iPhone 17 Pro Max vs OPPO Find X9 Pro: The Camera Mission

I took the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the OPPO Find X9 Pro on a camera comparison mission, and I mean a mission: over 2,000 photos and dozens of videos across four countries. London and Cornwall, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands. Pretty much every mode on both phones. The full video is here, and I’ve linked the original RAW files in its description so you can judge without YouTube’s compression.

What I care about is the end result: how the photos look, how fast I get them, and how much I need to fix later. Here’s how the mission went.

The theme that emerged early

Right off the bat, the X9 Pro has been more fun to use. Master mode is a fantastic way to learn photography (I’m still learning, I’m not a photographer), because even without changing anything it teaches you how white balance, shutter speed and ISO shape a shot. And outdoors, OPPO’s colour is just better to my eye: crisp micro-contrast without going crunchy, highlights that roll off naturally, shots that look finished out of the camera, almost artistic without a filter.

The iPhone plays it differently: more neutral, more malleable, a safe base that responds beautifully to small edits. In good light that’s a taste question. The pattern that isn’t taste: the OPPO gives photos character, and the iPhone’s colour science, I have to say it, feels a bit dated. Sometimes the sky comes out nearly purple, sometimes the warm tone swallows a red. You can tell straight away it’s an iPhone shot.

Indoors flips the story. Under mixed LEDs the OPPO can go plasticky and mess up colourful objects; the iPhone stays truer, more consistently. And when speed matters, the iPhone is ridiculously faster at RAW capture: three shots in the time the OPPO takes two. Chasing kids, that wins.

The fun stuff nobody else ships

X-Pano is an ultra-wide sweep with almost no distortion, and my beach shot with a single tiny person selling the scale is one of my favourite frames of the whole trip, completely unplanned.

Then there’s the Hasselblad optical add-on: it snaps onto the X9 Pro and turns the 200MP telephoto into a genuine super-zoom. A 230mm optical view, clean crops to the equivalent of 460mm, even 920mm for stills, and roughly 90% of the magic is optical, not AI slop. Concerts, wildlife, nosebleed stadium seats: this is where the X9 Pro stops being another flagship and behaves like a compact long-lens camera.

And Silhouette mode is my favourite of OPPO’s smart scenes: dramatic skies, beautifully defined edges, the look I was actually going for while the iPhone’s version came out soft. One-button long exposure is the same story. Photography as play.

Telephoto: the iPhone’s sore spot

I don’t enjoy piling on the iPhone, because on its own these photos look great. But side by side, the telephoto is a disappointment, and it’s not one or two shots: every single one looks better on the OPPO. In the helmet shot you can make out individual grains of sand on the X9 Pro; on the iPhone the same frame washes out completely. The Ford badge on a distant truck: legible on the OPPO, mush on the 17 Pro Max.

Low-light portraits continue the pattern. In a dim restaurant, the OPPO gave my son natural skin tones and a sharp face; the iPhone drew its little focus box around his face and then, apparently, focused on the glasses on the table. Too soft, washed out, hard to even tell where focus landed.

Video: still Apple’s round

Now I’ll stop sounding anti-Apple, because video is where the iPhone still leads. The wave shots came out more defined, slow-mo at 120fps is much smoother, and the OPPO struggles a little with stabilisation in motion and adds odd colour to selfie video. One OPPO detail I genuinely appreciate: a setting to lock exposure for the whole recording, which sells transitions beautifully. And one plea, again: Apple, the flickering and autofocus issues on the 17 Pro Max are real, only a handful of creators dare report them, and when this phone nails video it’s excellent. Fix it; you have the hardware.

The verdict

If you love tinkering, learning, and beautiful out-of-camera character, OPPO makes photography feel like play, and if you shoot travel, street and cityscapes, its colour and highlight roll-off are gorgeous. If you’re mostly indoors or in mixed light, if you grade every photo yourself, or if capture speed decides your shots, the iPhone’s neutrality and RAW pace are hard to beat, and its video remains the benchmark.

But the acid test: if I’m travelling tomorrow and can take one phone, I’m taking the X9 Pro, not even thinking. The iPhone would honestly be my third or fourth choice right now, kept close mainly because moving files to the Mac is so convenient. Neither is a bad choice; it depends on your style. And I genuinely expect software updates to close some of the iPhone’s gaps, even if Apple will never admit they existed.

The comparison is 100% independent, and the RAW files are there in the video description so you don’t have to take my word for any of it.