From the way Chinese phone makers are once again building and emphasizing their global presence and performance, it seems as though 2022 might be the year for a post-Huawei wave of new opportunities. In jumping the pre-MWC queue of announcements, Oppo (apart from its subsumed corporate cousin, OnePlus) is looking to strike a convincing impression ahead of an assured retail campaign targeting more of Europe. The new Find series devices — with the Find X5 Pro leading the charge — do just that with hard specs in competitive areas.

Chief among Oppo's priorities for the Find X5 Pro is to parry Samsung and the Galaxy S22 series' stake on their so-called "Nightography" abilities — high-resolution photos and videos with advanced coping techniques for noise and jitter. The Pro touts dual 50MP Sony sensors that utilize 2µm cell sites when shooting binned 12.5MP stills and a 13-channel spectral sensor for nailing down white balance. The main wide-angle sensor is supported with a "DSLR-grade" five-axis optical stabilizer; Oppo says it's an industry first. Everything gets piped through the company's custom-designed MariSilicon X neural-networking ISP, resulting in bountiful 10-bit pictures and movies and downright menacing 20-bit RAW potential. All of the above should equate to brighter, more accurately-colored nighttime scenes in 4K. Regardless of whether it's day or night, the camera app's Pro Mode features Hasselblad-branded color calibration and filtering and the phone's ceramic backplate has the Hasselblad wordmark emblazoned on it for dramatic effect as well. Speaking of output, the display, while improved to a barely noticeable extent from the Find X3 Pro, remains fit for the job with 10-bit color, 8,196 brightness levels, and adaptive refresh rates of 1 to 120Hz.

Sweating through the smaller details, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset is accompanied by a three-layer cooling system which includes a vapor chamber along with substrates of graphite and graphene. A new "Battery Health Engine" should double the useful life of the two-cell 5,000mAh battery — 11% greater capacity versus the X3 Pro — compared to "the industry standard," so perhaps the high-wattage VOOC (and other) charging protocols won't wear and tear as much as they might otherwise without BHE. And if reception is a killer factor, the company is implementing its third-gen 360° Smart Antenna. We would've liked to have seen firm software update commitments with the materials we received at press time, but muddled plans for a full OS merger between Oppo's ColorOS and OnePlus's OxygenOS may be complicating the outlook right now.

Making the right iterations is crucial to competing in the premium mobile space and, at least on paper, the X5 Pro has plenty of worthy ones in it.

Sharing some of the spotlight is the non-pro Find X5 and, as with last year's Find X3, Oppo has decided to upcycle some older parts and round off the corners for this device. It trades the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 for the 888, ceramic for frosted glass, and 50W wireless charging for 30W among other spec lines.

And if you're looking for wireless earbuds to go with Oppo's new phones, the Enco X2 fancy things up with dual drivers — each with specialties on tweeting and woofing — in each bud and noise cancellation of up to 45dB across a bandwidth of 4kHz. LHDC 4.0 support brings stream quality as high as 900kbps. These buds and their charging case come in either black or white.

In Europe, both phones are available on pre-order today with shipping starting March 14. The Find X5 is €999 while the Pro is €1,299. The Enco X2 buds, on sale in mid-April, will be €199.