Oppos foldable phones take on Samsung with a flip phone and a tablet

Why not launch both outside China? — Oppos foldable phones take on Samsung with a flip phone and a tablet Oppo’s Find N2 and Find N2 Flip have interesting takes on the foldable phone.

Ron Amadeo – Dec 15, 2022 10:20 pm UTC reader comments 46 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit The Oppo Find N2. Oppo The cover display is short and fat. Oppo Here’s a good look at the inner display. Oppo The Color 13 (Android 13) homescreen looks almost like a tablet. Oppo Look at how tiny this is. Oppo Yep: small. Oppo The spine. Oppo Laptop mode. Oppo An internal shot. Oppo

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

First up, the Oppo Find N2 is the company’s flagship foldable. It’s a phone that opens up into a tablet for 7,999 yuan (about $1,147). This one is a China-only release for now, but there’s always a chance Oppo’s sister company, OnePlus, makes good on all its teasing and jumps into the foldables market with a similar design.

We should talk about the dimensions of this phone first because they are very different. When folded up, the phone is 132.272.614.6 mm. That’s a normal width, but the phone is extremely short. The 132 mm height makes the Find N2 as tall as an iPhone 13 Mini. The short height explains the 120Hz, 5.54-inch front OLED display. I don’t know if it’s right to call this “small” since at 72.6 mm wide, it’s still as wide as a normal smartphone, but it’s a unique form factor.

Open the phone, and you end up with a nearly square 132.2140.57.4 mm device featuring a 120 Hz, 7.1-inch flexible OLED. Oppo’s foldables use the same “flexible glass” cover as Samsung, which means there’s a very thin layer of glass in the middle of the screen, while the outside is a plastic, non-removable screen protector. Inside is a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage (there’s also an upgraded 16GB RAM, 512GB SKU), and a 4,520 mAh battery with 67 W charging. There are three rear cameras: a 50 MP main, 40 MP ultra-wide, and a 32 MP, 2x telephoto. There are two 32 MP hole-punch cameras for selfies and video chatone in each screen. You also get a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. Advertisement

A big part of Oppo’s sales pitch is the weight of this device, which is only 233 grams42 g less than the similarly sized Find N1. That’s in the realm of a normal smartphoneone of the heaviest mainstream phones is the iPhone 14 Max, which weighs 240 g. The (checks notes) Oppo Find N2 Flip. I feel like you could cut at least one of those words from the name. Oppo Anyway, it’s a flip phone. It looks cute. Oppo A shot of the inside display. These are normal smartphone onces you open them up. Oppo The front display runs these custom mini apps. Oppo The phone half-open. Oppo The insides. Oppo

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is Oppo’s answer to the Galaxy Flip and is a normal-sized smartphone that folds in half for 5,999 yuan ($860). Officially, the Flip is coming to most countries in Europe in Q1 2023, and who knows when OnePlus will decide to raid the Oppo parts bin for similar devices. This makes sense since the Flip 4 is Samsung’s bestselling foldable.

For specs, you get a 6.8-inch 120 Hz, 25201080 flexible OLED, a Mediatek Dimensity 9000+ SoC, and a 4,300 mAh battery with 44 W charging. The Mediatek chip is a rare one to come across our desks, but it’s a 4 nm chip with one ARM Cortex X2 CPU, three A710s, four A510s, and an ARM Mali-G710 MC10. It’s basically a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with a worse GPU.

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

The front display looks like a tiny smartphone! It’s a 3.23-inch 60 Hz, 720382 OLED. Rather than squinting at a scaled-down smartphone UI, this runs a custom interface with little mini-apps showing things like the weather, music, camera viewfinder, and notifications.

For cameras, you get a rear 50 MP main camera, a rear 8 MP ultrawide, and a 32 MP selfie cam. There’s also a side fingerprint sensor. Oppo really leans into the “Fashion phone” vibeyour phone is now a tiny leather handbag. Oppo Yep, it’s a purse. Oppo When open, the strap gives you something to hold on to. Oppo Can the loop actually be a kickstand? That would be interesting. Oppo

I’ve called these new-age flip phones “Fashion phones” before because the form factor cranks up the price while adding basically nothing in terms of functionality. When open, they mostly feel like a normal smartphone, just with a smaller battery and a fragile screen. Oppo is really leaning into the “fashion” vibe with the N2 Flip: check out the optional leather case that turns the phone into a tiny handbag complete with a small hand strap. It’s adorable. reader comments 46 with 0 posters participating Share this story Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Reddit Ron Amadeo Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Email ron@arstechnica.com // Twitter @RonAmadeo Advertisement Channel Ars Technica ← Previous story Next story → Related Stories Today on Ars