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
Xiaomi 17
What Reviewers Agree On
Genuinely compact flagship form factor — one of the only small phones that doesn't compromise on the chipset or battery
Exceptional battery life for the size: a 6,330mAh cell (7,000mAh China) routinely delivering 6–7 hours of screen-on time, more on lighter days
Very fast 100W wired charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–61 minutes — plus 50W wireless and 22.5W reverse wired
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a significant performance jump over the Xiaomi 15, with strong Geekbench and AnTuTu numbers
Bright 120Hz LTPO AMOLED rated at 3,500 nits peak that stays legible in direct sunlight
Class-leading stereo speakers — repeatedly called among the best on any smartphone
Long software commitment: 5 major OS upgrades and 6 years of security patches (EOL February 2032)
Deal Breakers
The ultrawide camera is a clear downgrade — only ~17mm equivalent, poor quality, narrower field of view and still no autofocus
Inconsistent sustained performance: prolonged CPU stress and demanding games (Genshin, Honkai Star Rail) trigger heavy throttling and heat on some units
HyperOS 3 ships with bugs and missing basics (no native screen-on-time counter) and bundles ads in some proprietary apps
The global model's 6,330mAh battery is smaller than the 7,000mAh China version, and the China ROM lacks Google services out of the box
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
Xiaomi 17
Pros
Genuinely compact flagship form factor — one of the only small phones that doesn't compromise on the chipset or battery
Exceptional battery life for the size: a 6,330mAh cell (7,000mAh China) routinely delivering 6–7 hours of screen-on time, more on lighter days
Very fast 100W wired charging — roughly 0–100% in 45–61 minutes — plus 50W wireless and 22.5W reverse wired
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is a significant performance jump over the Xiaomi 15, with strong Geekbench and AnTuTu numbers
Bright 120Hz LTPO AMOLED rated at 3,500 nits peak that stays legible in direct sunlight
Class-leading stereo speakers — repeatedly called among the best on any smartphone
Long software commitment: 5 major OS upgrades and 6 years of security patches (EOL February 2032)
Cons
The ultrawide camera is a clear downgrade — only ~17mm equivalent, poor quality, narrower field of view and still no autofocus
Inconsistent sustained performance: prolonged CPU stress and demanding games (Genshin, Honkai Star Rail) trigger heavy throttling and heat on some units
HyperOS 3 ships with bugs and missing basics (no native screen-on-time counter) and bundles ads in some proprietary apps
The global model's 6,330mAh battery is smaller than the 7,000mAh China version, and the China ROM lacks Google services out of the box
Some find the huge circular camera apparatus ugly, when we usually ask for less intrusive camera bumps.
Xiaomi 17
The Xiaomi 17 is one of the last true compact flagships — small enough for confident one-handed use while keeping an IP68 rating and tough cover glass. Reviewers are split on the derivative, iPhone-like design.
It is one of the few genuinely compact flagship phones, with excellent build and design quality.
Feels well balanced and can be used one-handed without feeling like you're about to drop it.
Carries an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance and Xiaomi's Dragon Crystal Glass for scratch resistance.
The Xiaomi 17 might be a low point for original design — it leans heavily on the iPhone's look — but the upgrades may still make it worth buying.
The design makes every iPhone 17 Pro user jealous, and the hardware is absolutely brilliant.
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.
Xiaomi 17
A compact 120Hz LTPO AMOLED that punches well above its size for outdoor brightness, though it uses a different (lower) pixel arrangement than the Pro Max and measured full-screen brightness is well under the headline figure.
The display is as good as it can get on a compact flagship — high-res, vibrant and as bright as 3,500 nits peak.
Measured over 1,000 nits in auto mode and over 3,400 nits on a smaller patch — more than enough for good legibility outdoors.
In controlled testing, manual full-screen white brightness reached only around 1,100 nits — far below the 3,500-nit peak headline figure.
The standard model's screen doesn't use the new pixel arrangement found in the Pro Max version, though it still holds certain advantages.
Peak brightness of up to 3,500 nits keeps everything clearly visible even in direct sunlight.
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).
Xiaomi 17
A capable Leica-tuned main and telephoto pairing lets the compact 17 shoot above its class, but the ultrawide is a clear step backwards and default autofocus on people can be unreliable.
The main and zoom cameras are nothing short of excellent, though against the Vivo and Pixel 10 Pro it isn't such a clear-cut win.
The ultrawide is downgraded — poor quality, narrower field of view and still no autofocus.
The ultrawide lens is just 17mm wide, so the images aren't very wide at all.
Reviewers loved the Leica tuning on the base Xiaomi 17, even where exposure occasionally clips highlights.
The 60mm-class telephoto is good, but after a month you find yourself wishing it had more reach.
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.
Xiaomi 17
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 makes the 17 one of the fastest compact phones around, but sustained-load behaviour is the single most contested topic in the coverage.
Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a 3nm process, claiming ~20% better CPU performance and ~35% better battery efficiency than the previous generation, with a Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3,367 and multi-core of 9,830.
If you look at benchmark scores, it is a significant upgrade over the 8 Elite that powered the Xiaomi 15.
After a month it still feels just as snappy as day one, with high-end titles running at top settings and sustained performance over long sessions holding up well.
In a prolonged CPU stress test the Xiaomi 17 did worse than expected, dipping to less than 40% of maximum and spiking continuously rather than holding stable.
In Honkai Star Rail the Xiaomi 17 began throttling after about 3 minutes of gameplay, with the device becoming extremely hot to the touch.
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.
Xiaomi 17
The headline reason to buy a compact 17: an oversized silicon-anode battery and very fast charging that together solve the usual small-phone endurance problem.
The massive 6,330mAh battery is truly exceptional for a compact flagship (the China version is 7,000mAh).
You can get a full day of use, up to ~7 hours of screen-on time and sometimes more depending on usage.
In a one-month real-world test, 6–7 hours of screen-on time on regular days was normal, dropping to 5–6 hours on heavy days, with up to ~16 hours in benchmark testing.
Reached close to 9–10 hours of screen-on time on regular use — a genuine full-day battery phone — with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging faster than the iPhone 17 or Galaxy S26.
100W charging takes the 6,330mAh battery from 0–100% in as little as 45–46 minutes.
Software & AI
Oppo Find X9 Ultra
ColorOS 16 has matured a lot and is fast and smooth, but it still trails Samsung and Google on AI depth and feels iOS-derived to some — the phone's clearest weak point relative to its hardware.
ColorOS 16 feels like one of the best versions yet.
It's a good Android experience but not on par with the Galaxy experience for AI features and tool integration, and portrait autofocus struggles in some low-light conditions.
For me it's the best version of Android I've ever used — light, fast and smooth with no major issues.
The hardware is superior to the latest Samsung, but the software feels like an imitation of iOS.
With a bit of tweaking and updates, Oppo's software and camera engineers can make this even better — there's clear headroom.
Xiaomi 17
HyperOS 3 on Android 16 is fast and visually polished but draws repeated criticism for bugs, bloat and missing basics — and the China ROM many global buyers import has real Google-service gaps.
Runs Android 16 with Xiaomi's HyperOS 3, which is a very aesthetically pleasing UI.
Feature-rich HyperOS 3 with a promised 5 years of major upgrades, but the software feels cheap with lots of bugs and you have to calculate screen-on time yourself because there's no built-in counter.
Xiaomi confirmed the entire Xiaomi 17 series gets 6 years of security updates with end-of-life in February 2032.
On the China ROM there is no Google Play Store out of the box, and you can't get into the Google Discover page — a real friction point for global buyers.
Proprietary apps like settings, file manager and security ship with built-in ads.
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.
Xiaomi 17
At roughly $630 the 17 is aggressively priced for a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 flagship, but reviewers disagree on whether it's a category-beater or merely a strong-value option in a crowded field.
At around $630 it's a phone that's scaring the big brands on price-to-performance.
For being cheaper than the iPhone, the Xiaomi 17 is a really compelling — and noticeably cheaper — option.
Outside of being a rare compact flagship, the Xiaomi 17 doesn't offer anything significantly better than its competition.
With a top-tier processor, Leica cameras, great display and a huge fast-charging battery, the Xiaomi 17 is one of the best price-to-performance phones of 2026.
For a compact phone it didn't feel like a downgrade when switching from an iPhone 17 Pro daily driver.
Like the Ultra, the Xiaomi 17 can struggle to focus on living subjects unless you dig into settings and enable the motion track-and-focus option, which is off by default.
Cameras haven't seen big upgrades over the previous generation.
Got good average FPS with 120fps gaming support and didn't notice much heating in Genshin Impact even after 30–40 minutes.
The ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner is fast with no delays and works even with a tempered-glass screen protector.
Measured charging: ~15% in 5 minutes, ~50% in 21 minutes, ~70% in 30 minutes, ~91% in 40 minutes and a full charge in about 61 minutes.
A standardized battery-life test returned around 22 hours 30 minutes, with a 15%-to-full charge in roughly 43–55 minutes.
The battery isn't as good as it should be for a 6,300mAh cell — efficiency lags Samsung and Apple.