MobileTechTalk Folding phones are somewhat common these days depending on where you live. In China, there are offerings from many brands, but outside of Asia the market has practically belonged to Samsung ever since the Huawei ban came into effect, which is why I was so excited to hear Oppo would be bringing at least one of their folding ones for 2023 to the UK and Europe, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is a clamshell style foldable and might finally give Samsung a run for their money.
- Great screen
- Great Hinge
- Top notch performance
- Big cover screen
- Fast charging
- Shorter battery life
- Still expensive
- No IP rating
- Software quirks
- Limited coverscreen support
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Disclaimer
Quick Links…
- Jump to… Overview
- Jump to… Spec Sheet
- Jump to… Performance & Use
- Jump to… Camera & Samples
- Jump to… Software
- Jump to… Battery
- Jump to… Final Thoughts
Overview
Oppo is one of two companies actively making and releasing a foldable competitor to Samsung outside of China, the other being Motorola with the Razr reboot, but whilst Motorola undercuts Samsung by just £50 at MSRP, Oppo goes one step further by undercutting Samsung by £150 for what I think is a much more enjoyable device to use. Being a clamshell foldable, the Find N2 Flip is a normal-sized smartphone when opened, but folds vertically in the middle, but with Oppo’s “Flexion hinge” they have a damn near crease-less screen and paired with the ultra-thin glass the screen shouldn’t stretch and distort as the Motorola does. I usually start these sections with a design tour, but this time I don’t know whether to start with the device open or closed, how about closed for this one?
On the front of the device when closed we have one of the immediate differences between the Z Flip 4 and the Find N2 Flip, the outer screen. Whereas Samsung gives you a tiny 1.9” external display, Oppo gives you a monstrous by comparison 3.26” but the bigger difference is the orientation, the tiny screen on the Z Flip 4 is landscape, whereas the bigger screen on the Find N2 Flip is portrait, taking up almost the entire left-hand side of the lid of the Find N2 Flip. next to that cover screen is the 2-camera system, with a 50MP main camera and an 8MP ultrawide camera, with a microphone and LED flash in between the screen and the lenses. On the rear of the phone when closed there is nothing other than the Oppo and Hasselblad logos, showing off the collaboration the two companies used again for this device.
Opening the Find N2 Flip up we are greeted with the 6.8” AMOLED display, with a 120Hz LTPO 2.0 panel capable of going from 1-120Hz at any gradient, a 1200nit user accessible mode, and a 1600nit peak “high brightness mode”. The panel is 2520×1080 and has a 21:9 aspect ratio, making it even taller than the Sony Xperia 1 series of phones, which is a feat really. In the middle at the top, we have the hole punch selfie camera, a 32MP affair. The entire screen has a raised border around it, this is to have a small gap in between both halves of the panel so in case debris gets in there it will not puncture the screen. However the device does fold flush, there is no gap unlike with the Z Flip 4. In this bezel, above the selfie camera is the earpiece speaker.
Finally, we get to the perimeter of the N2 Flip, on the left-hand side we have a whole lot of nothing. The top has a secondary microphone for noise cancelling and what appears to be a second port for the earpiece speaker for enhanced stereo effect. The right-hand side is where we find the volume rocker and the combo power button/fingerprint scanner. And lastly, the bottom has the USB-C port for charging and data transfer, the NanoSIM tray and the main microphone and loudspeaker ports. I have spoken ad nauseam about how much disdain I have for side-mounted power button fingerprint scanners. As a left-handed person just significantly less of your intended finger makes contact and is more likely to fail than using your right thumb. I feel like we should have moved to either optical scanners or ultrasonic scanners under flexible panels by now. Vivo, another BBK group subsidiary has already shown off a book-style foldable with an under-display fingerprint scanner, please I beg of you to make them useful for lefties again.
Spec Sheet
- 6.8” AMOLED display (inner)
- 2520×1080
- LPTO 2.0
- 1-120Hz
- 1600 nits peak
- 3.26” AMOLED display (outer)
- 382×720
- 900 nits peak
- 85.5mm x 75.2mm x 16mm (Folded)
- 166.2mm x 75.2mm x 7.5mm (unfolded)
- 191g
- MediaTek Dimensity 9000+
- 1x Cortex X2 @3.2Ghz
- 3x Cortex A710 @2.85Ghz
- 4x Cortex A510 @1.8Ghz
- Mali- G710 MC10 GPU
- TSMC N4 (4nm)
- 256/512GB UFS 3.1 storage
- 8/12/16GB LPDDR5X RAM
- 4300mAh battery
- 44w superVOOC charging
- 50MP Main camera
- F1.8
- 23mm effective focal length
- 1/1.56” sensor size
- 8MP ultrawide camera
- 112-degree field of view
- F2.2
- 32MP Selfie camera
- F2.4
- 22mm effective focal length
- 1/2.74” sensor size
- Android 13
- ColorOS 13
For a more in-depth look at the specs on offer here take a look at the spec sheet from GSMArena here
Performance & Use
As I’ve spoken about many times before, performance is not just running geekbench and putting some screenshots up (though yes I will post some screenshots of benchmarking apps to appease you nerds) but performance is many things. How is the battery life? How is the radio performance? How does it behave thermally? All of these are different performance characteristics.
Starting with the benchmarking apps to get them out of the way, the Dimensity 9000+ in the Find N2 Flip just kills it. In my testing, it scores roughly on par with the 8+ Gen 1 from Qualcomm but seems to produce significantly less heat. However whilst I have many data points for the 8+ Gen1, I have only a single data point for the Dimensity 9000+, and Oppo could have just put a really good cooling solution in this. However, due to the space constraints in a clamshell foldable, im thinking the D9000+ is just a more efficient, and therefore cooler chip. Very rarely, if ever was I waiting on the phone to do something. I just clicked or swiped and the phone reacted, and it was nice and consistent. There were two apps I had used with weird performance bugs, however in testing other devices at the same time, it was a buggy build of those apps that I happened to be set up as a beta tester for, so I can’t hold that against the Dimensity 9000+ in the Find N2 Flip.
Thermally I want to commend the Find N2 Flip because it doesn’t just keep cool under pressure when using intensive apps, but when charging using the 44w SuperVOOC adaptor included in the box it was barely warmer than ambient (however charging on a USB-PD charger at lower charge speeds raised the external device temperature to the mid-40s celsius, warm enough to notice in your hand, but not hot enough to make you worried). Even when recording video the Find N2 Flip was an absolute champ, and any increase in temperature I would attribute to the uncharacteristically hot day we had and I was shooting in a park with clear skies.
Lastly, when it comes to performance I want to talk about the radio performance, because one of my most infuriating issues with the Z Flip 4 was the surprisingly weak radio, however on the Find N2 Flip it is the opposite scenario. I was able to test the Find N2 Flip on two networks this time, both Three UK and Vodafone UK (thanks once again Vodafone for sending out the review unit). I am more familiar with the Three UK network in this area so I will start there, and the conclusion is that the Find N2 Flip managed to beat out my previous most consistent device, the OnePlus Nord 2, using an older MediaTek Dimensity chip, the 1200, handily. Areas the Nord 2 struggled to get 5G, the Find N2 Flip had a strong one with faster speeds, and in places where the Nord 2 dropped to LTE, the Find N2 Flip would still stay on 5G, albeit weaker than before. Swapping in the Vodafone SIM card I can overall lower speeds than with Three, but more rock-solid coverage map, there are places I go relatively frequently that I just know I will have no signal on Three, and when swapping in the Vodafone SIM those places opened up. I also think that Vodafone might have a more robust and higher bandwidth allocation on the seafront where a lot of people are, because not only was I getting signal, I was getting good speeds reliably, something that other carriers, not just Three, struggle with on the seafront.
Using the Find N2 Flip was honestly a joy to use. When I reviewed the Z Flip 4 I said that it was a good phone and a good foldable, just not the foldable for me, and whilst the Find N2 Flip still isn’t, it is much closer to it than the Z Flip 4 was, and honestly It all starts with how much more usable that front screen is. Whether it is just notification triage, checking the weather, or, my favourite, checking the battery status of my earbuds and changing the ANC settings on the fly. I can’t say I’m overly happy with how restrictive the software is on what you can do on it, but at a hardware level, it is much more usable than what Samsung offers.
I’m one of the people who mostly got over the gutter in the Z Flip 4 display, most of the time I was using it, I didn’t notice it until I touched the gutter, and whilst it wasn’t all that often, because rarely do I go over the middle of the screen, once I did it brought me out of the experience and I noticed it for a few more minutes. The screen crease on the Find N2 Flip on the other hand is practically invisible, and I had to look for it, usually with the screen off. You can still feel a minute ripple under the screen and due to the hinge mechanism that ripple does extend wider than the Flip 4s gutter, however, it is much more shallow so it is less feel-able to me at least. I also want to call out that whatever screen protector Oppo is using on the Find N2 Flip is much less “grabby” than the one Samsung is employing on the Z Flip 4, paired with the UTG in the display makes this feel a lot closer to a normal phone display than a foldable plastic one.
I’m not a huge fan of the power button and the Fingerprint reader situation here, but even more so, as with the Flip 4 I do wish the power button would have been on the lower half of the device. These devices are so tall, and a candy bar phone would have the power button exactly where the hinge is on these, so you obviously can’t do that, however, I would much rather have the power button on the lower half of the phone and be potentially too low and most interaction of the phone is on the bottom half of the screen, so shifting your grip would be the worst thing. That paired with the infuriating decision to have a fingerprint scanner in the power button makes the device more awkward for left-handed users. Front and back are not biased to either dominant hand, however, the sides of a phone are biased to one or the other, and whilst there are fewer left-handed people than right-handed people, and currently foldable devices are a small niche userbase, it feels annoying to be left out in the rain again.
Camera & Samples
Oppo has continued their partnership with Hasselblad, the renowned camera house on the Find N2 Flip, and think of these partnerships what you will, I liked the outcome of a lot of the shots I got out of the Find N2 Flip. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that the Find N2 Flip perfectly emulates the Hasselblad lenses they’re going for, because I’ve never touched a Hassseblad camera in my life, and likely never will, they are extortionately expensive, but I do like the software tuning that has been done here, but it isn’t perfect.
I want to get the worst things about this out of the way first, my unit seems to have an intermittent shutter lag problem, leading to issues like the one you see below. It’s worse because it is intermittent. If it was just a consistent shutter lag, I could get used to the lag time and account for it, but because it doesn’t always happen, I have taken shots and moved, only to then have a blurry mess because of it, very infuriating.
Outside of that issue though, the main camera, a 50MP Sony IMX890 is really quite nice, the ISP in recent MediaTek products has been getting better faster than I would have thought. I still think that Qualcomm has an edge in this department, and given the Find N2 (the non-flip, book-style foldable that uses the Snapdragon 8+ Gen1) has the same camera sensor, I think the Find N2 Flip will have a slightly worse image overall. I have come to like the Oppo Camera app as well, everything it where I wanted it to be and moving between settings and modes was quite snappy. The colours coming out of this are, shall we say, amped. Not quite Samsung ISOCELL amped, and not “dynamic mode in a Walmart TV” amped, but just enough to know that it is abstracted from reality a bit. The thing is though, more often than not, those amped colours make the photo look nicer to most people. In the same way that most people don’t want reference headphones, they want something with a bit more bass or a better high-end, a lot of people don’t want a perfectly flat image that perfectly recreates life.
The Ultra-wide camera here is undoubtedly the worst part of this package, it is softer than the main (given the insane difference in resolution, even when the main bins down to 12.5MP) the viewport isn’t matched to the main lens all that well, and because of the lower resolution it also limits your video recording options, capping out at 1080p60 for the ultrawide lens. Another weird software limit of the cover screen means that whilst you can use the camera closed, you can only use the main camera, no amount of swiping of button mashing will swap you to the ultrawide camera from the cover screen, which is incredibly annoying.
Next, we’ll check the selfie camera, the 32MP internal camera is actually quite impressive for the lens, we’ve seen this lens before in other Oppo and OnePlus devices and it is just fine, I think the new ISP and the Hasselblad tuning is doing something here, and I like whatever it is doing. The next thing about these foldables though, is that with the cover screen, you can use the main cameras to take photos and videos, so why wouldn’t you use the main 50MP lens, with the bigger sensor, and the best processing over the smaller sensor of the internal camera. The secondary benefit of using the external camera is that the device is folded, it is a physically smaller thing to hold, much nicer and ergonomic than before, neato!
Video recording is less impressive than I would have liked, and I think this is where the Qualcomm ISP shines more. Whilst the focus, exposure and white balance tracking were all really good, blocking, artifacting and just general wonkiness let the video capture down a bit. Software weirdness, like being able to select 4K in the settings, but then swap the to the ultrawide lens, but it doesn’t tell you that it then drops down to 1080p, even when you go back to the main camera it will stay at the 1080p level as that was what you had used prior. Another annoying software quirk is the inability to choose the settings from the cover screen, the video recorded from the cover screen is always 1080p60, no option in there, and weirdly, It looks like it is doing different,t more aggressive processing when using the main camera as a selfie camera than it normally does. Either way, here are some video samples from the Find N2 Flip so that you can see what I mean for yourselves.
Software
So this is likely to be a controversial take to those of you living in the US, but I really like ColorOS, and what OnePlus’ OxygenOS has morphed into. It is a nice and cohesive visual design, It has added features without a performance penalty and unlike something like Samsung’s OneUI, all of ColorOS feels intentional, connected and modern, wherein OneUI can often feel tacked together and dated.
The Aquamorphic design motif that Oppo is using here works quite well with the Material You design language that Google has adopted in the last few years. Whilst Oppo doesn’t quite go into the pastels and complimentary colours that Google does, the version of colorOS we have right now will automatically pick accent colours based on your background, it will change your quick settings toggles, and it will let you change those for light and dark mode. If you don’t like the automatically chosen colours, you’re more than welcome to change them, I did, it picked a weird pink for my keyboard due to my background, but I swapped it to a nice pastel grass green, which was very relaxing to look at.
Something I still continue to not be a fan of with colorOS, and most Asian OEMs’ skins are the notification sounds, something never feels right about them, so I usually go into the settings and change those for the rare time I accidentally have my phone on loud. Speaking about phones being on loud, mine rarely is, due to the fact that I wear a smartwatch. For the longest time I have been wearing a Huawei Watch GT2, I love it, it is great, however since the Huawei ban, Huawei Health (the app used to control their smartwatches) hasn’t been available in the play store. With Android 13, one of the new features of security is that sideloaded apps can’t access certain permissions by default you have to explicitly allow them, which is what I had to do here, annoying, but I got around it.
In the foldable-related section of the software, I need to talk about the cover screen. Because whilst I gave it a tonne of praise earlier on, it is not perfect, it is very locked down currently to I think about 7 applets and some quick settings. The implementation of these things is very polished (outside of notifications only showing you the subject line of an email) but I do feel like they are being too restrictive here, I would love an option in the developer settings that would allow you to whitelist apps for the front screen. A perfect example I think would be the directions view of google maps on the cover screen, it is large enough to show an arrow and the street name with a remaining distance. 
Another application that would work well is a music player app, whether discrete services (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music etc) or just something that hooks into the Android music control API, the fact there is only a minute music player widget is infuriating here. Think about the app what you will, but honestly, this might be the perfect size for a TikTok app, you’ve got a minute to kill, but no need to open up the full phone, power up that massive screen and take up another flex cycle of the hinge.
The more you can do on the smaller screen, the less you have to use the bigger one, and given the bigger one consumes more power, that would likely equate to longer battery life as well, which, I think the Find N2 Flip needs.
Battery
This is unfortunately not as cut and dry as the other sections here. Whilst the 4300mAh battery is larger than the 3700mAh battery in the Z Flip 4, the battery life I got out of the two was much closer than one would like to see, whilst I never made it dead before bed as I did with the Z Flip 4, I got closer than I would have liked to. Making matters worse however is the idle drain on the Find N2 Flip, whilst I may have gone to bed with 55%, it was not uncommon for me to lose 20% of that overnight, and whilst I’m usually fine going about my day with a phone between 50-45%, dropping that to 35% makes me a lot itchier, so I would come downstairs to my office and plug it in.
When it comes to charging I want to commend Oppo for adding it. The Z Flip 4 apparently supports 25w charging but I never saw it above 18w. The Razr 2022 supported 33w I rarely saw that as well, but the 44w of the SuperVOOC system was actually hit here!, and whilst I didn’t hit the 50% in half an hour claim, it was a damn sight faster than the Z Flip 4 and I can be thankful of that. But annoyingly, unlike the creepy fast 80w+ we’ve had lately where I can plug in whilst I make coffee and have most of my battery back, I don’t feel comfortable doing that here, it is just slow enough that It enabled twitchy bum time of battery anxiety, at least for me, so the 65w SuperVOOC or even 80w would have been greatly appreciated. But also, fix the damn idle drain.
Final Thoughts
Reviewing the Find N2 Flip has been a dream for the most part, in fact, I asked my spokesperson if I could get an extension as I really wanted more time with it. Whilst there are a few software niggles (idle drain, cover screen limits) and the ultrawide camera is kinda trash, the overall package of the Find N2 Flip is one that is really quite enjoyable, couple that with the fact it is £150 cheaper at MSRP than the Z Flip 4 makes it a steal.
I have faith that Oppo will fix the idle drain issue, this has received 2 software OTAs in the time I’ve had it for various things, and they have already announced they’re going to let more things run on the cover screen, I just hope that endurance wise this lives up to the claims, because whilst all of this is good, Samsung is on version four of this, and has physical retail stores in some locations to assist with repairs, is Oppo up for that? Only time will tell.
