Well here it is folks, the holy grail of the OPPO smartphone range. The legendary Automobili Lamborghini Edition of the most innovative smartphone of 2018, the Find X.
If you are looking for a phone that will turn heads and as one of my friends said, “make you look like a baller” then the Find X Lamborghini Edition is the phone for you. What might not make it the phone for you is the $2,399NZD price tag that is the trade off for wanting to look like a “baller”.
The standard Find X was my favourite phone to review in 2018. It was genuinely innovative, super fast and has the fastest charging of any phone on the market. It was also the most expensive phone made by OPPO at $1,499 so the extra $900 your paying for the Lamborghini Edition is a HUGE step up in price but they do say you get what you pay for right?
Well yes and no, this is largely the same phone that I reviewed last year. Does that make this a phone unworthy of your money? Not in the slightest.
We all know that Lamborghini’s are a vehicle limited to only the abhorently wealthy. They are a statement piece, a super-powered, highly tuned work of art that can go ridiculously fast and turn heads at every corner.
The Find X Lamborghini Edition isn’t too dissimilar, it turns heads with it’s premium, innovative design, it has ridiculously fast performance and it has the fastest charging of any smartphone in the world. All that means that is very well placed to receive the Lamborghini branding.
The moment you lay eyes on this thing you’ll realise this ain’t no ordinary phone. The packaging is ultra premium to the point where it comes in it’s very own Lamborghini branded bag! The box has a faux carbon fibre design with the OPPO and Lamborghini logos that teases what to come when you open the box. It may be a tease but it won’t prepare you for what you’ll discover.
Open it up and bang, the familiar Lamborghini Yellow smacks you in the face with the unassuming Find X sitting to one side. Lift that up and again the design screams “look at me” as you discover the fully branded accessories. Striking black gloss contrasted against the yellow box. Super VOOC charger, premium braided USB-C cable and the gloss black box that contains OPPO’s very own wireless earbuds (I mean even the earbuds have the Lamborghini logo on each one!). The protective case it comes with also features a faux carbon fibre look and you’ll need it too because the all glass design creates a slippery unit.
That unassuming Find X I mentioned becomes anything but unassuming well you haul it out of its packaging. Gone are the striking colours of the standard Find X. The back of this phone has a black carbon fibre style design sitting below the Gorilla Glass with an embedded Lamborghini logo that appears to be floating between the glass and the carbon design.
Turn the phone on and again your point of difference is complete. ColorOS has received the Lamborghini treatment with Lamborghini car home screens. In fact ColorOS has been given the full high-performance make over featuring blacks, grays and yellows. Where the standard Find X is overly colourful, the Lamborghini Edition is boldly elegant. It takes some getting used to but it suits the phone perfectly.
Make no mistake though, underneath the shiny new theme, ColorOS is exactly the same with its same eccentricities. You can’t just swipe to delete notifications, you have to swipe and then press delete. And actually deleting apps is not the most intuitive but aside fro a few quirks, ColorOS is the most iOS-like OS running on Android. Whether that is for better or for worse is going to come down to individual preference.
Specs -wise, the Lamborghini Edition is exactly the same as the standard Find X. Snapdragon 845, 8GB RAM, 3,700mAH battery and the same cameras. Where it differs is that this version doubles the storage with 512GB. You can’t expand that storage with MicroSD but seriously, if 512GB is not enough for you on your phone then you should probably get yourself a laptop!
The innovative camera system on the Find X remains and it is still one of the best features on a phone. Having that camera pop up always surprises people and it allows the phone to be almost bezel free with it’s panoramic arc Full HD+ OLED screen. It is a stunning design that makes it easy to see why Lamborghini allowed their branding to be paired with the phone.
Not having a notch or bezel is a liberating experience. Absolutely nothing on the front of the phone to take away from the content creates an experience that is second to none when consuming content.
The downside to that design though is that there is no room for NFC or an IP rating. The pop-up is firmly to blame for that. 1, because it’s pretty tricky to water or dust proof a moving component and 2. because there is no room for the NFC chip apparently. It is a real shame given that we are talking about a phone that costs over 2 grand. The IP rating is a lot easier to forgive and even if it were waterproof, this thing is just way too sexy to be taking into an environment where the risk of damaging it becomes higher.
NFC though it’s pretty much a must have feature these days. Even phones costing a few hundred bucks tend to have it. Plus I work in a building were the security gates use NFC to authenticate my credentials and let me in so no NFC means no entry, regardless of how much of a baller I look like with the Lamborghini phone.
With such a hefty price tag the inevitable question is “is this worth the premium price tag?”. At face value in all honesty that would be a no. The only difference specs-wise is the increase in storage.
But you can’t take the phone at face value. This is a statement piece.
The truth of the matter is, I’ve found a new love in the Lamborghini Find X and when it heads back to Oppo HQ it’s going to be a break up that’s going to take a long time to get over.
The Find X was already one of the best looking phones on the market and the most innovative. With the Lamborghini branding the Find X takes premium to a whole new level and demands the attention of anyone looking at it. This phone has a wow factor I’ve never seen in a phone before and that is what makes it worth every last cent.