Oppo Find N3 creates a new standard for foldable phones

When competing with Samsung for vertical foldable, Oppo has always gone for more. More screen space, cover display, and camera. While doing so, the Chinese smartphone brand has also chosen a more refined hinge, which worked in favor of the Oppo Find N2 Flip when I compared it to the Galaxy Z Flip 4 earlier this year—a few months later, Motorola released its Razr 40 Ultra, which offered a radical design with an edge-to-edge cover display (and embedded cameras), as well as features like an IP rating and wireless charging. A few months later, Samsung released an updated Galaxy Z Flip 5, which followed Motorola’s lead and featured a big, squarish cover display, but fell short in execution due to poorly optimized software.

Now we have Oppo’s second effort at a vertical foldable. Surprisingly, Oppo has not followed Motorola’s lead and adopted a square cover display. Oppo retains its large rectangular cover display but has added new features to make it more usable. It also features a brand-new camera system and an alert slider that appears to be borrowed from OnePlus.

OPPO FIND N3 KEY FEATURES

The original Oppo Find N from two years ago was foldable like no other – extremely tiny when folded, just mid-sized when unfurled – and made us wish more firms would take that approach to bendy smartphones rather than the apparent division between clamshells and phone-turns-tablet designs. Sure, the Find N3 is larger than the previous two incarnations, but it is still relatively light, and its screen proportions are more logical than the de facto class standard, the Galaxy Z Fold. And those are some really beautiful screens.

Naturally, top-tier internals can be found here: a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset is in charge, storage starts at half a terabyte, and the 12 or 16GB of RAM ensures smooth operation, even with ColorOS 13.2’s numerous multi-tasking capabilities (some of which are unique and truly useful). The Find’s primary selling point, however, is its camera system, not just the Hasselblad emblem.

The trio of modules on the back form a very versatile system: the primary wide camera ushers in a new generation of Sony sensors, the telephoto is nearly as good at 6x as it is at its native 3x, and the ultrawide, while not spectacular in isolation, has the potential to be significantly better than the Galaxy’s counterpart.

All of this comes in a form that may be sexier than what Samsung has to offer, and while it isn’t as slim as, say, the Xiaomi Mix Fold 3, the Find is still rather appealing to the eye. Its splash resistance falls short of the Galaxy’s IPX8 grade, so the Z Fold wins in that regard.

OPPO FIND N3 UNBOXING

Oppo has always prioritized presentation, and this premium sector necessitates extra attention to detail (while Samsung, for example, does not). So the Find N3 comes in a big package with some dynamic opening techniques to make you feel extra special.

The list of contents is also greater than that of the Galaxy. Here, you get a 67W charger with a cable, which is already better than the Z Fold’s cable-only option. A two-piece protective solution is also offered, complete with a snap-on back cover and a frame for the cover display. Samsung will charge you extra for those; here, they are included.

CAMERA

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is the first smartphone to feature a quality camera configuration on a clamshell foldable design. That gives us a 50-megapixel primary camera (OIS), a 32-megapixel telephoto camera with 2X optical zoom, and a 48-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 114-degree field of view and a minimum focus distance of 4cm (when utilizing macro mode). A 32-megapixel front-facing camera takes selfies. Oppo’s rear camera, like OnePlus’s cooperation with camera company Hasselblad, produces colorful shots.

The primary camera takes photographs with good, resolved detail and clarity in all lighting settings. They come out a little saturated but with an excellent dynamic range. I could use the cover display as a viewfinder to take photographs of myself with the camera, which turned out sharp and had good edge detection. This performed wonders in low light, as selfies were clear and detailed compared to the selfie camera incorporated in the folding display. Even close-ups of items turned out sharp with a natural bokeh.

The telephoto camera, a first for a clamshell folding, produced good close-up shots with a great natural bokeh in daylight. It loses some detail when shooting in low light, but the images are still passable. The photographs recorded at 5X magnification with the in-sensor lossless zoom are useable in daylight (with some apparent purple fringing), but not in low light.

The color tones produced by the ultra-wide-angle camera appear slightly cooler than those acquired by the primary camera. These feature a lot of detail and are surprisingly sharp, but you can’t pixel peep. The dynamic range is also fairly strong, bringing out ample detail in the shadows, but there is visible barrel distortion near the image’s edges. Macro photographs turned out very great, allowing me to get quite close to items. The details are also quite sharp, but the colors were a little cooler.

The phone’s high-resolution sensors allow it to record 4K video at 30fps on all cameras. However, I found the recorded movies to be somewhat lacking in terms of detail and clarity. Stabilization was adequate, however the camera was unable to keep a consistent framerate when shooting. The low-light footage looked decent, with adequate stabilization but significant noise.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

Oppo’s design for the Find N3 Flip is remarkably similar to the Find N2 Flip it replaces. It boasts a nice, rounded form that feels more pleasant to hold than the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s sharper edges and flat sides. However, I miss the matte finish on the Find N2 Flip’s Astral Black variant, as the glossy finish is extremely slippery.

While the overall appearance and feel of this foldable are certainly exquisite, I did notice some sharp edges at the bottom border of both parts (when folded), where the curved outer panels meet the flat frame. For a phone that costs around Rs. 1 lakh, I expected more attention to detail. Fortunately, Oppo offers a basic, matte-finished case in the box that snaps perfectly onto both parts and provides some grip.

The rectangular cover display on the top part stays unchanged from before. And I believe Oppo has left it in this mode to allow the triple rear camera setup, which is a world first for clamshell folding phones. I appreciate the design of the triple rear camera setup, which looks quite distinctive and is around the same size and thickness as a Rs. 10 coin.

Despite being as thick as a dime, the spherical camera module with Hasselblad branding adds little to the device’s overall thickness, whether opened or folded. It is wide enough to prevent the phone from wobbling when placed open on a flat surface.

The characteristic OnePlus alert slider is located on the device’s left side, whether it is open or closed. This is the first Oppo handset to provide this function, and I found the three-stage slider useful for altering device profiles. While it may feel weird for Oppo customers, who are accustomed to having a clean and buttonless left side, OnePlus users wishing to transition to a vertical foldable may find it useful and familiar.

The interior folding display has a shallow crease that is scarcely visible, as are the bezels, which are extremely thin on all four sides. These bezels are also relatively flat, making it easy to swipe in or out of the display’s edges. The interior folding display, like the previous model, does not attract fingerprints readily. Even if you have smudges on the display, they are easy to remove.

Going back to that large cover display, there’s something strange about the way Oppo promotes it. Given the cover display’s left-side layout (when folded with the hinge up), I frequently had to reach for it over the circular camera module to operate it, which, given my pretty large hands, appeared right but was still not right.

To my surprise, I soon realized that Oppo prefers its users to use the phone with the hinge down (rather than at the top), making the left-handed display easily accessible to right-handed people. However, it introduces an unusual layout issue for its fingerprint sensor, which switches to the opposite side and must then be opened using your ring finger rather than your thumb, which I thought absurd.

So I tried unlocking the phone in this “advertised orientation” with my right hand and the display on the right, and it worked as it should. However, flipping it open upside down requires two hands or risk swinging the phone around (bringing the hinge up) with one hand before flipping it open normally.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

The Oppo Find N3 Flip’s software performance is rather good. I experienced no lag or stuttering while using the phone in its default battery mode, which appeared to be sufficient for all of the apps I use regularly. Our benchmark testing also showed that the phone operated as expected. The phone scored worse than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 5, which is powered by a proprietary Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, with AnTuTu scores of 10,27,655 and Geekbench scores of 1,116 and 3,325 points in the single and multi-core tests, respectively. It has a dual speaker setup, with a speaker at the top that serves as the receiver yet sounds as loud as the primary one at the bottom. Even at high volumes, they produced well-balanced and clear sound.

The gaming performance was very good. Call of Duty: Mobile performed admirably at all settings, including the recently released Medium graphics and Ultra frame rate combination, which allows the phone to reach a respectable 120fps when playing games. The phone heated up when playing games, but it did not appear to get too hot, and performance was not compromised.

When playing the game, the touch sampling rate was also fairly good, with swipes accurately registered when using the Pro Gamer mode in the slide-out gaming console. This is an area where Samsung has struggled for some time, so it’s encouraging to see a smartphone that provides a strong gaming experience in such a small package.

While I enjoyed gaming on this phone, the display feels just as delicate as the previous model. So, during the evaluation, I noticed a few dents on the primary Schott UTG display (caused by gaming). Indeed, Oppo’s display does not appear to be as durable as Samsung’s solution for foldable devices.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip has a good battery life, lasting me a whole day and a bit more. On the busiest of days, even after half an hour of gaming and camera use, it still had at least 20% remaining in the tank. Oppo appears to have done an excellent job at optimizing the software and hardware, which is especially notable given that I hardly used the cover display throughout my testing due to its restricted capabilities.

Buy it if...

• Outstanding design and construction, with IPX4 splash protection.
• Excellent foldable OLED panel with 120Hz refresh rate, brightness, color accuracy, and Dolby Vision.
• Excellent cover OLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, brightness, color accuracy, and Dolby Vision.
• Battery life is good, and it charges quickly.
• The Dolby Atmos three-speaker system works wonderfully.
• Multitasking is made easy with this feature-rich software.
• Flagship-level performance and solid stability.
• The rear cameras produce amazing photo quality and provide solid video capabilities.
• Excellent shots and selfies with the back cameras.

Don't buy it if…

• Many competitors offer superior water resistance (IPX8 rating).
• No wireless charging.
• No HFR gaming.
• Selfie cams are mediocre.

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