Just tried the latest Oppo phone at a demo booth and found something wild in the Photos app: offline semantic search seems to work even in airplane mode. I typed stuff like “blue car at night,” “receipt with total,” and “dog on a couch,” and it instantly pulled the right shots I’d just taken. No network, no delay after a minute or two of “indexing” in the background. If this is truly on-device AI, it’s super useful.
A few questions for anyone who owns it or has gone deeper:
- Where does the photo index live? If you clear Photos cache or move images between albums, do the smart tags/search results rebuild or persist?
- Does first-time indexing wait for charging/idle, or does it chew battery while you’re shooting a lot? Any hidden toggles to schedule or pause it?
- Multi-language queries: can you mix keywords from different languages in one search? Do synonyms work (e.g., “car” vs “automobile,” “sofa” vs “couch”)?
- Does it tag videos frame-by-frame for search, or only photos? Can it find specific moments inside a video like “fireworks” or “dog jumps”?
- Export/backup: if you copy photos to a PC or upload to Google Photos, do those smart tags travel with the files (EXIF/XMP/sidecar) or are they locked to the phone’s database?
- Third-party access: can gallery apps like Simple Gallery, Lightroom, or Snapseed see or query those tags via Android’s MediaStore or an Oppo-specific API/intent?
- Privacy: is there a setting confirming the model runs fully on-device and never uploads samples for “improvements”? Any per-app permission controlling which apps can read these tags?
- Edge cases: how does it handle similar-looking items (e.g., toy guns vs real, replica sneakers vs authentic)? Any obvious biases or misses people have noticed?
- Performance: if you dump 20k photos on day one, how long does it take to finish indexing, and does the phone throttle/heat? Does charging + screen off speed it up?
- File changes: if you edit a photo (crop, filter, erase objects), does it re-index the new content immediately? What about RAW+JPEG pairs?
If you want to try it:
- Shoot 10-20 quick pics across categories (text/receipts, pets, food, vehicles, night scenes).
- Toggle airplane mode and search oddly specific combos like “red jacket on stairs” or “latte art with heart.”
- Then move a few photos between albums, duplicate some, or edit/crop and see if the results update.
If this works as well as it seemed, it’s basically Pixel/Photos-level magic but local. Would love confirmations, region notes, and any hidden settings or developer hooks people have found.