Chinese tech company Oppo has unveiled its latest flagship smartphones which are powered by its first self-developed imaging chips, as it works to expand its presence in the premium smartphone segment.

Powered by MariSilicon X, a neural processing unit that is designed by Oppo, Find X5 Series are the results of the company's broader push to beef up research and development, including heavy input into the R&D of in-house chips.

The phones are designed to help Oppo stand out amid intense competition with rival players including Apple Inc and Honor Device Co Ltd.

Pete Lau, chief product officer of Oppo, said the only way to truly make valuable innovation is through self-research that goes deep into the bottom layer of communication, chip, and material technologies to solve key problems.

Oppo said the MariSilicon X chip is a dedicated imaging neural processing unit which overcomes smartphone video's greatest challenge – nighttime recording.

Night video presents a major challenge for smartphones, so countless beautiful moments have not been captured or saved in high quality. That's why Oppo developed MariSilicon X to catch the video details at night, the company said.

Oppo said based on a 6-nanometer process crafted for top-tier imaging performance, the MariSilicon X not only packs a powerful AI computing power, it also runs an advanced AI noise reduction algorithm designed by the Oppo Research Institute. This means it can detect and reduce noise in each frame, pixel by pixel, while preserving finer detail, skin tone, and color accuracy.

The Find X5 Series, with the highest priced at 6,799 yuan ($1,077) in China, came as Chinese smartphone vendors are working hard to fill the void created by the exit of Huawei Technologies Co from the premium phone segment, after the latter faced US restrictions.

So far, none of them appears to have succeeded. Many users of Huawei's smartphones are now switching over to Apple's iPhones, and Chinese smartphone brands are still struggling, said Fu Liang, an independent telecom analyst who has followed the sector for more than a decade.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple was the largest smartphone vendor in China with a market share of 21.7 percent, as the iPhone 13 dominated the premium segment, thanks to its comparatively lower launch price, said market research company Counterpoint.

Honor, which became independent from Huawei more than two years ago, surged to become the second largest smartphone vendor in China with a 16.7 percent share of the market. Oppo came in a close third with a market share of 16.6 percent, Counterpoint said.