Cover story: A look at OPPO and Hasselblad’s blend of classic and contemporary

The Lunar Module Eagle spacecraft touched down on the Moon five decades ago, marking the historic occasion of humans first landing on the Earth’s satellite. NASA’s astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, stepped out onto the dusty surface of the Moon, wearing massive space suits. To capture the watershed moment, NASA chose Swedish manufacturer Hasselblad’s cameras, which subsequently immortalised the images of the two heroic astronauts taking a giant leap for mankind.

More than five decades later, NASA’s newest rocket Artemis is all geared up to launch a trip around the Moon this year, an integral task that is inching towards the ultimate mission of transporting people to the Moon in 2026. To commemorate this milestone, OPPO has launched its cutting-edge flagship Find X5 series in partnership with Hasselblad. “Hasselblad aims to serve image creators who want to be remarkable with their capabilities and inspirations. The collaboration between OPPO and Hasselblad is focused on developing more advanced imaging solutions, currently starting with software improvements aimed at providing users with more natural colours and a more refined imaging experience,” says Tarek Zaki, senior product manager at OPPO MEA. OPPO has also announced a three-year partnership with the camera manufacturer for the Find series.

The wait is over
OPPO’s latest Find X5 series was unveiled in Dubai Mall at the immersive art experience, Infinity des Lumières, which featured hi-tech digital art masterpieces. In addition to its futuristic aesthetic, the series offers world-first imaging experiences. Among them is an imaging Neural Processing Unit designed to overcome the most pressing challenge of a smartphone’s video recording – its nighttime recording. With a dual IMX766 camera system, unrivalled performance, ultra-fast 5G connectivity and Supervooc flash charging, this series is said to deliver a truly remarkable experience.

“The Find X5 series is yet another jewel in the crown of OPPO’s innovation and creativity, elevating the series to a whole new level of beauty, redrawing the boundaries of the mobile experience across design, imaging, technology and performance,” states Lucy Aziz, senior PR and communications manager at OPPO GCC. “It was only fitting to unveil the Find X5 series to stakeholders surrounded by futuristic digital art at Infinity Des Lumières under the guise of their current theme of Destination Cosmos, showcasing the vastness of the universe. This collaboration allows us to honour our strategic partner Hasselblad’s most iconic moment, being the camera used to document the historical first steps of man on the Moon,” she adds.

Futuristic design and display
The OPPO Find X5 Pro features a distinctive design, with the rear camera array resting in an irregularly shaped, elevated section that appears to have been sculpted out of the chassis rather than being fitted into a more standard cut-out. “The Find X5 series is OPPO’s high-end flagship series. It represents the pinnacle of advanced technology, and provides users with an unmatched design and fantastic product experience,” comments Fadi Abu-Shamat, director of Planning and Strategy at OPPO MEA.

Meanwhile, the ceramic back of the Find X5 Pro has twice the strength of a glass panel and is twice as effective at dissipating heat. Display-wise, it promises a 6.7-inch ultra-clear curved AMOLED screen. Furthermore, with a 100 per cent P3 colour gamut coverage, the Find X5 Pro’s 10-bit screen displays more than one billion colours, resulting in seamless tonal and colour gradations. With its first multi-brightness colour calibration, the phone provides consistent colours, regardless of whether the user is looking at the screen in dim artificial light or in bright daylight. Since excessive amounts of specific types of light can disrupt sleep and cause eye fatigue, OPPO has created an 8192-level screen dimming feature in the smartphone so that pupil adjustment speeds can be matched across various lighting conditions.

Empowering every moment
OPPO aims to empower every moment, just as NASA aims to empower more discoveries. The brand seeks to provide consumers with the best technology and user experience which is why it has worked closely with Hasselblad’s engineers to bring natural colour calibration to Find X5 Pro. The natural colour calibration brings iconic natural colour, professional colour profile and style to mobile photography. “OPPO collaborated with top-tier Hasselblad photographers to jointly develop three creative master-style filters, including Radiance, Emerald and Serenity that allows users to easily replicate Hasselblad’s masters’ style with their mobile phones,” opines Zaki.

“Image creators are able to use Hasselblad camera to get the uncompromising image quality and true-to-nature colour performance. The collaboration between OPPO and Hasselblad is focused on developing more advanced imaging solutions, currently starting with software improvements aimed at providing users with more natural colours and a more refined imaging experience.” Meanwhile during its research, OPPO also noted how capturing night video poses a significant challenge to users. This makes countless beautiful moments go unrecorded or are recorded at low quality. Addressing this need, OPPO designed a dedicated imaging NPU, MariSilicon X, to unveil the details at night.

The MariSilicon X is built on a 6nm process and is built for top-tier imaging performance. It has the fastest artificial intelligence (AI) computing power as well as an advanced AI noise reduction algorithm developed by the OPPO Research Institute. As a result, it can reduce noise pixel by pixel in every frame while preserving finer details, skin tones, and colour accuracy. This further results in a four-fold increase in perceived night video resolution, less grain, and better colour reproduction, making 4K ultra night video available for the first time on an Android phone, each frame looking like a still photograph.

Distinctive performance
Performance is one of the vital factors for users when choosing a smartphone. The Find X5 Pro sports a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 quad-core processor so that it can handle even the most complex games and applications. In addition to improved AI capabilities, Qualcomm’s integrated flagship GPU delivers 30 per cent more performance and 25 per cent greater power efficiency than the previous generation. Despite its class-leading power, OPPO has doubled its efforts to boost battery life on the Find X5 Pro. The smartphone’s 5000mAh dual-cell battery can charge from close to empty to 50 per cent in only 12 minutes, and a 50W Airvooc can wirelessly charge it to 100 per cent in just 47 minutes. The Find X5 Pro also includes a Battery Health Engine, which helps extend the battery’s life for longer – up to 1,600 charging cycles, roughly twice the industry standard.

Security ‘first’
Nearly 84 per cent of the global population now owns a smartphone, which has made these devices a favoured target for malicious hackers. OPPO has always placed a high priority on the security and safety of its products. The brand’s human-centric interface, ColorOS 12.1, combined with Google’s Android 12 operating system, delivers incredible experiences and maximum privacy features while maintaining full access to the Google Play Store and over three million applications. Maintaining the privacy and security of users’ data – whether personal or for business is a top priority and a key focus for ColorOS. These efforts have been recognised by third-party organisations, including ISO, ePrivacy and TrustArc.

Creating new possibilities
OPPO has always strived to meet the core needs of its users and provide optimum customer service. “We have always been committed to technology and product innovation that creates a more comprehensive and immersive user experience. Innovative technologies and unique designs are OPPO’s core competency. We strive to create products that enable users to enjoy the ‘beauty of technology’ by packing the powerful technology into beautiful designs, allowing the state-of-art innovation to flow seamlessly into our customers’ lives,” adds Abu-Shamat. OPPO is looking to change the way people preserve memories, be it in broad daylight or under the stars. The company’s futuristic endeavour attempts to mirror how half a century ago NASA managed to revolutionise space travel.

Read: Raising the bar: How OPPO is inching towards the high-end segment