This 10x zoom flagship aims to make telephoto converters obsolete

Ultra flagships from Chinese OEMs sport some of the best tech you can find on phones, and this year’s lineup is doubling down on cameras in all the right ways. Xiaomi has already launched the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, while vivo is gearing up to launch the vivo X300 Ultra. OPPO is not to be left behind, as the company has confirmed the global launch of the OPPO Find X9 Ultra flagship and its innovative 10x optical zoom camera that uses a five-reflection prism.

OPPO Product Manager Zhou Shijie took to Weibo to share the Find X9 Ultra’s 50MP 10x optical zoom camera and the innovation that makes it possible. The biggest highlight is the five-reflection prism, as each reflection in the periscope optical path increases the engineering difficulty.

This periscope zoom setup uses a custom JNL 50MP sensor with an f.3,5 aperture. There’s also “gimbal-level” OIS on board. With this camera setup, OPPO is promising 10x optical zoom with a 230mm focal length, and 460mm 20x “optical quality” zoom.

OPPO is also doing all of this in a smaller camera module. A conventional L-shaped periscope telephoto module can be as long as 41mm for the same 10x zoom level. Using a five-reflection prism, OPPO has reduced the module’s length to 29mm, though it’s worth noting that the lenses now sit on top of the prism, so the module could potentially be thicker.

OPPO’s CEO, Pete Lau, took to X to say that phone makers adopted external telephoto converters because it was so challenging to build a 10x zoom camera into the phone. But with the Find X9 Ultra, OPPO has managed to deliver the same level of quality, eliminating the need for a telephoto converter.

OPPO is confident enough about this implementation that it is calling it the Hasselblad 10x Optical Telephoto Lens on the Find X9 Ultra. Note that the OPPO Find X9 Ultra has also been spotted with its own external telephoto converter, and existing phones like the Find X9 Pro also have their own.

Pete has also confirmed that the Find X9 Ultra is launching globally in April. Leaker Yogesh Brar cheekily responded, “Can’t wait for the 20th,” suggesting the launch date could be the 20th.

Leaks suggest that the Find X9 Ultra will come with a 200MP primary sensor, a 200MP 3x periscope telephoto camera, a 50MP ultrawide, and a 50MP selfie (front) camera in addition to this 50MP 10x periscope telephoto camera. That’s a lot of big cameras, so it remains to be seen just how big and beastly the camera module will be. We’ll find out soon enough.