When Oppo teamed up with Lamborghini in 2018, it produced a stunning, unusual special edition smartphone that is still immensely desirable today.
Let’s look back at the amazing Oppo Find X Lamborghini Edition and understand what made this trendsetting phone so special. You may have forgotten about it, but it more than deserves a trip down memory lane.
Remember the Find X?
The Find X was Oppo’s big push into the mainstream. Until then, the brand had been known for unusual, design-led smartphones made almost solely for the Chinese market, but the Find X received a splashy launch at the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was the right phone, too, as it caught everyone’s attention due to the incredibly cool motorized slide-up camera. Rather than being a single pop-up camera like the OnePlus 7 Pro, the entire top of the phone contained a hidden camera module.
It remains probably the best-looking interpretation of the technology, and it still makes you say wow when you see it in motion today. But there is a far more desirable version of the Find X that few seem to recall. Oppo partnered with Lamborghini to make the Oppo Find X Lamborghini Edition, which (for me) is the ultimate car-related smartphone special edition. Why? It takes an already exciting phone, gives it the ultimate (at the time) specification, adds an appropriately “fast” new feature, and subtly changes the design and software to match.
The fast new feature was Oppo’s SuperVOOC proprietary charging system, which made its debut on the Lamborghini Edition of the Find X. You’ll recognize the SuperVOOC name from OnePlus phones today, and in 2018 its speed was a very big deal. It took the Lamborghini Edition’s 3,400mAh battery to full in 35 minutes.
The normal Find X with its VOOC charging took more than twice this amount of time. The Lamborghini Edition was truly fast, just as it should be.
Not just a marketing exercise
The specification was similar to the standard Find X, apart from having 512GB of internal storage space, which was impressive for the year. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor was inside, the AMOLED screen measured 6.4 inches, and there were two cameras in that motorized module — a 20MP main and a 16MP wide angle. At launch, it ran Android 8.1 with ColorOS 5.1 over the top.
Although the spec wasn’t that different from the regular Find X, the Lamborghini Edition came packaged inside a special presentation box with a design based on the Lamborghini Aventador’s signature taillight design. Open it up, and you find the customized SuperVOOC charging block and a bright orange, braided charging cable, plus it came with a Lamborghini protective case and a special Lamborghini-branded, carbon-look pair of Oppo O-Free in-ear Bluetooth earbuds.
The SuperVOOC charging was brand new tech that hadn’t been seen on any Oppo phone before — and a genuine reason to choose the Lamborghini Edition over the standard Find X. It also made the phone a trendsetter, with fast charging going on to become an Oppo and OnePlus trademark feature, and throughout the industry. The Oppo phone was the perfect example of two brands coming together to create something technically forward-thinking yet still really special, that went beyond being simply a marketing exercise.
Using the Lamborghini phone in 2023
At five years old, what’s the Find X Lamborghini Edition like today? Although it’s 9.6mm thick, the first thing that strikes you when you pick it up now is how thin it feels. It’s due to the very aggressive taper down the sides of the chassis, making the phone feel very sleek and expensive. You’ll also notice how light it feels, as at 186 grams it’s more than 50 grams lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
At some angles, the rear panel looks like a glossy black, but get closer and shift it around in your hand, and a subtle carbon fiber effect reveals itself around the sides. It fades out towards the center of the phone, so instead of looking cheap and tacky, it looks smart and classy. The Lamborghini crest is more prominent than the Oppo logo on the phone, and even gets its own texture on the back of the included case.
But the motorized camera remains the high point of the Find X’s design. The motors can be heard moving inside as they rise steadily from the phone’s top. It’s not fast, but it can be used for face unlock, and the more opportunity to see it in motion, the better. It’s not especially practical, but it is deeply cool. Use any Find X today, and everyone smiles when they see the feature in action.
The Find X Lamborghini Edition is sleek and fast, with a design aspect that makes even people who don’t care about phones smile and laugh at both its coolness and absurdity. It’s very fitting, given the partnership, and not all that dissimilar to descriptions and reactions to Lamborghini cars. It means the phone really succeeded.
Will we ever see another?
Did everyone buy it over the normal Oppo Find X? Almost certainly not, as it was priced according to the effort put into its creation. When it was announced, it had a price tag of 1,699 euros, which converts to around $1,890 today, and that makes it more expensive than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. It was also hard to come by, just as any Lamborghini should be.
In 2020, Oppo and Lamborghini worked together on the Find X2 Pro Lamborghini Edition, but that was the last we saw of the partnership. Since then, special edition phones haven’t been a rarity — however, Realme has been a superstar with the Coca-Cola and Naruto edition phones — but few seem to ever partner with car manufacturers. It’s surprising, as there’s obvious design crossover, and luxury marques are often salivated over by those who can’t afford the car but can afford some related gear.
Vertu (may it rest in peace) teamed up with Bentley and Ferrari, but those phones really did have luxury price tags and were out of reach of everyone except really flush fans. The closest competitor to the Oppo phone was Huawei’s partnership with Porsche Design, and as great as the phones from the pair were, Porsche Design isn’t actually Porsche the car brand. These weren’t phones to go with your 911 but ones to slip into your Porsche Design crossbody bag. I’m sure there are many business-related reasons why these partnerships don’t happen often, but that doesn’t stop it being a shame.
This all-encompassing exclusivity is a big part of what makes the Oppo Find X Lamborghini Edition so special. There wasn’t anything like it before, and there hasn’t been much like it since.
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