Here's the phone that could bring back 10x optical zoom

What’s the last smartphone you used that offered some really impressive optical zoom? Sure, with AI-powered tools like Google’s Zoom Enhance on the Pixel 9 Pro, you can achieve some impressive results without needing a lot of extra camera hardware, but for the purists out there, sometimes nothing but an actual zoom lens will do. But looking at the latest crop of devices, their zoom specs have been a little underwhelming: both the Pixel 9 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra are limited to just 5x, and even the OPPO Find X7 Ultra only hits 6x. We’ve got some good news for fans of the extreme close-up, as the latest OPPO Find X8 leak suggest there’s a big zoom-lens upgrade in the works.

We already heard that the Find X8 Ultra could feature some impressive camera hardware, with four separate 50MP sensors. And while that same source also mentioned the possibility of dual periscope zoom lenses, we didn’t get all the details about how those might arrive. Now Smartprix shares the latest leak from Yogesh Brar, who reveals that the Find X8 Pro (perhaps we’re dropping the “Ultra” and going back to Find X6 era branding) may upgrade to a 10x optical zoom.

Samsung kind of dropped the ball on zoom with the Galaxy S24 series this year, only hitting 5x like we mentioned. Prior to that, though, the Ultra models in the S21, S22, and S23 families all delivered 10x zoom performance. With a vacuum in the market, perhaps OPPO saw its opportunity.

In addition to that 10x zoom, Brar reports that the Find X8 Pro should offer a 3x zoom lens, as well as 50MP wide and ultra-wide options. The phone will supposedly be powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC, have a ~6.8-inch 120Hz “micro-curved” screen, and include a 5,700mAh battery with 100W charging.

As for the regular OPPO Find X8, it sounds pretty similar to the Pro. You should get 3 of the 4 same cameras, only losing the 10x zoom. Screen size could shrink slightly to 6.7 inches (and also lose the curve), and the battery may be ever-so smaller at 5,600mAh. Expect the same Dimensity 9400 under the hood.

Finally, we’ve got some good news for those of you who loved to see OPPO start adopting the OnePlus-style alert slider on its own phones — as Abhishek Yadav shares on X (from a source that appears grabbed from Weibo), a photo of a possible Find X8 shows the return of that handy hardware switch.

According to Brar, OPPO is shooting for an October launch for the Find X8, while the X8 Pro’s plans remain up in the air.