Skip to main content

Oppo’s Hasselblad collaboration goes deeper than expected

In an interview with Digital Trends and selected journalists at Mobile World Congress 2022, smartphone manufacturer Oppo talked further about its newly signed partnership with Hasselblad. In a question put to the team and answered by Oppo’s Director of Imaging Simon Liu, the depth with which Hasselblad has been involved with the new Find X5 Pro’s cameras was revealed.

“Talking about the Find X5 Pro at the hardware level,” Liu said through a translator, “we sent the device to Sweden and [Hasselblad’s] professional hardware team for testing, so we could get the Hasselblad Natural Color Solution certification. Our future products will use customized sensors and before we finalize the specification, we will also discuss with Hasselblad how we can improve the photo quality through the hardware.”

Since OnePlus and Oppo announced partnerships with Hasselblad, it hasn’t always been very clear how much the camera maker has been involved with the cameras. Liu’s confirmation shows it’s more than simply shipping a software solution for use with the phone, and while he’s now Director of Imaging at Oppo he was formerly Imaging Director at OnePlus, so he’s familiar with both businesses. But will Oppo’s work with Hasselblad differ from OnePlus’s approach?

Oppo Find X5 Pro camera module.
Andy Boxall/DigitalTrends

“After the integration [internal-link post_id="2722087" sponsored="false"]of OnePlus and Oppo[/internal-link] we are a unified team and we share the same resources,” Liu continued, “and if the direction we take proves to be correct in the Hasselblad partnership, we will share it and consider what we can offer to consumers through this partnership.”

However, don’t expect the Oppo and OnePlus cameras with Hasselblad’s name attached to take identical photos.

“We will share the camera technology across different series,” Liu continued. “But when it comes to the tuning and style it depends on the preferences of the target audience. If these are different, the style will vary.”

In an interview with Digital Day, Liu also talked about Oppo’s partnership with Hasselblad, saying it, “has no boundaries of any kind, and is not limited to color tuning.” He goes on to call it a collaboration rather than a partnership and says Hasselblad also gains from the work it does with Oppo.

The Find X5 Pro is the first phone Hasselblad has worked on with Oppo, and is the beginning of a three-year deal between the pair. It has previously worked with OnePlus on the OnePlus 9, OnePlus 9 Pro, and OnePlus 10 Pro, and is now a year into its three-year deal with the company.

Editors' Recommendations

Andy Boxall
Senior Mobile Writer
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
Your $1,000 flagship may not have faster 5G speeds than a budget phone
Moto Edge 20 Lite, OnePlus Nord 2, Oppo Find X3 Lite, and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.

After spending over $1,000 on a flagship 5G phone, you might think you're getting the fastest network speeds possible. After all, isn't that what you're paying for? But our recent network testing shows that may very well not be the case, with 5G performance on flagship phones being minimally better than budget phones, and in some cases, actually worse.

To give you some context, earlier this year, we put the 5G-capable MediaTek Dimensity 700 against the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 in a test to see which processor delivered the best 5G performance and had the best daily user experience. Six months on, we’re going to take a look at four new 5G phones with different chips to see how they compare to answer this question: Does paying more for a smartphone with a flagship processor inside give you the fastest network connection, or is it all pumped-up marketing?
Understanding 5G
Before going into the details, we received some very interesting feedback from MediaTek after our last test, which is also relevant to this one. MediaTek contacted Digital Trends to discuss the 5G speed test results, as the Dimensity 700-powered Realme 8 5G couldn’t match the Oppo A54 5G with a Qualcomm chip inside. The company then took its own test equipment to the area where I had tested the phones, and in conversations afterwards, it gave plenty of insight into how 5G varies across phones, networks, and location.

Read more
OnePlus 10 Pro, Oppo Find X4, Realme GT 2 Pro get 125-watt fast charging
Camera module on the Realme GT Neo2.

When Oppo first unveiled 125-watt fast charging tech in 2020, it said that a phone with 4,000mAh of battery could be charged to full within 20 minutes. The company also said that when you didn't have time to top up to 100%, the tech would allow you to plug in your phone for five minutes and charge it to 41%. This sounded too good to be true, but according to a new leak, all of this could soon be a reality on high-end devices coming out next year.

According to tipster Mukul Sharma (via Twitter), the Realme GT 2 Pro, Oppo Find X4 series, OnePlus 10 Pro, Oppo N series phone, and the Reno 8 Pro will feature 125W fast charging support. All of these devices are likely to be powered by the next-gen Qualcomm flagship system on a chip -- the Snapdragon 898, which is all set to be unveiled in the coming weeks.

Read more
Oppo’s Android 12-based ColorOS 12 is coming to the Find X3 Pro in December
oppo find x3 pro review back hand

ColorOS 12, Oppo’s smartphone operating system based on Google’s Android 12, will be coming to the Oppo Find X3 Pro in December, with other models in the company’s range to follow over the coming year. Oppo says the new version is cleaner, smoother, and more inclusive than before, but if you’re waiting to hear a mass of new features, you may be disappointed.

Inclusivity is one of the key aspects of ColorOS 12, and is important to the continued growth of ColorOS around the world. New Omoji animated emoji characters have a wide range of customizations to ensure they appeal to everyone, for example, but it’s in the software itself that a lot of work has taken place to make it more inclusive. This includes formatting and appearance changes for text in languages other than Chinese and English, new translations for specific languages including Danish, where Oppo understood it was lacking, and even alterations to the camera app algorithm in the beautification feature to make it more suitable for more people.

Read more