The Samsung Galaxy Fold series has gone unchallenged in India for the past few years and we have recently seen Samsung really step up its game with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 (Review). However, Oppo just unveiled a big surprise before we close out 2021, which gives us plenty of reason to reconsider whether the Galaxy Z Fold is indeed the best way to make a large screen foldable. The Oppo Find N was unveiled a week ago as the company’s first commercially available foldable smartphone, and while it’s only available for purchase in China, Oppo India has sent us a device to play with for a while.
After testing the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, there are enough differences about the Oppo Find N that I immediately notice and make a better foldable tablet style in my opinion. I haven’t spent a lot of time on it, and a full review of this phone won’t be too helpful at this point as it won’t be launching in India anytime soon, but I do want to point out a few things I’m really sorry about. fun.
The design of the Oppo Find N is arguably the biggest talking point, as this is where most of Oppo’s R&D efforts have been applied. The Find N is made of premium materials such as glass and aluminum, which you can see from the moment you pick it up. It’s quite thick and heavy, but surprisingly not much more than the Galaxy Z Fold 3.
The first thing you will appreciate is the familiar form factor. The outer OLED screen goes almost edge-to-edge with the frame, and the 18:9 aspect ratio makes it relatively easy to handle and use with one hand. It’s almost like using a standard smartphone, which just happens to be unusually thick. The outer screen only has a 60Hz refresh rate, but once you unfold this phone you get a much larger 7.1-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. Both screens are bright and vibrant, support HDR playback and deliver sharp images. Because the Find N is shorter and wider than the Galaxy Z Fold 3, videos automatically fill more of the screen without having to change the position of the device in your hands.
Speaking of the foldable screen, the Find N uses ultra-thin glass over the OLED panel, but the magic is in the ‘Flexion’ hinge. Oppo has developed a special mechanism that allows the two halves of the Find N to sit flush against each other, eliminating gaps so that dust and dirt can’t easily get through. The hinge also allows for greater tolerance where the screen actually folds, so there’s hardly any fold when open. You can still see slight undulations when looking at the off-axis screen, but you won’t feel a bump in the center when you run your finger over it. This is a significant achievement and something Samsung hasn’t quite mastered even with the third iteration of the Galaxy Z Fold.
The Oppo Find N is also a true flagship. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC plus up to 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Oppo has even managed to fit in a pretty hefty 4,500mAh battery, and this phone supports 33W fast wired charging and 15W wireless charging. There is a fingerprint sensor in the power button, but you can also use facial recognition to unlock this phone.
A big feature missing from the spec sheet is an IP rating for dust and water resistance. This is one area where Samsung still has the upper hand.
The cameras on the Oppo Find N also look promising. Both selfie cameras have 32-megapixel sensors, while on the back you get a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens and a 13-megapixel telephoto lens. I haven’t tested the cameras extensively, but they seem to deliver quite satisfactory results.
Let’s also quickly run through the software. Oppo has added custom gestures to ColorOS 12 to take advantage of the large folding display. You can quickly turn full-screen apps into floating windows or use them in split-screen mode, depending on the gesture you’re using. This only worked on a handful of Oppo apps, at least on the device I had. There’s also a FlexForm mode, similar to Flex mode on Samsung’s foldable devices, which essentially rearranges an app’s layout when you fold the phone halfway in landscape orientation. Again, this only worked for a handful of apps like the camera, although that could change in the future.
The Oppo Find N has made me optimistic about foldable devices again, and I really hope more manufacturers adopt this design philosophy: a compact screen with a standard aspect ratio on the outside and a larger screen on the inside. This, along with the barely visible crease in the foldable display, makes the Find N the most polished foldable to launch this year. It’s a real shame that it isn’t launching anywhere else in the world right now, but I hope it comes to India soon. If Oppo can polish its software, I think it could mean stiff competition for Samsung’s offerings.