Hands On: Is Oppo's Find X5 Pro Bad News for OnePlus?

pcmag.com:

Oppo, the world's fourth most popular phone brand, launched its latest flagship, the Find X5 Pro, on Wednesday. You can't buy the phone in the US, but it's likely an indication of what's next from OnePlus, which is slowly folding into Oppo (and which does sell phones stateside).

While the Find X5 Pro sports a superb design, a top-notch screen, fast charging, and solid battery life, its software is an irritating, buggy mess, with enough bloatware to make US phone carriers blanch. Perhaps most notably, its ColorOS software rejects everything OnePlus has stood for over the years—namely innovation, speed, and "burdenlessness."

PCMag's review process isn't compatible with using a non-US phone as a daily driver, but I wanted to know what the Find X5 Pro was like, so I swapped in my SIM and trialed it over the long Presidents' Day weekend. I don't plan to fully review and rate this phone, let alone perform all the usual battery, performance, and camera tests I do with others, but I've compiled my impressions of the Find X5 Pro after a few days of use.

The Find X5 Pro is gorgeous, without looking like an Apple or Samsung phone. Its glossy ceramic back panel meets a very saturated 6.7-inch, 120Hz screen on the front. The contouring of the camera bump makes it easier to hold; it feels less chunky than the Samsung Galaxy S22+, for example, which uses hard-edge cutouts for its cameras.The phone recalls the stylings of Alan Tudyk's robot character from I, Robot, if that makes any sense.

The 10-bit, WQHD+ color screen is an absolute pleasure to look at both indoors and outside. The Hasselblad-branded camera app is reliable, fast, and responsive. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor performs much like the one in the Galaxy