The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is here
'Tundra Umber' is the way to go
Today Oppo is taking the wrappers off its flagship phone for 2026, the Find X9 Ultra. I have it in hand, and while it isn’t ready for review, sample photos or an in-depth spec discussion just yet, I can at least talk about the phone’s external design.
Which is fine for now, because there’s actually quite a lot to talk about on that front.
Readers, I am smitten. After last year’s excellent but fairly staid X8 Ultra, Oppo has followed it up with a gorgeous phone that finally makes the most of the company’s Hasselblad partnership.
This review unit comes in the “Tunda Umbra” colourway, which takes notes from the Earth Explorer limited edition of the Hasselblad X2D 100C. Like that camera, the finish here is akin to a gunmetal grey with slight brown undertones — notably different to the vaguely reddish Find X9 Pro — and it’s paired with a black vegan leather material for grip.
Oppo says the design “channels Scandinavian minimalism and the raw beauty of tundra and glaciers, honouring legendary craftsmanship.” The Oppo and Hasselblad logos are both horizontally aligned, reinforcing the idea that the X9 Ultra is meant to be held in landscape orientation, like a camera. There’s a Hasselblad-trademark orange ring around the knurled camera bump, which is also echoed in the dedicated shutter button on the top edge of the phone.
Oppo did make one unusual choice with the camera bump, giving the glass section a vaguely hexagonal design that’s inspired by the aperture blades of camera lenses. I’m not fully sold on this, as the rounded shape means it doesn’t really look regular from any angle.
Overall, though, the effect is very impressive. This phone feels like a tank in terms of build quality, and Oppo has done a great job of giving it the sense that it’s a piece of professional equipment you could take anywhere.
The other finish is Canyon Orange, which I briefly saw at a preview event in Shenzhen last month. This version of the Find X9 Ultra has a completely different vibe, and it’s also pretty different to the orange Find N6 I’ve been using; it has a fibre back panel with an orange pattern that’s subtly embossed with a pattern evocative of Antelope Canyon.
At 8.65mm, the Canyon Orange Find X9 Ultra is almost half a millimetre thinner than the Tundra Umbra version, and it’s also a single gram lighter. For me, though, Tundra Umbra is clearly the way to go. This is just a great-looking phone that I’m excited to go out and shoot with seriously.
Xiaomi set a very high bar for cameraphone design early this year with the 17 Ultra by Leica, and so far I would say Oppo has certainly risen to the challenge. Stay tuned to see how the X9 Ultra matches up in terms of performance.
For now, real hardware sickos may be able to glean some hints from this close-up of the camera bump:
