Oppo unveils first foldable phone outside China

Will 2023 be the year that foldable smartphones finally become mainstream? That's what many tech analysts say. According to a recent research by Counterpoint, the global foldable market is expected to grow 52% in 2023, reaching more that 22 million units. Until now, this niche sector has been dominated by Samsung. The Korean company was the first to officially announce a 'smartfold' and its current range includes two different foldable models, the largest being the Z Fold and the Galaxy Z Flip, the latter somehow reminiscent of the iconic clamshell phones of Y2K. Lenovo's parent company Motorola revived the Razr brand to launch the first flip smartphone a few years ago. Huawei followed with both horizontal (Mate X series) and vertical foldable models.

Oppo impressed at home with its larger, horizontal foldable phones, the Find N and Find N2. On 15 February in London, the company launched the Find N2 Flip. The brand's first foldable phone available to customers outside the People's Republic is a flip phone.

“Not the first, but the best”, says Oppo's Peter Lee, Head of Find Product Line, pointing out that the Chinese company started foldable R&D back in 2018, but waited to launch the product until it was mature.  This phone is intended to be “a new benchmark for flip phones”, Lee explains. 

Oppo aficionados will find at ease some of brand's signature top-notch technology on board this new phone, such as the Hasselblad camera system and the Supervooc ultra-fast charging system – it takes 23 minutes to get 53% of the battery′s juice and less than an hour to get a full charge. As Oppo points out, this is the longest battery life and the fastest charging system you can find in a device of this type today. Oppo has completely overhauled its hinge technology for this crucial piece of technology, and has done a wonderful job, as Domus was able to confirm in a first hands-on at the London event: the small furrow between the two parts of the foldable screen, a visible problem in the look and feel of every foldable phone so far, has been reduced to an almost invisible line on the Find N2 Flip. There's also no visible crease when the phone is closed., when looking at its profile.

Entering the foldable smartphones arena with a new contender, Oppo didn't waste any time in aggressively designing this new phone to be as disruptive as possible. The press release is a parade of -ests, i.e. “fastest” (charging), “longest” (battery life). And “biggest” is the external display, a vertical 3.6-inch screen that sits alongside the dual camera module. It's both useful and fun: you can check up on up to 6 notifications - and even reply if they're messages - take a selfie, set a looping GIF as your wallpaper or… host an animal companion: there are cats, dogs, birds and more, but if you were hoping for it, sorry, this isn't a Tamagotchi, and no, you can't have a Pokemon here, sorry. Peter Lee explains that flip phones offer a main design challenge: how to access crucial notifications while they're closed. Oppo's solution is a big external screen. Of course, if you were thinking of buying a flip phone to stop the digital noise constituted by the wave of notifications simply keeping it close, this might not be the model for you; on the other hand, it's pretty clear that the external display on “smartflips” is getting bigger, and we'll probably have even bigger ones in the future, perhaps even wrapping around the entire outside of the device.

Foldables are an exciting new form factor, but tech manufacturers know very well that the camera is probably the most important element when it comes to choosing your next phone - especially one with a price tag of over $1,000. The Find N2 Flip's main camera comes with a 50MP Sony sensor, fast aperture lens (f/1.8), capable of 4K resolution videos. There's also a 32-megapixel wide-angle selfie camera. To improve the colour quality of Oppo's camera systems, the partnership with Hasselblad, which is back on this phone, is an important asset, as is the trademark Xpan shooting mode, inspired by the cult Hassy-Fuji camera from the '90s, which produces beautiful horizontal, analogue-like images. 

New shooting possibilities are offered by the 'Flexform' mode, enabled by Oppo's improved hinge technology: you can half-fold the phone - it remains fixed from 45 to 100 degrees - to allow dynamic angles when taking a video or photo, while placing it on a surface avoids the use of a trypod for selfies and time-lapses. This mode is also useful for video calls, with on-board software optimisation for Whatsapp and Zoom. It's clear that Oppo has done its best to make this camera system something special. On the other hand, as we noticed during our hands-on at the launch event, it's not the pictures you’ll take that make you want to buy such a device. Foldable phones have to be slim and make room in their structure for the hinge, so all the other components - batteries, processor, camera, & everything else - have to fit as well as possible into the remaining space, which isn't as large as on a ’normal’ smartphone.

Finally, a few specs we didn't mention above (there are tons of them in this technical gem): a smaller, better second-generation Flexion Hinge, that creates no visible crease when the phone is closed: the system was tested and certified by the TÜV Rheinland laboratories in Cologne for over 400,000 “flips” (that's more than 100 times a day for ten years); a big battery, capacity of 4,300 mAh; dual-sim 5G connection; MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor, and  ColorOS 13 on board, with more than 4 years of major updates and 5 security updates to be provided by Oppo; (obviously) foldable Amoled display, 6. 8” size, 21:9 ratio; two colours: Astral Black and Moonlit Purple. Packaging comes 100% from recycled materials and is fully recyclable. Prices start at £849.

All pictures courtesy Oppo.