What’s in a name? When it comes to smartphones, quite a lot, actually. And some brands’ product naming conventions are more straightforward than others.
The Oppo Find X10 series arrived last week, comprising two models: the Oppo Find X10 and Oppo Find X10 Pro Max. There’s no regular ‘Pro’ this year, and while there may yet be a Find X10 Ultra in 2027, Oppo’s decision to mix up its flagship naming strategy raised eyebrows at the brand’s Find X10 series launch.
Typically, flagship smartphone lineups include a standard model, a Pro model, and a larger Pro Max and/or Ultra model. Apple does it, Google does it, Samsung does it (sort of), and until this week, Oppo did it — the Oppo Find X9 series was made up of the Find X9, Find X9 Pro, and Find X9 Ultra. There was no ‘Pro Max’, but the sequence made sense.
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Why, then, has Oppo decided to scrap the regular ‘Pro’ and add a ‘Pro Max’ into the fold with this year’s Find X lineup? The reason, Oppo says, is to distinguish the Find X10 Pro Max from the Find X9 Pro as more than just a generational upgrade, and to avoid aligning the Find X10 too closely with its bigger, more premium sibling.
“For the Find X10, though it’s a standard version, it’s better compared with the last generation [Find X9 Pro] because it’s empowered with Pro capabilities,” Jensen Jie, Smartphone Product Director at Oppo, explained (via translation) at a roundtable attended by TechRadar.
“And for the Find X10 Pro Max, you must have felt the change compared with the Find X9 Pro. Its competitiveness has been lifted remarkably — that’s why we wanted to name it ‘Pro Max,’ to send a message to users and the market.
“When we’re naming our products, one of the key considerations is that the users can understand the meaning [implied by] a name change,” Jie continued. “And for the Find X10 series, [we believed] there should be a standard version, because many users are more familiar with [the experience offered by] a standard version.
“We just talked about positioning; we have empowered the Find X10 with Pro capabilities this time. And for the Find X10 Pro Max, we have empowered it with the three 200MP camera system and a larger battery [than the Find X9 Pro]. It’s a big upgrade on the last generation — it’s a step forward. That’s why we used ‘Pro Max’, so we can articulate this upgrade clearly to the market and our users.”
Now, that’s a bit of a word salad — I’ll reiterate that Oppo’s answers were provided via translation, so some nuance may have been lost as a result — but I think I understand what the company is trying to say here.
In Oppo’s eyes, the Find X10 Pro Max is a better phone than the Find X10 Pro name would’ve implied. And the Find X10 couldn’t be called the Find X10 Pro, because doing so would make it seem like the same phone as the Find X10 Pro Max, but smaller, which it isn’t (versus the regular model, the Pro Max has a more powerful 2nm MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro chipset and a larger 200MP ultra-wide camera).
Of course, you’d think this conundrum could’ve been solved by simply calling the Find X10 Pro Max the Find X10 Ultra, but we’re expecting that very device to arrive sometime next year and be better still than the Find X10 Pro Max.
So I can (sort of) understand Oppo’s strategy here: the ‘Pro Max’ is being used to describe a product that’s better than ‘Pro’, but still not quite ‘Ultra’. That’s different to how, say, Apple uses the ‘Pro Max’ designation.
Still confused? Perhaps this might help: imagine for a moment that Samsung wanted to release an even better phone than the Galaxy S26 Ultra in the same generation. In that case, the Galaxy S26 Ultra we know might have instead been called the Galaxy S26 Pro Max (owing to its size and premium features), while Samsung would continue to call the Galaxy S26 the Galaxy S26. There’d be no Galaxy S26 Pro. That is, I think, what Oppo is doing here — but please correct me in the comments if you think I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
I’m not entirely sure what Oppo means by “many users are more familiar with [the experience offered by] a standard version,” but it’s clear that Oppo thinks of the Find X10 as the true successor to the Find X9 Pro. And that sentiment rang true in our testing of the new device:
“The Oppo Find X10 costs £1,099 — exactly the same as last year’s Find X9 Pro at launch and £200 more than the standard Find X9,” we wrote in our review of the phone. “That might sound like a mighty price hike at first, but the truth is that the Find X10 is more obviously a follow-up to the Find X9 Pro than the standard Find X9, and makes a case for its price point with some properly pro-grade features.”
Both the Oppo Find X10 and Find X10 Pro are available to pre-order now from Oppo directly; they’ll begin shipping later this month.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
