Oppo Find X2

Sometimes newer isn't better. Sadly, after smashing my Find X3 Pro (with a very small tumble) I found myself needing a new phone (fuck I hate glass phones, no really what drooling moron thought of this and why to the sycophantic fucktards in professional phone reviews keep going on and on about how premium it feels in their hand).  I'm rather sick of how pricy things are now, so I saved some money and got this "refurb with warranty" for AU$250 ... the extra cash left in my hand feels better than any phone IMO.

Strangely the X2 Pro (while older) has in my opinion a better camera system; indeed it has a proper optical long focal length camera done in the periscope style (see below).

This idea dates back some time to perhaps the Minolta DiMAGE X from 2002 (so like 24 years ago) when the sensors of the time were 3M pixels not 48 like the current ones.

note that it was mounted horizontally ... while the camera is held vertically.

The technology for this optical zooming (instead of digital crop "zooming") was important because at 3Mpixels you just don't have any room for cropping. Not to mention that since photography started we "zoomed" mostly with lens focal lengthe changes and kept film size and print enlargement  for zooming to a minimum because clarity loss was obvious..

Various phone/camera makers had a go at this (periscope lens design) over time, to enable the physics of a longer focal length without adding a great long bulge at the back of the phone; not many have stayed. Perhaps people have historically had a poor ability to judge pictures? People often buy add on lenses that make the back of the camera look weird and the phone unweildy, but I'll not start on that here.

The three cameras on the phone are specialised to different tasks, as seen here: as well as a similar sized 120° wide angle system which has a much smaller pixel size (making it less desirable in low light) with a slightly dimmer f2.2 aperture. 

This arrangement (using the IMX 698) gives quite some scope for cropping (say, up to x2) from the ample "general" photography lens and generally (even when shot with the wide) binned down to 13M Pixels don't too crap look crap (and you'd never bother digital zooming that) ... if you're unfamiliar with pixel and sensor sizes then I recommend you read the articles linked in the next paragraph to understand pixel binning (or throwing pixels in the bin to make better images) because compared to bigger sensors on actual cameras (like my m43 or Full Frame) because "size matters".

Long ago Nokia tried a super high density sensor and further analysis (here) employing digital zoom to make a lower pixel crop (they used a then stellar 39M pixel sensor and cropped and binned down to 5M pixel (about x7 enlargement) while Oppo is here capturing directly as a x5 enlargment (compared to a "normal" view) but perhaps a x10 on their standard wide lens.

So here's a sample image (reduced for the web) taken with that proper telephoto.

The lens data is available in the picture EXIF

So in 35mm camera (who even knows what that looks like anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I digress) its equivalent to a 160mm lens, or mild telephoto ... perhaps a bit long for portraiture. Anyway lets look at what advantage over digital zoom this brings.

Next, here we have that and the "digital" zoom applied to their 48M pixel these zoomed in (not even to full pixel peeping)

Even at 50% (which you should know that I've chosen as the "compare on screen", because that is very close to what one sees when the full image is printed at 300dpi. Specficially that would be a print 25.4 x 33.9 cm; or 10.00 x 13.33 inches). The observant will spot that the RH picture is enlarged a bit more (61%) because if I zoomed to x5 it would automatically switch to the other lens...

At this size you can see far more detail in the grass that I don't even need to tell you that the native telephoto shot is the left hand side. The pixel binned digital zoom is over sharpened and lacks texture (even the grass has texture on the zoom) and resolution.

This however means that for video this periscope lens arrangement will be capable of doing x10 or about 300mm equivalent comfortably. That's impressive.

So, there you have it ... a much more compact phone than the new Oppo Find X10 Pro ... which looks like an amazing machine. However at the prices of these things are likely to be, that's a solid no way. 

Have fun