For someone who loves movies, I’ve never fancied myself as much of a filmmaker — but Oppo’s Hasselblad-inspired XPAN mode has got me rethinking my directorial ambitions.
Built into the new Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and other Find X Series phones, XPAN lets you shoot ultra-wide frames with a 65:24 aspect ratio. It’s inspired by the Hasselblad XPan camera, which first launched in 1998 and could capture both standard 35mm and panoramic images on the same roll of film.
During a recent visit to Mallorca, Spain, I put Oppo’s XPAN mode to the test, and I’ve decided that a) I wish my iPhone 18 Pro had the same photography feature and b) if Christopher Nolan ever did decide to own a smartphone, he should consider the Find X10 Pro Max. If you’re reading this, Chris, you’ll soon understand why.
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I bring up Nolan because XPAN mode turned what would have been good-but-not-great vacation snaps into photos that look like scenes from The Odyssey.
By extending the width of the frame significantly — 65:24 is roughly the size of two standard 35mm frames side by side — XPAN lets you capture the full context of a scene, and I found this extra width beneficial for shooting both landscapes and urban cityscapes.
XPAN works across the wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses of the Find X10 Pro Max — all three, impressively, are 200MP (that’s a first for a smartphone) — and in the gallery above, you’ll see I used the ultra-wide for the widest possible shots of the sunset, and the standard wide for a tighter framing of the headland.
In the Cathedral of Santa Maria in Palma, XPAN came in handy for capturing the breathtaking scale of the building. I particularly love how, in the last image, the almost ethereal light in the middle of the scene is bookended by completely normal churchgoers. The contrast is great.
In these shots, I’ve used XPAN to capture the hustle of busy streets. In the first gallery, see how the couple is trailing behind their runaway daughter, and in the second, how four distinct groups are visible outside the café — you just can’t get the same dynamism and richness from standard smartphone aspect ratios.
As mentioned, XPAN works with all three lenses on the Find X10 Pro Max, and in the gallery below, I’ve included shots taken with the phone’s telephoto lens at 3x optical zoom — proof that wide angles can work up close, too.
Of course, I’m not the first person to discover Oppo’s XPAN mode, but I’m writing this article to make sure I’m not the last.
The feature is actually pretty hidden (it’s tucked away in the ‘More’ tab in Oppo’s camera app), and I only learned about its existence after my colleague, Prakhar, highlighted it in his coverage of the Oppo Find X8 Ultra last year.
“I love anything that helps me see the world differently, and XPAN does just that. It brings an amazing new perspective that I wouldn’t have paid attention to otherwise,” Prakhar wrote at the time, and having now used the feature for myself, I feel the same way.
It’s worth noting that you can achieve similar results with non-Oppo phones by manually cropping ultra-wide shots into the 65:24 aspect ratio, but you’ll have to think harder about your framing before taking the shot.
XPAN, meanwhile, lets you shoot directly into this wider ratio and even transforms the Find X10 Pro Max’s camera into a classic Hasselblad XPan viewfinder. What’s more, once you click the shutter, you’ll get a nice ‘developing’ animation as the phone simulates the transition from negative to photograph, which is a nice nostalgic touch.
Oppo announced the extension of its partnership with Hasselblad in 2025, meaning future Oppo phones will continue to feature XPAN mode and other Hasselblad-inspired photography tools, including Hasselblad Portrait Mode and Master Mode.
It’s sometimes easy to think of these brand partnerships as gimmicks, or as something that Chinese smartphone companies do to keep pace with rivals — Oppo has Hasselblad, Xiaomi Leica, Vivo Zeiss, and Honor recently partnered with ARRI. But if not for Oppo’s Hasselblad collaboration, XPAN mode wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t have looked twice at my Mallorca vacation pictures.
So what do you say, Chris — fancy taking the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max for a spin?
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
