No significant hardware improvements, OPPO Find X8 aims to win with AI

It's that time of year again when smartphone manufacturers frequently release new products, but the current crop of new phones fails to impress consumers much.

Among them, Apple's iPhone 16 event was as predictable and unremarkable as the market expected, continuing to rely on its absolute hardware dominance and loyal user base to maintain its position as the "defender." Huawei's tri-foldable phone, while a significant hardware breakthrough, is hampered by its high price and novelty, limiting it to a niche audience. Vivo's recent X200 event, besides the mini version appealing to iPhone switchers, mostly offered incremental upgrades, and a price increase of 300 yuan deterred many potential buyers.

It seems likely that in 2024, smartphone manufacturers will continue their struggles from the past two years, failing to deliver a new phone that targets a substantial audience, offers truly eye-catching features, and boasts impressive value for money.

The fourth entrant this fall, OPPO, which announced its full transition to AI earlier this year, has not escaped the "midlife crisis" of the smartphone industry, but it does have some new tricks up its sleeve.

01

The unremarkable Find X8 is solid in every aspect

Unlike Vivo's "high-end" event, OPPO's Find X8 launch was hosted by Liu Zuohu in a more approachable manner.

Right from the start of the event, he unveiled the product to the audience. Unlike previous generations with curved screens across the lineup, the standard Find X8 features a flat screen design. Utilizing a unique chip-level screen encapsulation production line costing up to 100 million yuan, OPPO achieved a 1.45mm ultra-narrow bezel on all four sides, striking a balance between imitating Apple's compact design and offering a large screen with excellent handling.

However, the 6.59-inch screen size feels awkward compared to the 6.3-inch iPhone 16 Pro or the recently launched 6.31-inch Vivo X200 Pro mini. Ultimately, the definition of a small screen depends on individual consumer preferences.

Despite the lackluster screen size, the phone's thickness has been significantly reduced. As a flagship, a periscope camera is a must, but its size inevitably contributes to the phone's thickness. OPPO has addressed this issue with the Find X8.

By adopting an inverted periscope camera design, the Find X8 achieves a thickness of 7.85mm and a camera bump of 10.96mm, marking a noticeable improvement in slimness and enhancing handling.

Similarly, the Pro version also offers upgrades, featuring an equal-depth quad-curved screen design and being thinner than the Find X7U while retaining dual periscope cameras. Overall, the improvements mirror those of the standard version.

Achieving such improvements, especially across two versions while catering to the broadest user base, is commendable, justifying the three-year investment of 100 million yuan.

After introducing the hardware, imaging, another major selling point, was discussed for over an hour. The core attraction lies in "snapshot photography."

According to Liu Zuohu at the event, atmosphere is crucial for a great photo, and it's captured through snapshots. However, current competitors struggle to balance good image quality with excellent timing for snapshots.

Specifically, while other phones offer snapshot modes, they require users to adjust settings and focal lengths in advance, often relying on algorithms to produce satisfactory results. This is counterintuitive. The Find X8 addresses this issue by integrating snapshots into the entire imaging system, allowing almost any focal length or mode to be used for snapshots, even more efficiently than dedicated snapshot modes.

The Pro version goes further with a dedicated snapshot quick-start button, allowing users to quickly launch the camera with a double tap, effortlessly capturing life's fleeting moments. Additionally, optimizations like pre-set film styles (NC, CC, NH), high-frame-rate live photos, and enhanced portrait mode soft lighting cater to the preferences of many Xiaohongshu users.

Thus, snapshots become a capability rather than just a mode on the Find X8.

While this upgrade doesn't involve significant hardware changes in the camera module, it effectively addresses many common photography issues in daily life. It also avoids potential issues like glare caused by camera module design, as seen recently with a competitor's device.

Following imaging, the Find X8 series' AI interaction also impresses.

At the start of the AI feature introduction, OPPO subtly criticized rival Vivo's swipe-up AI interaction method, arguing that selecting and swiping up to the "Atomic Island" before choosing an action is counterintuitive and inefficient. Instead, the Find X8 introduces an "AI button."

Officially, users can press and hold the power button on any interface to wake up the AI with a single tap. Put simply, it integrates various AI entry points, allowing users to verbally ask questions or make requests after activating the AI function.

Despite its apparent simplicity, this design addresses many AI usage issues. In the AI era, competitors strive to demonstrate AI's omnipresence and simplicity by dispersing features throughout the system. However, due to user diversity, this approach often complicates usage, whereas the "AI button" concept simplifies things significantly.

Besides summoning the AI assistant, following the popularity of AI portrait removal earlier this year, the Find X8 introduces AI glare removal, AI super-resolution, and AI motion blur reduction. As their names suggest, these features are useful for salvaging suboptimal photos in daily life.

Performance, often overlooked, was saved for the end of the event.

Currently, performance offers few surprises, with most flagships sporting the Dimensity 9400 chipset, differing mainly in benchmark scores (3 million vs. 3.1 million) and gaming performance demonstrations. In terms of battery life, the standard and Pro versions are equipped with 5630mAh and 5930mAh batteries, respectively, both supporting 50W wireless charging, delivering solid overall performance.

Moreover, the Shanhai RF architecture, signal map, and smart private network address communication issues in specific scenarios, though not groundbreaking, perform at a satisfactory level.

Regarding pricing, as a late entrant, the Find X8 holds an advantage. Amidst supply chain inflation and a 300 yuan price hike across Vivo's new lineup, OPPO absorbs some of the cost increase, resulting in a modest price increase for consumers. While not yet a no-brainer purchase, OPPO demonstrates its commitment, giving the flagship strong competitiveness, even outshining rivals.

02

China's former top player slipping out of the top 5 needs to catch up

Despite the Find X8 series' surprises and innovations, it faces challenges in standing out among fierce competition with minor breakthroughs to attract increasingly reluctant upgraders.

As OPPO's first flagship fully embracing AI, the Find X8's AI progress is ahead of competitors but not yet a compelling reason to choose it exclusively.

In February this year, OPPO's founder and CEO Chen Yongming issued an internal letter titled "Ushering in a New Era of AI Smartphones," declaring 2024 the first year of AI smartphones. He forecasted that AI's impact on the smartphone industry over the next five years would rival that of smartphones replacing feature phones, with OPPO already taking the lead.

Leveraging the AndesGPT large model, OPPO excels in AI features like generative images and call summaries, with AIGC removal outperforming rivals like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Vivo. The event's AI glare removal, super-resolution, and motion blur reduction functionalities are also novel.

However, user demand for these demonstrated AI capabilities remains to be seen. Some AI demos at the event were even somewhat awkward.

This isn't solely a designer issue but a shared challenge for AI-enabled smartphones and the consumer base. Until in-device AI singularity arrives, OPPO strives to create more user-friendly entry points (like the updated AI button).

Hardware-wise, despite investing over 100 million yuan in screen technology for this flagship, OPPO, having abandoned Zeku, offers little differentiation from rivals like Xiaomi and Vivo in terms of handling and usability.

In today's "advanced assembly plant" era, apart from Apple and Huawei with some autonomy, other smartphone manufacturers have limited options for flagship devices.

Processors are limited to Qualcomm's Snapdragon or MediaTek's Dimensity, with imaging capabilities often bolstered by partnerships with traditional imaging brands like Hasselblad, Zeiss, and Leica. Battery technologies, regardless of their fancy names, are mostly similar silicon-carbon anode batteries. So-called cutting-edge glasses are mostly variations of microcrystalline glass.

Given the lack of groundbreaking hardware innovations, calling these events branding exercises for smartphone manufacturers isn't far-fetched.

This is understandable given the product's size constraints and lack of new demands. Enhanced performance, longer battery life, and lighter weight are mere bonuses.

OPPO's modest hardware advancements may garner fleeting attention but are unlikely to win the stock competition or overcome the industry's "midlife crisis" for a renaissance. Beyond the Find X8's challenges in differentiating from competitors, OPPO stands at a crossroads, reevaluating its AI strategy.

According to multiple agency reports, OPPO's smartphone shipments declined amid an overall market recovery in Q2 2024, marking its fourth consecutive quarter of negative growth. Counterpoint data even placed OPPO outside the top 5 domestic players, labeling it as "others."

This positions OPPO as a "catch-up player," requiring innovative offerings to regain its former standing.

OPPO's struggles aren't due to inaction but overzealous efforts. Over the past five years, it embarked on numerous reforms, including long-term investments in imaging, in-house chip development, IoT expansion, XR enhancement, and channel reforms, all aimed at boosting sales.

Yet, looking back, only the sustained investment in imaging has kept OPPO afloat, while the shutdown of Zeku, abandoned IoT and XR plans, and channel reform struggles have hindered its brand's leap forward.

Reasons abound for this stagnation, from prematurely abandoning Zeku due to lack of immediate returns to entering the IoT market too late and grappling with entrenched dealer networks.

Nonetheless, OPPO has turned a new leaf in 2024, eyeing AI as a game-changer. Navigating sustained AI leadership while pushing boundaries in conventional areas like systems, screens, imaging, and batteries poses OPPO's paramount challenge.

References:

"OPPO Lags Behind, AI Not a Panacea," Tech Insights;

"OPPO Struggles: AI Smartphone Business Fails to Stem Urgent Needs," Stock Star;

Edited by Ding Li