One-minute clip recording upgraded from 12 seconds as standard. A reduced cool down time between clips from 5 minutes to 1 minute allowing for up to 12 hours of cloud storage every day, per camera. For an Android device, open the device’s Settings and tap App > Neos SmartCam > Permissions and toggle Storage On. On the video front you get Oppo’s Ultra Steady Video 2.0 for super-smooth footage, though this is also present in the cheaper Oppo Find X2 Lite. This is one of the better hybrid zoom modes I’ve seen in a mid-range phone. However, in certain lighting conditions the Find X3 Neo seems to revert to using a crop of the primary sensor even at 5x, resulting in weird-looking oversharpened images. And, at times, there’s significant purple fringing at 5x.

I carried out much of my testing before looking into the Find X3 Neo’s tech specs, to evaluate its photos without being swayed by the hardware. Its 16-megapixel wide camera isn’t at the same level as the OnePlus 9’s, but it’s sharper than the iPhone 12’s.

The Oppo Find X3 Neo speakers, too, are solid. There are two: one sits along the bottom edge of the handset, and you’ll find the other above the display. They aren’t quite as loud and beefy as those on the OnePlus 9 Pro – podcasts may struggle to compete with the sound of a kettle boiling 30cm away – but they’re punchy. You can always opt to punch the colours up a little by activating the Dazzle Color AI mode. We tended to leave it off for more natural results. While Fujifilm’s Instax cameras may still have the Go beat for price-per-shot value, if you’re in the market for a Polaroid-branded instant camera, the Go is the most attainable model yet. But everything moves along fluidly, and ColorOS also retains the quality of being quite customisable. Granted, it’s far from unique in that regard, but this means you can mitigate those irritations and make it quite pleasant to live with. Battery Life – Oppo impresses with fast charging again Comparing shots like for like with the similarly priced Motorola Edge and OnePlus 8, there wasn’t a clear winner. The OnePlus 8 (which uses the same main sensor as the Oppo) seems to have a bit of an edge when it comes to general colour balance and detail. On an overcast day, the Find X2 Neo would tend to introduce a smidgen more noise to the grey-white skies.

The Oppo Find X3 Neo probably won’t get the attention it deserves. It sits one step below the Oppo Find X3 Pro, and sells for hundreds of pounds less.The video score of 103 is respectable, though a handful of phones in the category do better. The Oppo Find X3 Neo is fairly competitive within its category, and though it does not particularly excel in any one aspect (except perhaps zoom), it will deliver decent results in most situations. To receive notifications once relevant alerts are turned on, you will need to ensure you have toggled on the setting on your phone for the Neos SmartHome app allowing it to send/push notifications. Overall the Neo isn’t necessarily the most interesting phone on the market, or at the price point, from a design perspective, but it is robust and comfortable to use, both of which are significant strong points. That it has wireless charging too is a nice surprise, as it is something that much of the competition at the price point omits entirely. We’ve blamed the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s Snapdragon 695 for a lot. But it may also be behind the phones surprisingly decent battery life. So there is clear benefit too. Though it may be smaller, and cheaper, than its kin, it has a 1080p OLED display, a 50MP camera, a powerful processor and an interesting design to boot – so it is hardly a poor cousin. This said, at the price of entry it finds itself up against a host of powerful players, each offering options that blend a similar set of specs, though all of them are larger.

The Motorola Edge 30 Neo camera sounds great on paper. It has a 64-megapixel main with optical image stabilisation (OIS). This means a little motor can tilt the camera lens to compensate for handshake motion, and it’s far from a standard feature at the price.There’s plenty of customisation on offer, though. You can switch the Oppo Find X3 Neo’s icon shapes, the size of them and the size of the graphic inside. This lets you alter ColorOS’s character quite dramatically. But you can’t change the fundamental appearance of the app menu, which doesn’t have the coherent style of the best. Attempt a standard setup as if you are hearing the voice prompts. If the camera is able to scan the QR code, the LED status light will change to flashing blue-yellow. From a software perspective, the situation begins to change somewhat. For all the attention that has been shown to the hardware, the included ColorOS is a little underwhelming. It’s the lightest phone in the family, too, at just 171g. And the Neo spreads that meagre weight well over a fairly large 6.5-inch canvass. General performance is perfectly solid too, but the Motorola Edge 30 Neo’s processor is not great considering the phone’s price. It uses the Snapdragon 695. It has 5G, sure, its CPU-side performance is entirely acceptable, but unlike the higher-end Qualcomm models the gaming performance here is not all that hot.