Oppo tipped to revive legacy flagship smartphone design in Find X9 series

The Find X9 and X9 Pro are thought to be unveiled with a corner-mounted camera hump, in a stark departure from the prominent circular camera humps that have dominated Oppo flagship rear panels in the X6, X7 and most recent X8 series. 

Their successors might express their design genes in other ways, though, as the typically accurate leaker Digital Chat Station now hints at a look "a bit like a one-piece cold sculpture" in the updated Find X9-series camera module.

The phrase might evoke memories of the Find X3 Pro, a smartphone with an iPhone-esque camera hump, albeit one that at least looked as though it blended seamlessly with the rest of its glass back thanks to a complex "40-hour" process.

Accordingly, the Find X9 and X9 Pro might look more like that - or rather like the X5 and X5 Pro, the first and last Oppo devices to combine that esthetic with ceramic and a Hasselblad logo.

Digital Chat Station now also backs the Dimensity 9500-powered devices to emulate their iPhone counterparts, even if only in terms of the elegance of the bezels surrounding their 6.59- to 6.78-inch displays.

Both screens are also now projected to be 1.5K rather than 2K in resolution, though.

The X9 and X9 Pro are also still backed to launch with "obvious" rear camera upgrades and significantly upgraded 7,000 to 7,500mAh batteries.

Finally, the latest leak also hints that this design switch is exclusive to the X9 and its Pro sibling, meaning that the X9 Ultra could still emerge looking like its direct, class-leading camera monster forebear.