Oppo Find X9 Ultra review

ColorOS 16 and Android 16

The Find X9 Ultra comes with a familiar ColorOS 16 based on Android 16. It's familiar because we've already reviewed a bunch of ColorOS 16-powered phones like the Find X9 Pro and the OnePlus 15, even though the latter's software is branded as OxygenOS 16 for the global markets.

Oppo has a generous software support policy for its Ultra model - 5 years of OS upgrades and 6 years of security patches. Although "5 years of OS upgrades" is a bit ambiguous. We can only assume that Oppo means 5 major OS upgrades.

Home screen • Quick toggles • Recent apps

Generally, the UI and most of the features are identical to the Oppo Find X9 Pro's, so we recommend checking out the software section in that review.

However, there are a few new additions to the feature set that debut with the Find X9 Ultra. The AI Bill Manager, for example, makes it easier to track your finances. It's a sub-feature of AI Mind Space on ColorOS/OxygenOS/Realme UI devices. After a digital payment, the AI Bill Manager will analyze, sort, and save the transaction displayed on your screen. You can also do that for physical receipts using the camera.

Mind Space

AI Mind Pilot is also part of AI Mind Space, but it lets you leverage more than one AI model. The feature offers integration with Google's Gemini, Perplexity AI, and DeepSeek. You can ask them to do one, but a more complicated query, or simply use them to compare answers and perspectives. It's a convenient way to ask more than one AI chatbot to look for relevant information.

The AI Menu Translation is also quite neat. It may sound unimpressive at first, but it actually does way more than just translate simple text via the camera feed. It can visualize the dishes on the menu and even extract ingredients that are not listed on the menu. It gives you a more comprehensive view of the same menu and makes your life much easier when you are visiting a restaurant in a foreign country. It gives you a good idea of what to expect before you even order.

Unfortunately, these AI features were unavailable at the time of writing, so we couldn't test them ourselves. A future software update will deliver those features in the near future.

Last but not least, Quick Share now gains support for cross-platform sharing. That's not necessarily a ColorOS feature, though, but more of a core Android functionality. It allows you to share files with iOS, iPadOS, and macOS devices.

Benchmark performance

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra runs on the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a successor to the highly-regarded Snapdragon 8 Elite chip from last year. At launch, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max was the first phone to feature Qualcomm's new silicon, which comes with significant performance and efficiency improvements.

The SoC is based on the 3nm manufacturing process and features third-generation Oryon CPU cores, promising a 20% performance and 30% efficiency boost. The octa-core CPU configuration is 2+6 with 2x high-performance Oryon V3 Phoenix L cores ticking at 4.6 GHz and 6x Oryon V3 Phoenix M cores running at 3.62 GHz.

The GPU on board is Adreno 840 and also promises a 23% improvement in performance and 20% in power efficiency. It should also be 25% better at ray tracing than its predecessor.

Other notable features include Unreal Engine 5 support for console-level gaming and a Hexagon NPU with Qualcomm Sensing Hub, enabling 37% faster AI number crunching and agentic AI assistants.

When it comes to memory, the Find X9 Ultra is offered in two flavors - 12GB/512GB (the one we have here) and 16GB/1TB. Both variants use UFS 4.1 storage chips.

As you can see, the Find X9 Ultra performs just as expected with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Sustained performance

The device appears to handle heavy CPU loads surprisingly well. The CPU did throttle down to 65% of its theoretical performance, but it maintained fairly stable CPU clocks throughout the test. There are no sudden drops, just steady performance.

CPU and GPU stress tests

On the other hand, the GPU seems to struggle in the presented setup, with 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test showing only 40% stability, which is below-average performance.