Oppo’s foldable phones take on Samsung with a folding phone and a tablet

Oppo has a new range of foldable devices with some interesting designs: Meet the Oppo Find N2 and the Oppo Find N2 Flip. Just like the Samsung range, these are big and small foldable phones, but both offer something unique.

First off, the Oppo Find N2 is the company’s flagship foldable phone. It’s a phone that turns into a tablet for 7,999 yuan (about $1,147). This is a China-only release for now, but there’s always a chance Oppo’s sister company OnePlus will do well all his teasing and jumps into the foldables market with a similar design.

We should first talk about the dimensions of this phone because they vary a lot. When folded, the phone measures 132.2 x 72.6 x 14.6 mm. That’s a normal width, but the phone is extremely short. With a height of 132 mm, the Find N2 is as tall as an iPhone 13 Mini. The low height explains the 5.54-inch 120Hz front OLED display. I don’t know if it’s correct to call this “small” because at 72.6mm wide it’s still that way wide is like a regular smartphone, but it’s a unique form factor.

Open the phone and you’ve got a nearly square device measuring 132.2 × 140.5 × 7.4mm with a flexible 7.1-inch 120Hz OLED. Oppo’s foldable devices use the same ” “flexible glass” cover like Samsung, which means there’s a very thin layer of glass in the middle of the screen, while the outside is a non-removable plastic screen protector. Inside is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, 12GB RAM, 256GB UFS 3.1 storage (there’s also an updated 16GB RAM, 512GB SKU) and a 4,520mAh battery with 67W charging. There are three rear cameras: a 50 MP main camera, a 40 MP ultra wide camera and a 32 MP 2x telephoto camera. There are two 32MP hole punch cameras for selfies and video chats – one in each screen. You also get a side-mounted fingerprint sensor.

A big part of Oppo’s selling point is the weight of this device, which is just 233 grams – 42g lighter than the similarly sized Find N1. That’s in the range of a regular smartphone – one of the heaviest mainstream phones is the iPhone 14 Max, which weighs 240g.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is Oppo’s answer to the Galaxy Flip and is a full-size smartphone that folds in half for 5,999 yuan ($860). Officially, the Flip is coming to “most of Europe” in the first quarter of 2023, and who knows when OnePlus will decide to scour the Oppo parts bin for similar devices. This makes sense as the Flip 4 is Samsung’s best-selling foldable device.

As for the specs, you get a flexible 6.8-inch 120Hz, 2520×1080 OLED, a Mediatek Dimensity 9000+ SoC, and a 4,300mAh battery with 44W charging. The Mediatek chip is rarely found on our desks, but it is a 4nm chip with an ARM Cortex-X2 CPU, three A710s, four A510s and an ARM Mali-G710-MC10. It’s basically a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with an inferior GPU.

The 4,300 mAh battery is impressive. A major downside of Samsung’s flip phones was battery life. The hinge in the middle of these phones takes up a ton of space and cuts the battery in half, leaving the Galaxy Flip 4 only managing a 3,700mAh battery. A solid slab phone of this size would have around a 5,000mAh battery, so it’s still a compromise, but Oppo is closer than ever to a reasonable battery size.

The front display looks like a tiny smartphone! It’s a 3.23-inch, 60Hz, 720×382 OLED. Instead of peeking at a scaled-down smartphone UI, it runs a custom interface with little mini-apps that handle things like weather, music, camera viewfinder, and notifications Show.

For cameras, you get a 50MP main rear camera, an 8MP ultrawide rear camera, and a 32MP selfie camera. There is also a side fingerprint sensor.

I’ve called these new-age flip phones “fashion phones” before because the form factor drives up the price while adding basically nothing in terms of functionality. When opened, they mostly feel like a normal smartphone, only with a smaller battery and a fragile display. Oppo really leans into the “fashion” vibe with the N2 Flip: check out the optional leather case, which turns the phone into a tiny handbag with a tiny wrist strap. It’s adorable.