OPPO showcases Find X9 Ultra democratizing storytelling

OPPO and designboom collaborated at Milan Design Week 2026 inside the "Room for Dreams" programme, presenting a panel called "Digital Dreams: Finding Beauty through the Lens" and releasing a short film titled "Seeing Further," which was shot entirely with the Find X9 Ultra, according to designboom, Techprincess, and Megamodo. The panel featured Simon Liu, Imaging Director at OPPO, and Davide Reinecke, founder of Cherto Agency; designboom quotes Liu saying, "The main philosophy that we are aiming for at OPPO is to make taking pictures or taking photos to be a very simple thing for the general big audience... and enable users to capture the right moment as they actually remember it." Designboom also quotes Reinecke: "I've always wanted my content to be as authentic as possible. And so that's the reason why I've always shot on a smartphone."

Tech coverage of the event describes the Find X9 Ultra as OPPO's camera flagship. Techprincess, Techzilla, and Megamodo report the device uses a Hasselblad Ultra-Sensing 50MP telephoto, a 10x optical zoom with claimed optical-quality up to 20x, enabled by a periscopic structure with five internal reflections. Sources further describe the phone's Pristine Optical Path and Sensor Shift stabilization; Techzilla and Techprincess note the periscope design reduces module length by 30% and that a teleconverter yields effective reach near 300 mm in some shooting modes.

Editorial analysis: Mobile imaging coverage at design events increasingly frames smartphones not just as capture devices but as narrative tools that combine optics and computation. Companies showcasing flagship camera phones at public cultural programs follow a pattern where product demonstration is paired with creative content, in this case a short film, to illustrate real-world storytelling workflows rather than lab benchmarks.

Editorial analysis: For practitioners, the trend matters because advances in compact periscope optics, coordinated optical-path engineering, and sensor-shift stabilization shift the device-level trade-offs ML engineers and imaging teams must consider. Teams building on-device computational photography pipelines or mobile video workflows will observe growing expectations for integrated hardware-software stacks that enable long-focal-length capture without large form factors.

Editorial analysis: The event is part marketing, part cultural program. From a technical-product perspective, the claims around 10x optical zoom and optical-quality up to 20x reflect continuing industry investment in folded-periscope optics and optical-path calibration. From a creative-practice perspective, the public conversation at designboom foregrounds authenticity and accessibility, arguing that lowering the barrier to high-quality capture expands who can create cinematic and photographic narratives.

Editorial analysis: Observers should watch independent technical reviews and MTF/telephoto image analyses to validate vendor optical-quality claims reported by Techprincess and Techzilla. Also monitor follow-up developer or research disclosures about the Find X9 Ultra's computational imaging pipeline, because on-device processing often determines final image quality more than raw optics alone.

Editorial analysis: For teams integrating mobile-captured media into downstream ML or production pipelines, key indicators will be sample rate and format support for long-focal footage, raw capture availability, and whether vendor tooling exposes calibration metadata needed for stabilized stitching, depth estimation, or perceptual correction.

The Milan Design Week appearances and the Find X9 Ultra showcase combine product messaging and creative demonstration to argue that contemporary smartphones can enable broader access to cinematic storytelling. Reported hardware claims and the accompanying creative work are informative for imaging engineers, mobile ML practitioners, and content technologists evaluating where device-level optics and computation are heading.