Here’s a flipping wonder from Oppo

Oppo has been a brand in the NZ smartphone space for ages, but now they’ve finally launched their first foldable phone in NZ, their foldables having previously been confined to the Chinese market.

Where Oppo’s earlier foldable phones had been aimed at productivity power users, the Find N2 Flip’s clamshell design is aimed at people wanting a compact yet stylish phone with all the good bits of a high-end full-sized smartphone. Priced at a reasonable $1679 (for a foldable phone), does the Find N2 Flip have what it takes to carve out a loyal following in the ultra-competitive New Zealand phone market?

From a design perspective, the Find N2 Flip is an attractive wee unit. It has a 6.8-inch 120Hz folding AMOLED display which cleverly folds away in an ultra-compact and pocketable 45mm-thin body that weighs in at 191 grams. We at Witchdoctor think the Find N2 Flip should be called the FIND N TARDIS given how its screen real-estate tucks away into such an improbably small space.

The most crucial component of any foldable phone is its hinge. Oppo has put a lot of effort into what they call the “Flexion Hinge.” It runs across the Flip’s mid-section and delivers the least noticeable display crease I’ve seen yet in a foldable phone. The other benefit of this hinge design is that the Find N2 Flip can be closed without leaving any gap between its two halves, which can greatly help its durability. Oppo has had the hinge tested by TÜV Rheinland, and it’s rated to withstand some 400,000 openings and closings. This translates into it being opened and closed 100 times daily for ten years. As most of us change phones every 24-36 months, this is more than ample.

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Locally, the Find N2 Flip comes in two colourways, Astral Black and a glossy Moonlit Purple. The look and feel of the Flip is given a further hint of sophistication thanks to a metallic wave pattern etched onto its outer hinge face. In the hand, the Find N2 Flip feels solidly built. Its design may be durable, but the Find N2 Flip lacks IP-certified water and dust resistance. That said, its gapless folded state kept my pocket cruft out of its fold, while its inward folding design did a solid job of protecting its display.

While its design makes it eminently pocketable, it weighs in at 191 grams, making it slightly heavier than other competing foldable flip phones. In real-world terms, however, the difference isn’t huge. Even better still, you get a larger display and battery than most competing clamshell foldables. Oppo’s marketing bumf says the screen crease is half that of their “main competitor” (who I’d guess must be Samsung). Either way, in use, the crease is all but unnoticeable.

Another design win is the large 3.26-inch AMOLED external screen which is next to Flip’s main 50MP and secondary 8MP ultrawide shooters. As it is considerably larger than other competing foldables, notifications are more readable. A range of widgets can be displayed, greatly extending the secondary display’s usefulness. Equally nifty, it can also be used as a viewfinder with the phone’s main camera. I also liked that it even comes with a Tamagotchi-style virtual pet. Here’s hoping one of the many future colour OS updates extends its utility even more. There is some third-party app support, such as controls for Spotify, and Oppo has hinted that there may be more to come. Fingers crossed!

The 6.8-inch 20:9 full HD+ internal display uses LTPO E6 AMOLED, which translates into crisp and sharp on-screen images with vibrant colours and acres of contrast. Further helping things along is support for a variable refresh rate from 1 Hz to 120 Hz. This means you get both super smooth video for gaming and greater power efficiency. The display delivers around 1,600 nits of brightness, so that even on a sunny day, you can read it under direct sunlight. Its bezels are practically invisible too. All told, the Find N2 Flip probably has the best foldable display on the market at the moment.

The N2 Flip’s design also confers what Oppo calls “FlexForm”. This is when the phone is partially folded, allowing you to use its cameras for everything from time-lapse shots to video calls, all without a tripod. It comes in two colourways – Astral Black or Moonlit Purple. Both are pretty easy on the eye.

Under the hood sits MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset. Mediatek has traditionally been regarded as silicon used for underpowered and cheap smartphones. They’ve moved upmarket, and nowadays the Dimensity 9000 Plus silicon is already proving its worth on high-end gaming phones such as Asus’s ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. While the Find N2 Flip comes with a generous 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a China-only model comes with a whopping 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Oppo has built a strong following for its own take on Android, Color OS. Having moved from aping iOS, the Color OS UI has matured and feels far more Android-like. Split-screen multitasking is available (via a three-finger swipe), plus there’s a sidebar/floating window thingy. One of the really nice things about Color OS is the sheer amount of depth and customizability on offer. Spending time going through the myriad of settings reveals a plethora of options. The display can be tweaked using the O1 Ultra Vision Engine, while Zen Mode locks the phone down for a pre-defined time to give you a break from your phone. These are just two of many, many tweaks available. Oppo has also committed to four years of OS updates and five years of security updates.

The Find N2 Flip has three cameras: a 50MP primary shooter, an 8MP wide-angle secondary snapper on its outer front, and a 32MP hole punch selfie shooter atop the Flip’s inner display. The camera hardware isn’t half bad. The main shooter consists of a Sony IMX890 sensor paired with Oppo’s MariSilicon X imaging neural processor for image processing. Equally as crucial, camera optics and tuning are handled via renowned camera maker, Hasselblad. The net result is crisp photos with solid low-light performance. While not quite in the same league as some flagship models, the Find N2 Flip’s cameras are still very capable.

On the connectivity front, Find N2 Flip is well-appointed. Not only do you get Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6 baked in (sadly there is no Wi-Fi 6E), but the Find N2 Flip also supports eSIM and dual 5G SIMs. Its 360-degree antenna design also means that NFC works regardless of how you’re holding the Flip, opened, or closed. For topping up my snapper card, it was bomb-proof.

The Find N2 Flip might be a super compact foldable clamshell. But it still packs a huge 4,300 mAh battery that effortlessly delivers close to 2 days of life with light use. As you’d expect from Oppo, super quick charging is there too. It’ll charge at 44 watts using the bundled SuperVOOC charger. In around 20 minutes, I was 30% charged, and I was fully charged in just shy of an hour. Unfortunately, space constraints mean that wireless charging is MIA.

The Find N2 Flip is an excellent evolution of the foldable Flip phone. Great design combines with a flagship-level spec to make it an absolute joy. Most crucial of all is the wallet-pleasing sticker price of $1679, which makes the Find N2 Flip excellent value for money. All this combines to earn it a perfect 10 out of 10.

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