One of the best — frequently the best — camera phones of 2026, with a uniquely versatile quad Hasselblad system and class-leading 10x optical zoom
Class-leading battery life: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell routinely delivers 8–10+ hours of screen-on time and can stretch to two days
100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–52 minutes
Stunning, distinctive Hasselblad-inspired design widely called one of the best-looking phones of the year
Excellent, very bright display — ~3,600 nits HDR peak and ~1,800 nits full-screen outdoors
Pros & Cons
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Pros
One of the best — frequently the best — camera phones of 2026, with a uniquely versatile quad Hasselblad system and class-leading 10x optical zoom
Class-leading battery life: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell routinely delivers 8–10+ hours of screen-on time and can stretch to two days
100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–52 minutes
Stunning, distinctive Hasselblad-inspired design widely called one of the best-looking phones of the year
Excellent, very bright display — ~3,600 nits HDR peak and ~1,800 nits full-screen outdoors
Detailed Comparison
Design & Build
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A Hasselblad-camera tribute in phone form — vegan leather, a symmetrical 'master eye' module and a Hexagon-inspired ring. Gorgeous to most, oversized to some, and undeniably heavy.
One of the best-looking phones of the year.
Inspired by the Hasselblad X2D camera — the most beautiful phone of 2026 so far.
The perfectly symmetrical 'master eye' camera module and Hasselblad-style shutter button clearly pay tribute to the brand's classic camera aesthetics.
The hardware is insanely ambitious, but the first thing you notice holding it isn't elegance — it's size and weight.
It weighs about 239g and measures ~9.1mm thick — a genuinely big phone.
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Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers top-of-chart benchmark performance
Best-in-class video on an Android phone, with strong stabilization and 8K30 / 4K120 Dolby Vision across lenses
Deal Breakers
Heavy and large (≈236–239g, ~9.1mm) with a polarising oversized circular camera island
Expensive (≈€1,699 / ~$1,100+ in China) with limited or no official availability in many markets
ColorOS trails Samsung and Google on AI-feature depth and integration, and feels iOS-derived to some users
Mediocre sustained performance — 3DMark stability around 49% with peak performance dropping within a minute
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
What Reviewers Agree On
The aluminium-frame, Gorilla Glass Victus+ build feels genuinely premium — close to a flagship and a step above most midrange rivals.
The 6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED at 120Hz is a great-looking screen and the highlight of the daily experience.
The 5,000mAh battery delivers strong all-day-plus endurance with very low standby drain.
The 50MP OIS main camera is dependable with excellent video and strong low-light for the price.
Four years of OS updates plus flagship-grade Knox Vault security is class-leading long-term support for a midranger.
Deal Breakers
Charging is a slow 25W wired with no wireless charging at all.
The Exynos 1480 is midrange — there's occasional micro-stutter/lag launching the camera or switching apps.
The display maxes at ~1,000 nits (well below flagship brightness) and there's no official US availability.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 delivers top-of-chart benchmark performance
Best-in-class video on an Android phone, with strong stabilization and 8K30 / 4K120 Dolby Vision across lenses
Cons
Heavy and large (≈236–239g, ~9.1mm) with a polarising oversized circular camera island
Expensive (≈€1,699 / ~$1,100+ in China) with limited or no official availability in many markets
ColorOS trails Samsung and Google on AI-feature depth and integration, and feels iOS-derived to some users
Mediocre sustained performance — 3DMark stability around 49% with peak performance dropping within a minute
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
Pros
The aluminium-frame, Gorilla Glass Victus+ build feels genuinely premium — close to a flagship and a step above most midrange rivals.
The 6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED at 120Hz is a great-looking screen and the highlight of the daily experience.
The 5,000mAh battery delivers strong all-day-plus endurance with very low standby drain.
The 50MP OIS main camera is dependable with excellent video and strong low-light for the price.
Four years of OS updates plus flagship-grade Knox Vault security is class-leading long-term support for a midranger.
Cons
Charging is a slow 25W wired with no wireless charging at all.
The Exynos 1480 is midrange — there's occasional micro-stutter/lag launching the camera or switching apps.
The display maxes at ~1,000 nits (well below flagship brightness) and there's no official US availability.
Some find the huge circular camera apparatus ugly, when we usually ask for less intrusive camera bumps.
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
The A55's standout: a premium aluminium frame with Gorilla Glass Victus+, subtle design refinements, and IP67 — it feels far more expensive than it is.
Subtle design updates make the A55 look and feel desirable from the moment you pick it up.
Build is Gorilla Glass Victus+ front, glass back and an aluminium frame.
Premium in-hand feel — about as close to a premium flagship feel as any midrange phone, with a build nicer than the S24 FE.
It's a few millimetres bigger and 10g+ heavier than before thanks to the more premium build, but still comfortable.
Owners consistently single out the build quality and premium feel as the best part of the phone.
Display
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A 6.8-inch LTPO OLED with up to 144Hz and very high real-world brightness — among the brightest screens on any phone outdoors.
6.8-inch LTPO OLED panel up to 144Hz, with a maximum brightness around 1,800 nits and dimming as low as 1 nit.
Hits a staggering ~3,600 nits of peak HDR brightness, making it incredibly easy to see and edit shots in direct sunlight.
In manual mode the display peaks at 840 nits, rising to ~1,156 nits in auto on a 75% white patch and up to ~1,932 nits in the native gallery app.
The smoother 144Hz panel and 3,600-nit brightness outperform Samsung's display.
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
A 6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED at 120Hz — vibrant and the highlight of the experience, but caps at ~1,000 nits, below flagship brightness.
6.6-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED at 120Hz, the same bright, smooth panel class as the A35.
The viewing experience is basically what makes this phone 100% worth the money.
It can't match the S24's 2,600-nit peak, maxing at 1,000 nits in High Brightness Mode.
The AMOLED gets very dark at night, which photophobic users particularly appreciate.
Cameras
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
The reason to buy it. A Hasselblad-tuned quad system with the most versatile zoom on any phone, a true 10x optical periscope and an optional 300mm Hasselblad teleconverter. Near-universally praised, with only minor sharpness and ultrawide caveats.
A 200MP main, 200MP 3x telephoto, 50MP 10x optical telephoto and 50MP ultrawide, all Hasselblad-branded — camera-first overkill in the best way.
Consistently great photos, sharpness and dynamic range with really good color calibration — this phone did basically everything right in the camera department; an incredibly well-rounded smartphone camera.
Is this the best camera phone ever built? — my new favorite camera phone and one of the best Android phones I've ever used.
Even after a direct shootout, still the best camera phone I've ever used.
Detail is very good, but sharpness remains a bit underwhelming on the main camera.
The ultrawide is probably the weakest part of the setup — with the first three cameras taking so much space, Oppo reused the Samsung GN5 sensor here.
Night-mode processing — color, contrast and exposure handling — is so much better than the Galaxy S26 Ultra's, and the ultrawide is now one of the best for detail preservation.
The optional 300mm Hasselblad teleconverter delivers ~13x (300mm) optical-feel zoom that retains real telephoto sharpness, extending to ~60x (1380mm).
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
A 50MP f/1.8 OIS main, 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro, plus a 32MP selfie. Dependable with strong low-light for the class, weaker against true flagships at night.
Triple rear: 50MP f/1.8 OIS main (1/1.56"), 12MP ultrawide and a 5MP macro.
Dependable camera performance with excellent videos, per the GSMArena review.
Versus the iPhone 13 it holds its own in almost every scenario, and clearly wins in low light with less noise.
Night mode isn't on par with the iPhone 15 or Pixel 8 Pro, but it's a clear improvement and competitive at the price.
Video records up to 4K 30fps on the main, ultrawide and front cameras, with smoother FHD 60fps available.
Performance
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 puts it near the top of the benchmark charts, but sustained-load stability is mediocre and Oppo deliberately throttles early to control heat.
As expected, the Find X9 Ultra earns excellent benchmark scores near the top of the charts.
A 3D ultrasonic fingerprint scanner Oppo claims is 35% faster and 33% more reliable, plus vapor cooling to dissipate heat through the aluminium frame for better sustained performance.
3DMark returned ~7,530 best-loop and ~3,682 low-loop with only ~49% stability, and peak performance didn't last a minute — weak sustained behaviour.
Genshin Impact stayed consistently above 50fps and remained smooth even when throttling to ~30fps after ~16 minutes at 41.5°C, at under 4W power draw.
Honor of Kings averaged 144fps over 30 minutes at max settings; Genshin held max 60fps before stabilizing near 50fps.
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
Exynos 1480 with up to 8/12GB RAM — solidly midrange. Smooth for daily use thanks to 120Hz, but with occasional micro-stutter under load.
The A55 ups the ante with more memory (8GB), a faster Exynos 1480 and a superior camera setup over its predecessor.
There's occasional lag or micro-stutter when launching the camera in social apps or switching between apps.
120Hz is well optimised and the UI stays smooth, with the camera even opening slightly faster than on the A56.
It runs cooler than a Galaxy S24 in sustained tests (A55 ~31–34°C vs S24 ~37–38°C) and beat the A35 on AnTuTu.
An owner found it ran cooler/better than an S23 FE, which heats up faster even just browsing social media.
Battery & Charging
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
A genuine highlight: a 7,050mAh silicon-carbon cell that posts some of the best endurance numbers of any 2026 flagship, with fast 100W wired and 50W wireless charging.
Draws power from a 7,050mAh battery — a sizeable increase over the previous generation — with 100W SuperVOOC wired and 50W AirVOOC wireless charging.
Earned an active-use battery score of over 20 hours; with the SuperVOOC charger it went 0–75% in 30 minutes and to full in 45 minutes.
After ~10 hours of continuous use starting at 7am it still had 53% battery, regularly getting 8–9 hours of screen-on time and ~40% left after a 13-hour day.
A PCMark synthetic loop returned 15 hours 2 minutes, and 100W SuperVOOC charging took ~49–52 minutes (the charger isn't included).
With moderate usage you can easily expect more than 2 days of battery life — Oppo finally feels like a truly complete product.
Charges 0–100% in about 52 minutes on the official 80W charger in a head-to-head charge test.
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
A 5,000mAh battery with very strong endurance, undercut by slow 25W wired charging and no wireless charging.
The 5,000mAh battery can stretch toward two days if you're sensible with gaming and camera use.
It uses only ~2% battery over 8 hours of 5G standby — far better than a Galaxy S24's ~5%.
Around 8 hours of screen-on-time means it easily lasts a full day; the battery 'just goes on and on.'
It does not support wireless charging at all; charging is 25W wired over USB-C only.
The lack of fast charging is the one thing owners really miss in a rush versus 90W rivals.
Value vs Competition
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
Premium-priced and hard to buy in many markets, but reviewers broadly conclude it out-cameras the S26 Ultra and Pixel and edges the Vivo X300 Ultra on usability.
Its main compromises are the ~€1,699 price, large 236g body, occasional software concerns and limited availability in some markets.
It feels like Oppo wanted to make the camera first and just happened to also create the best Android phone you can get right now — though it won't win every year-end award.
The base Find X9 Ultra starts at 7,499 yuan in China — roughly £814 / ~$1,100 — but the heaviness and visual pressure are the first impression.
The closest rival is the Vivo X300 Ultra, but the X9 Ultra wins by having a more user-friendly OS.
The Hasselblad alliance delivers a phone that genuinely challenges the Galaxy S26 Ultra on cameras.
Samsung Galaxy A55 5G
A 'boring but solid' midranger that becomes an excellent value at its frequent discounts — though it's not officially sold in the US.
A boring update, but still a solid mid-ranger for its price.
It once again seems to be one of the best mid-tier Android devices of the year for the rest of the world.
It packs a lot of premium features into a midrange smartphone.
It's half the price of its flagship counterpart, but the gap between the two isn't nearly as large as you'd expect.
It has dropped to as low as £249 in price-cut deals — exceptional value at that level.