Oppo enters three-year partnership to bring Hasselblad imaging tech to its flagship smartphones: Digital Photography Review

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo has announced it is entering a three-year strategic partnership with Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad to bring Hasselblad technology to Oppo’s mobile devices.

In December 2020, smartphone manufacturer Vivo announced it was partnering with Zeiss to co-engineer the imaging systems for Vivo’s flagship smartphone lineup. Four months later, in March 2021, OnePlus announced it was teaming up with camera manufacturer Hasselblad to bring the Swedish company’s image processing technology to its OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro smartphones. Now, it’s smartphone manufacturer Oppo who will be looking to gain some imaging expertise from a seasoned veteran in the imaging world.

If three partnerships between iconic camera brands and Chinese smartphone manufacturers in just over a year seem unusual, it isn’t all that surprising when taking into consideration that Vivo, OnePlus and Oppo are all subsidiaries of BBK Electronics Corporation, a Chinese multinational conglomerate that’s currently one of the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers. In addition to Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus, BBK Electronics also owns Realme, who is rumored to be partnering with Kodak for future smartphone models, as well as iQOO, which is a sub-brand of Vivo.

Find X3 Pro smartphone, released in March, 2021.

As for Oppo’s new partnership, the company’s forthcoming Find X series smartphones are the first to showcase technology derived from the partnership. While the X3 series was the latest flagship offering from Oppo, rumors suggest they might skip the ‘X4’ name and jump straight to X5, due to the number ‘4’ being considered unlucky in Chinese culture. Whatever the name ends up being, it’s likely any serious imaging technology from Hasselblad will be limited to the most flagship Find X Pro modeland not the other mid-range models in the lineup, as noted by Android Authority.

‘OPPO and Hasselblad will now work together to further develop advanced imaging solutions through R&D collaboration, which aims to provide users with more natural colors and a more refined imaging experience,’ says Oppo in its press release. ‘Leveraging Natural Color Calibration with Hasselblad, OPPO also targets to bring the most natural skin tone possible to its portrait photography.’