estate here, nor is there a notch. The effect is a striking all-screen design. The phone itself appears to be an all-glass design that comes in a sophisticated blue or wine-red finish.
About the only real downside with a pop-up camera is that it makes for a slightly chunkier phone. Given the gorgeous edge-to-edge and stunning all-glass chassis, this isn’t likely to be a massive issue for most users.
Oppo has yet to announce New Zealand pricing and availability. We at Witchdoctor can’t wait.
