Find X: Oppo’s new full-screen phone has motorised pop-up camera

The elusive chase for a good full-screen phone is on. The race, which arguably began with the Xiaomi Mi MIX in 2016, now has tech firms producing phones with increasingly higher screen-to-body ratio every other day. The catch is that while modern phones are sparing more real-estate for the screen than ever before, they come with various compromises such as the ugly and perpetually distracting notch.

Some phones are trying to go notch-free and still deliver a full-screen phone. The problem is - they're not user-friendly. The latest attempt at delivering a pure full-screen phone is Oppo's Find X. The smartphone is set to launch in Paris today. There's already a lot of buzz around the phone, as it succeeds Oppo's popular Find 7 smartphone. Folks at TheVerge have already gotten hands on with a pre-production version of the phone.

Apart from being a top-end phone, Oppo Find X's highlight is a camera system that gets completely tucked into the top edge when the phone is switched off. When you launch the camera, the entire top section pops up, revealing a 25-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3D facial-scanning system and a dual-camera setup on the back consisting of 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel sensors. The entire section returns to its place after the camera app is shut down. Oppo claims the camera launches in 0.5 seconds, something that TheVerge agrees is "fairly accurate".

Even though the Oppo Find X seems innovative, getting used to a motorised panel in a phone will take a lot of time. Moreover, the phone does not feature any biometric authentication facility other than the 3D scanning camera. So, each time you want the phone to unlock securely, the motorised section will need to pop up. The silver lining is that it's fast, but how will it perform after long periods of usage? We may have to wait longer for the answer.

Another example of such full-screen phone is Vivo Nex. The smartphone comes with an impressive 91.24% screen-to-body ratio and a small slot that features a front camera tucked in the top-edge. As you might have guessed by now, it pops up whenever the camera is on. And it goes back into the housing when you're done using the camera.

Just like Oppo Find X, Vivo Nex's setup is claimed to be ultra-fast. This phone comes with top-end specifications like 6.59-inch Ultra FullView display, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor with 8GB of RAM, 12-megapixel and 5-megapixel dual rear cameras.

If we keep the notch-phones away, very few phones have come close to delivering a good phone with full-screen. Xiaomi's Mi MIX 2, which launched in India last year, still remains a benchmark for such phones. While the phone featured an all-screen front with 91.3% screen-to-body ratio, it did take some to get used to the device. Particularly inconvenient was the selfie camera located on the bottom right of the screen. Each time you take a selfie on this phone, you have to hold the phone carefully to ensure that the lens doesn't get covered by the palm.