Thomas Dietrich
Oppo took its time when developing its first foldable phone – it went through six iterations over the last four years. Finally the Oppo Find N is here and some of the design decisions make it unique in a market that is slowly but surely filling up with competitors. One key difference is that Oppo stuck to reasonable aspect ratios, starting at 18:9 for the outer display, bringing the inner to 8.4:9. To put that in perspective, the Galaxy Z Fold3 has a 25:9 external display, the Mi Mix Fold comes in at 27:9, while the Mate X2 comes closest to a normal aspect ratio at 19.5:9.
Oppo Find N
It’s not just aspect ratio, although it has a big impact on usability, as many apps don’t work well on extremely tall and narrow displays. The Find N is also slightly smaller than the competition, with a 5.49-inch outer display and a 7.1-inch inner display.
The new flexion hinge is a complicated assembly made up of 136 components, but it fulfills two important tasks. First, it folds the display in a teardrop shape at the crease, making it 80% less noticeable, according to TÜV. Second, when folded, it eliminates the wedge-shaped gap between the two halves. The hinge also enables the so-called FlexForm mode. Essentially, the hinge can hold the two halves at any angle between 50 and 120 degrees, allowing the phone to be used without a tripod even during long video calls or time-lapse photography.
New flexion hinge and Ultra Thin Glass
The Serene display consists of 12 layers. It uses something called Flexion Ultra Thin Glass, which is much thinner than the competition – 0.03mm vs. 0.6mm. That makes it much more flexible. TÜV tests have shown that after 200,000 folds there is still hardly any wear. The main layer of the display is an LTPO AMOLED panel with a refresh rate between 1 and 120 Hz. The touch sampling rate can reach up to 1,000 Hz. Oppo has calibrated the color reproduction and brightness of both the inner and outer displays. They reach a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, which is adjustable in 10,240 brightness levels.
The outer 5.49 inch display uses an AMOLED panel with Gorilla Glass Victus protection. It has a resolution of 1,972 x 988 pixels, which results in 402 ppi. The refresh rate is 60 Hz. The inner 7.1-inch display has a resolution of 1,792 x 1,920 pixels (370 ppi).
The Oppo Find N is powered by a Snapdragon 888 chipset with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. While the phone supports the normal multitasking gestures on the split screen, Oppo has implemented a two-finger swipe down to split the screen. Alternatively, you can turn a full-screen app into a floating window with a four-finger gesture. The transition between using an app on the outer or inner display also works quickly and seamlessly.
Five Cameras
The phone comes with five cameras in total – three on the back and two selfie cams (one on each screen). Since the Oppo Find N is a foldable, you can of course also use the main cameras for selfies. The wide angle has a 50 megapixel Sony IMX766 sensor of 1/1.56 inch size with 1.0 µm pixels. This is joined by a 16-megapixel ultra-wide (14mm, IMX481) and a 13-megapixel telephoto camera (52mm, S5K3M5).
The phone packs a 4,500mAh battery that charges with 33W of SuperVOOC wired and 15W of AirVOOC wirelessly. 10 watt reverse charging is also possible. The Oppo Find N will go on sale in China from December 23. The price is almost cheap at 7,699 RMB ($1,077) for the 8/256 GB version and 8,999 RMB ($1,258) for the 12/512 GB variant. As of now, Oppo has no plans to launch the Find N internationally.
