Oppo Find N2 Flip reviewReady to spoil Samsung's party

By Manas TiwariThe Oppo Find N2 Flip was introduced ‘globally’ last month and is now making its way to India. There has not been so much excitement around a foldable phone in a while, simply because of two reasons – the Find N2 Flip is supposed to be an affordable competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Flip phones (currently the Galaxy Z Flip 4) and it brings a fresh take on the clamshell phones with a larger cover display and a new hinge that promises to get rid of the crease.

Honestly, while this is supposed to be an innovative phone category, the foldable phones haven’t seen much innovation since their first generation. That’s probably one of the downsides of having a single major player in the market. The other is, of course, the high price tag Samsung seeks because of the lack of options. The Find N2 Flip is an important device in that sense as Oppo would look to undercut Samsung and even push the latter to make further improvements to its phones to stay competitive in the market.

The Find N2 Flip is a promising phone, despite it being Oppo’s very first attempt at this form factor. Whether it’s ready to spoil Samsung’s party or not, is something you will find out over the next minutes. The important thing – Find N2 Flip is priced at Rs 89,999 – same as the Galaxy Z Flip 4.

A fresh take on design

One of the things I loved about the Oppo Find N2 Flip is that it comes with a fresh take on the design. That’s largely because of two things – a new hinge and a vertical cover display. Let’s start with the first. Oppo has used a special Flexion waterdrop hinge on the Find N2 Flip which ensures that there is less gap between the two halves of the phone when folded.

Both parts of the phone sit flat on top of each other, when folded, making the phone really compact unlike the Z Flip 4 where you get a typical U-shape at the centre.

The advantage of this hinge is that there is hardly any gap for debris or dust particles to get underneath the folding display. The phone is also easier to open and close. Even though it doesn’t feel as assuring as the Galaxy Z Flip 4. The other obvious positive is that you get a very minimal screen crease. In fact, it’s barely visible while using the phone unfolded. I was only reminded of it while scrolling through the centre of the screen.

It’s also great to have a bigger and vertical cover display. There is more screen space to interact with and I believe this is also a better way to use the cover screen as a viewfinder. I will explain that later in the review.

Apart from this, the Find N2 Flip is your usual compact foldable phone. At 191 grams, it is lighter than most traditional flagship phones of 2023, fits easily into a pocket and is available in two colours – Black and Purple. I have been using the Black variant, which I believe, can never match the charm of that Purple variant. The phone also gets Gorilla Glass 5 protection but there is no official IP rating on it. That can be a problem in the long run, but we will have to wait and see.

Overall, Oppo has done well with the design. I would still want to wait and see how durable this phone is. Oppo claims that the Find N2 Flip can withstand 400,000 folding cycles – double than what Samsung is claiming for the Z Flip 4 but since this is company’s first attempt at this form factor, it’s impossible to back the claim.

Phone outside of phone

When it comes to displays, let me address the usual part first. The inner display is a nice and vibrant 6.8-inch 1080p OLED panel with a 9:21 aspect ratio and 120Hz refresh rate support. The brightness goes up to 1600 nits and there is also HDR 10+ support. In simple words, when unfolded, the Find N2 Flip matches most modern-day flagship Android phones. Yes, there are a few options in the market with higher screen resolution but other specs are at par. And, using the phone was mostly fun. The best part is that there is no crease while watching the content and it feels so refreshing.

But, it’s the cover display that excited me more. Oppo has used a considerably larger 3.2-inch external display on the Find N2 Flip with 9:17 aspect ratio. It means that the screen is big and allows you to do more things without unfolding the phone, even though I believe there was potential for more. It’s again a very vibrant and punchy display. It shows important information like date, time, phone’s battery status, and can be used to access the control centre and to read notifications.

Oppo has added support for a few widgets –

Weather
Timer
Recorder
Camera
Wireless earbud controls
Calendar events

The cover display feels like you have a phone on the outside of your actual phone. While I say that, I am also aware that more can be achieved from this hardware with better software support. For example, you can add support for some apps on the cover display or have more widgets for it. Hopefully, the use case improves further with the next generation Find N Flip.

The increased real estate lets you use the camera in a better way as it turns into a vertical viewfinder showing more things than Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4’s horizontal cover display. One of the problems I have faced with Samsung’s flip phones is that the cover display crops things while previewing them which results in a different final image than what I am mostly trying to capture. The Find N2 Flip genuinely fixed that.

As of now, even though this is a more intrusive cover display, I found myself unfolding the phone to complete most tasks. So, there is clearly scope for improvement.

Performance and multi-tasking

The Find N2 Flip challenges the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 on the performance front too. The phone has a pretty decent MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor with 8GB of RAM. The chip is not as powerful as some of Snapdragon’s latest 8 Gen line-up SoCs but keeps up well with most tasks. This is actually the first foldable phone I have used with a MediaTek chip and I am impressed with the optimisation and performance. I used the phone for about 15 days as my daily driver – played a lot of games, clicked hundreds of images, spent a lot of hours on social media platforms – it lived up to my expectations.

Then, you can definitely make use of the dual screens by opening different apps on them. There are a few apps that are also customised to use the two screens differently. For example, while using the camera app you can use one part of the screen as a viewfinder while the other part shows all the camera controls.

The phone runs ColorOS 13 based on Android 13. It’s difficult to ignore the resemblance to the OxygenOS I recently used on the OnePlus 11 and 11R. I like how the whole UI is very well optimised for the folding screens. It’s still a heavy version of Android, which means you get plenty of pre-loaded apps on the phone, something I really don’t wish to see on premium phones. Oppo is promising 4 years of software updates on the Find N2 Flip which is a huge step in putting on the same map as the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4. Additionally, there will be 5 years of security updates on this phone.

Battery has never been the strength of flip or rather foldable phones but Oppo has taken some important steps in this area. First, the Find N2 Flip comes with a 4300 mAh battery (bigger than Z Flip 4’s 3700 mAh battery) which allows almost a day’s battery life on medium to heavy usage. Plus, fast charging finally makes it to the foldable phones. The Find N2 Flip supports 44W charging and the charger comes inside the box. A massive advantage.

There is no wireless charging on this phone but, I haven’t really missed it yet.

Good camera performance

The Flip phones are usually a let-down when it comes to the camera part. The Find N2 Flip also doesn’t have the best camera hardware on offer. So, I will spend most time talking about what you can possibly achieve from this camera system. But, first the camera specs – there is a 50-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle at the back. The front houses a 32-megapixel selfie shooter. The rear camera supports 4k video recording at 60 fps and, for the first time, we have the Hasselblad tuning on an Oppo phone, at least in India.

The camera also gets the X Pan mode which was introduced on the OnePlus 9 series a few years ago. It’s an interesting take on the panoramic shots. Now, let’s dig deep into the camera performance.

– The main camera isn’t the class leading but gets the job done. I covered London with this phone and managed to click some good images. It generally captures sharp and well-detailed images in daylight.

– As in case of most Android phones these days, the Find N2 Flip also has this tendency to boost the colours. You can see in the images – brighter colours like Red, Green and Blue really pop. Whether you like it or not is a personal choice.

– The HDR performance is decent but can be better. The camera limits can be seen in Night photography. While I still managed to get some good images around a light source, most pictures taken in low light lacked a punch.

– The performance of the ultra-wide angle again depends a lot on the light conditions. In good light, I have clicked some great images but, otherwise this can look a very ordinary sensor. And yes, I did miss a dedicated telephoto sensor because zoomed pictures were not great.

I have not had so much fun using a camera feature like the X Pan mode on the Find N2 Flip in the longest time. Just the fact you can stand in front of the London eye and take a wide shot which captures everything in the background is so much fun. I really recommend using this feature.

The other camera feature which I want to talk about is the ability to use the cover display as a viewfinder and click selfies from the rear camera. It’s been there with Galaxy Z line-up but the Find N2 Flip does more justice to it because of that vertical screen. I have been using the cover display to click images far more than I ever did on Samsung phones. Oppo has also added the palm gesture support. So, you don’t even have to touch the phone — just show the palm and clicks an image.

The other thing is you can partially fold the phone and record videos — almost like the traditional cam recorders. Again, I think a very useful feature for anyone into vlogging.

Should you buy?

Absolutely, especially if you are in the market specifically for a flip phone, then this one is worth giving a try. I have also done a side-by-side comparison with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 which you can read on India Today Tech or watch on FIIBER’s YouTube channel but the Oppo phone definitely comes with less compromises. It has a pretty functional design, a decent camera performance, good software promises and, most importantly – good battery backup and fast charging support. In exchange, you will have to give up on the IP rating and wireless charging support, which I happily would as long as Oppo delivers on the 400,000 folds without any damage.