Here’s how OPPO achieves the timeless, exquisite look of its flagship device
MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Aside from a smartphone’s powerful features that deliver remarkable performance, its design is, without a doubt, a key consideration when looking for a mobile device. But, nowadays, with a handful of smartphones in the market with the same look, feel, and even color, it gets trickier to choose from among the available options.
But smartphones from the global smart device brand OPPO beg to differ as OPPO’s designers and engineers always work tirelessly to innovate and aim for perfection, ensuring that every OPPO mobile phone exhibits stunning form and unparalleled function.
OPPO Find X5 Pro’s timeless, exquisite look
For instance, with the stunning ceramic back of the OPPO Find X5 Pro, its curved rear wraps elegantly and organically around the device’s camera housing while embodying a volcano-like design to form a seamless look and feel, which no other smartphone can match.
But how did OPPO develop such a spectacular design for its flagship device? Find out how they created the exquisite appearance and comfortable handling of the OPPO Find X5 Series.
A nature-inspired design
“There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature,” said the famous architect Antoni Gaudi. And like Gaudi’s magnificent architecture, the humble yet beautiful curve in nature has inspired artists and engineers for millennia. The curve has also inspired the OPPO Find X Series through the years, making it different from the other models.
While other handsets have unattractive camera bumps that look like different features of smartphones, one can see in the OPPO flagship device the smooth, elegant nature of its rear panel that gently flows around the lenses, forming a striking volcano-like shape.
Such a design was born as OPPO engineers and designers leveraged their past experiences to further level up the curve in the OPPO Find X5 Pro, delivering a device that beautifully and seamlessly integrates the camera system while producing energy that is eye-catching and gentle.
Developing a ceramic-based back
For the first time, a ceramic back is used to leverage its superior properties from the glass and for a stunning visual appearance. It is made from a microcrystalline material, calcined at a temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius to produce a texture twice stronger than glass, minimizes fingerprints, and with double heat dissipation.
However, it is a very tricky and unforgiving material to work on due to its strength. To create a precise, organic curved back for the OPPO Find X5 Pro, OPPO engineers invented a process that sees the ceramic rear panel carved like a work of art. They used over 2,000 individual control points to achieve the flagship device’s seamless and organic curves.
But taming the ceramic panel was far from easy. Because of its robust properties, it was difficult to machine, which raised a serious problem in creating the flagship OPPO Find X5 Series’ unique curved rear design. And as OPPO engineers had to solve other crucial hurdles, it took them six months of research and development in the molding, machining, and polishing process to create the incredible feature.
For instance, utilizing existing manufacturing methods created a larger cap and less smooth curve gradient between the ceramic rear cover and the camera housing. For OPPO, it was unacceptable, which is why its engineers devised a more precise machining method with two blades arranged at an exact 90-degree angle.
Another challenge came up for OPPO engineers as a straight-edged cutting line surrounding the sides of the ceramic cover appeared with visible cutting marks from the machine blades. To solve this problem, OPPO created a new lift edge polishing process to refine the machined edges and produce a smoother, finished appearance.
However, OPPO realized that removing the manufacturing marks could lessen the ceramic material used while making the rear panel smaller to fit the OPPO Find X5 Pro. As a result, the brand’s engineers opted to meticulously polish the ceramic’s edges in multiple stages, leveraging the first-ever four-axis polishing machine that uses a micron-level diamond powder.
And at every stage, the results were checked at uniform intervals for precise adjustments, down to 0.005mm. With such a careful process, it takes OPPO engineers five whole days to produce a perfectly machined, polished, and premium ceramic back that has a yield of 97 percent than 87 percent.
Embodying a precise camera placement, housing
A camera housing solution is one of the main challenges for a smartphone design. Usually, mobile phones have unsightly bumps in their design that do not add excitement or finesse to their appearance. And while OPPO engineers solved this problem with the OPPO Find X5 Series’ smooth, volcano-like look, one more challenge has to be addressed — how to integrate the lenses into the housing without unattractive bumps or camera rings.
Removing the rings of the camera lenses would provide a cleaner look. But it also means that the lenses should be positioned precisely in the housing. If placed too high, the lens can be at risk of being damaged. And if it is too low, users will notice a dip in the surface and lose the premium feeling of flushness flow.
OPPO engineers determined that the perfect placement of the camera lenses under the ceramic housing was 0.10mm, equivalent to a human hair’s thickness. However, direct assembly resulted in the thickness of two hair strands.
As a solution, OPPO Find X5 Pro’s ceramic battery covers and three lenses were separated into three groups, depending on their thicknesses. The lenses, then, were matched to their closest ceramic cover to achieve the precise camera housing depth. And as manual measuring and grouping can take time and too much to handle, OPPO invested millions in creating specialized automated equipment, which automatically categorizes and matches the lenses and rear covers.
How OPPO ensured perfection in creating the OPPO Find X5 Pro’s design is astonishing. And with all the processes the design underwent to achieve perfection, it is impossible not to fall in love with its timeless and exquisite look. Meanwhile, OPPO also integrated into the flagship device a high-end camera system and premium features that deliver world-class performance to empower your moments.
To know more about the latest OPPO Find X5 Pro, visit OPPO Philippines’ official website at https://www.oppo.com/ph/ or its official Facebook page at OPPO Philippines.
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