Folding phones is still not common. Why? Possibly because of the price, or is it because of its unusual form factor when closed? Oppo thinks so and so the handset maker decided to give its first foldable smartphone, the Oppo Find N, a more regular closed-form factor.
That, my friend, is the first factor that had me sold. Save for the 15.9 mm thickness, it has a form factor we are all familiar with when in its non-open state. In fact, it is smaller, at just 132.6 mm tall. The Oppo Find N essentially sits between the chunky Royole Flexpai 2 and the Fold3.
Like the Samsung Galaxy Fold3, it has a full-screen external display for use as a regular size phone in its closed state. The regular aspect ratio screen is a modest 5.49-inch but opens up to a generous 7.1-inch, almost square display. It looks kind of neat, IMHO.
The external display aka the secondary display is a 60 Hz HD+ (1,972 by 988) display while the main display is a variable refresh rate (1-120 Hz) WUXGA (1,792 x 1,920) display.
Like Samsung’s, Oppo also claims the folding screen has flexible glass. But unlike Samsung’s, it promised not to have folding lines – even have repeated foldings. The folding mechanism, which packs no less than 136 components, is rated for 200,000 folds and can achieve the same in an environment with a temperature of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit).
The folding phone has been 4 years in the making for Oppo and the folding mechanism alone boasts 125 patents. The promise of no fold line is the other thing that might just push me to buy this foldable phone.
Oppo said it uses a teardrop folding design, which together with the special “glass”, to achieve the non-fold line screen. If it is 100% no fold lines, I am on board. Well, that’s if I can find that kind of money. More on that in a bit.
The device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 mobile platform featuring an octacore processor with up to 2.84 GHz clock speed and Adreno 660 840 MHz GPU. The SoC is bolstered by LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 2-lane storage.
Other notables include a triple camera setup with OIS (main sensor) on a Find X3 Pro style camera bump, a 32 MP front-facing camera, 4K videoing, slo-mo down to 720p@480 fps, 2,415 + 2,085 mAh (typical) battery with support for fast charging, side-mounted fingerprint sensor, face unlock, dual SIM, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and GPS (A-GPS, Beidou, GLONASS, GALILEO, QZSS).
The Oppo Find N Foldable Smartphone is available now in China with a fairly competitive starting price of 7,699 yuan (about US$1,210), with an official release date of December 23, 2021.
All images courtesy of Oppo [CH].
