Review: Oppo Find N2 Flip

Smartphones have gotten very samey. One glass and metal rectangle is much the same as the next. The advent of folding displays is the latest innovation. Samsung led the charge, taking a few generations to hone its designs, but the Galaxy Fold and Flip are no longer the only game in town. Google’s forthcoming Pixel Fold shoots for the high end, but like Motorola's upcoming Razr+, Oppo’s Find N2 Flip is more affordable.

As a folding phone skeptic, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed using the Find N2 Flip. It's svelte and sexy. It simultaneously conjures nostalgia for the flip phones of old and feels like the future. Oppo has cut a few corners to keep the price down, but you might be willing to compromise to find out what folding phones are all about.

Photograph: Oppo

The Oppo Find N2 Flip folds into what is almost a square at around 3.3 x 3 inches. It slips easily into a tight jeans pocket or a small bag. My black review unit has a lovely, subtle textured finish that enhances grip. The shiny spine bears the Oppo logo, and the hinge mechanism is smooth. When opened, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is a typical flagship smartphone size at 6.8 inches, almost exactly matching Google’s Pixel 7 Pro and the Xiaomi 13 Ultra.

It’s funny to think that the outer display is around the same size as the screens on the earliest smartphones. At 3.26 inches it’s big for a phone with this clamshell design, but it's cramped for anything more than checking notifications and sending quick replies. However, it does have a few tricks up its sleeve. You can use it as a viewfinder to take superior selfies with the main camera, and you can swipe to cycle through handy customizable widgets that display things like the local weather, your calendar, and media controls.

Open the Find N2 Flip and you're treated to an AMOLED display. It boasts an adaptive refresh rate that ratchets up to 120 Hz, a 2,520 x 1,080-pixel resolution, and a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. In other words, it's responsive, sharp, and plenty bright. The matte finish on the screen is typical for folding phones, but the lack of reflections makes for comfortable reading, and it is clearly legible outdoors. The crease is inevitably visible, and you can feel it when you tap and swipe the screen, but it's relatively subtle.

The best part of a compact clamshell is flipping it open to answer a call and snapping it shut to end one. The folding action is satisfying, and Oppo reckons it’s good for 400,000 folds, so there’s no need to ration yourself. It feels well made, though I tended to use both hands to open it.

There’s no IP rating here for water resistance, so best to keep it dry. The hinge picks up pocket lint, as does the lip around the main screen, and smudges are a bigger issue on the matte finish, so you need to wipe occasionally to keep it clean. It’s tough to say how gracefully it will age, which is a concern with folding phones in general.

Photograph: Oppo

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is equipped with MediaTek's Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset, and the UK version has 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It can’t match the latest Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm, but its performance was consistently good over my two weeks of testing. Navigation was smooth, the phone was quick to load apps and games, and it coped just fine with long sessions of Kingdom Rush.

I suspect the occasional transitional jitters I encountered had more to do with Oppo’s ColorOS software interface, which sits atop Android 13, than a lack of processing power. The front screen and the main display seem to struggle with orientation and are slow to adjust when you switch from portrait to landscape and vice versa. There is some bloatware, and some tweaking is needed to make the best of Oppo’s user interface. It's not as polished as it could be, but it’s not a major annoyance. Oppo promises four years of software updates and five years of security patches, which is a pretty good length of time.

Battery life is a common problem on flip phones, and the Find N2 Flip doesn't move the needle in this regard. The 4,300-mAh battery will see you through all but the busiest days. Fully charged, it might stretch to two days with light use, but I plugged into the included 44-watt charger each night. Sadly, there’s no wireless charging, but wired charging is pretty speedy, and you can expect more than 50 percent from a half-hour charge.

With a 50-megapixel primary camera, the Find N2 Flip proved capable in the photography department. The camera employs pixel binning to produce richly detailed shots, and the HDR does a fine job of handling mixed lighting. Oppo’s postprocessing is a little heavy-handed, and colors can get distorted and oversaturated. The shortcomings are more evident when you use the 8-megapixel ultrawide or the 32-megapixel selfie camera.

Still, I was pleased with most of the results from the main camera in a variety of different scenarios. Most shots look crisp, and there is a pleasing depth of field. The secondary lenses are prone to over-brightening and saturation.

The folding design is the headline here. Oppo has opted for less than top-tier hardware, but the Find N2 Flip holds its own against similarly priced smartphones. It may not be as slick or proficient at photography, but it is far more interesting than the Samsung Galaxy S23, Google Pixel 7 Pro, or Apple's iPhone 14. Those can all be had for the same price, and they are arguably better picks if you don’t care about the folding functionality.

For the foldable-curious crowd, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 is the obvious rival, as is the upcoming Motorola Razr+. Samsung has done more with its software to take advantage of the form, but Oppo’s Find N2 Flip is significantly cheaper. Cute, compact, and classy, it may just be the perfect foldable for anyone who lacks deep pockets.