Oppo Find N2 Flip review: The first foldable smartphone to shut Samsung up

The Oppo Find N2 Flip in a nutshell

The Oppo Find N2 has been available in Europe since February 15, 2023. It arrives in a single memory configuration of 8/256 GB and is sold for €1,099.90 (approximately $1,170). Currently, it might be available for less than $1,000 on Amazon.

Like the Oppo Find N2 that was reviewed by my colleague Matt, the Oppo Find N2 Flip debuts its new teardrop hinge technology. The latter is supposed to make the crease in the middle of the smartphone’s screen more discreet.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip also comes with a very large external screen, making its foldable and clamshell form factor much more relevant.

Oppo Find N2 Flip design and build quality

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is a foldable clamshell smartphone with the largest external screen in the market, measuring 3.26-inches across diagonally. It also relies heavily on its teardrop hinge when opening or closing.

What I liked:

• Very nice colors with a classy matte coating.
• Compact form factor when folded.
• The cover screen is much more useful since it is larger.

What I disliked:

This cover screen occupies two-thirds of the total area of the Flip. It has gained a lot in height compared to the previous model, which in turn makes information displayed on it far more legible.

You can view notifications and reply to messages. Heck, you can also use it as a viewfinder when taking photos, respond to messages quickly, and send voice notes without having to flip open the smartphone.

However, I still find its use to be a bit too limited. You can only reply to messages via quick and preset responses. If a message or notification is too long, you will have to fold open the smartphone.

Ideally, I’d really like the cover screen to occupy almost the entire surface and I’d like to be able to interact with an actual interface, like a miniaturized ColorOS. Widgets and fast replies are nice, but we need to go further than that.

As for the remainder of the Find N2 Flip, its frame is made of aluminum with a plastic back. The smartphone has no IP certification for water and dust resistance, so this is not something you’d want to dunk by accident.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip comes in two colors: black and purple. I found the coating to be particularly beautiful. It’s matte with a bit of a grainy feel and is very pleasant to touch.

The Oppo foldable is also quite light and compact, tipping the scales at 191 grams while measuring 85.5 x 75.2 x 16 mm when folded and 166.2 x 75.2 x 7.5 mm when unfolded.

Oppo Find N2 Flip display

The Oppo Find N2 Flip has two displays (obviously). The external screen is a 3.26-inch AMOLED panel with a 382 x 720 pixel resolution and a maximum brightness of 900 nits (peak), protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The inner screen is also an AMOLED LTPO panel measuring 6.8-inches with a resolution of 1080 x 2520 pixels, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and a maximum brightness of 1,600 nits (peak).

What I liked:

• The very bright inner screen (1,600 nits).
• The 120 Hz refresh rate of the inner screen.
• The massive external screen (3.26-inches).

What I disliked:

• The crease in the middle of the screen is less noticeable, but is still very visible.

We already talked about the external screen earlier. However, the main screen is indeed this inner 6.8-inch AMOLED. The maximum brightness of 1,600 nits at peak is amazing. Even in typical environments, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is capable of achieving 1,200 nits, according to the manufacturer. These are very good scores on paper.

In reality, I found the screen to be quite inconspicuous under direct sunlight, and browsing on the smartphone is very smooth thanks to the 120 Hz and variable refresh rate using LTPO technology.

The screen of the Oppo Find N2 Flip can also be tilted 90 degrees. This makes it possible to use it as a tripod to take pictures. You can also hold the smartphone like an old-fashioned camcorder to take videos, taking a page from Samsung’s playbook.

That’s all good, but we need to talk about the crease in the middle of the screen. Marketers throw the “teardrop hinges” jargon around, promising that they make the crease almost imperceptible.

This is not the case. For sure, the crease is less noticeable to touch, I cannot deny that. But it still remains very visible. This is obvious when the dominant color displayed is white. Just tilt the smartphone slightly and you can see three parallel stripes that occupy the entire width of the screen.

The worst thing is the visual imprint of the crease becomes more pronounced over time. Well, I never noticed it while watching a YouTube video or when playing games. Still, beware of the marketing bullshit concerning this new hinge technology.

Oppo Find N2 Flip software

The Oppo Find N2 Flip runs on ColorOS 13, Oppo’s
Android 13-based skin, and will receive four Android updates and five years of security updates.

What I liked:

• Customizable external screen.
• ColorOS 13’s multitasking features (split screen, floating windows, sidebar shortcuts).
• Good update policy.

What I disliked:

• Not many “foldable-specific” features.
• Can’t feed your virtual pets on the external screen (nor can you give them a big hug).
• Required to unlock the screen to view notifications on the external screen.

Unfortunately, our model ran on the Chinese ROM, but I doubt there are many fundamental differences with the global/European version.

I don’t have anything special to tell you about ColorOS 13 since we have done a full review of Oppo’s interface. I just noticed that Oppo added a menu dedicated to foldable functions in this version.

This menu allows, among other things, to customize the external screen by changing the wallpaper, adding widgets, and selecting automatic responses to messages.

You can also have a kind of interactive pet, which lives on the external screen. You can choose from five animals that do something different every time you wake up the lock screen.

Tapping on the animal will make it react in some way. It’s strictly pointless and I wish Oppo would have gone all the way by making it into a Tamagotchi-like creature, by allowing you to feed and take care of it. But no….

Just one detail that bugged me during my review. You can pull down the quick access menu from the external screen but to do so, you have to unlock the smartphone via the fingerprint reader. The same goes for viewing notifications. No other Android smartphone requires this step and it’s quite a pain in the ass to do so daily.

Oppo Find N2 Flip performance

The Oppo Find N2 Flip is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 9000+ SoC with its Mali-G710 GPU and is backed by 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

What I liked:

What I disliked:

• Unsteady performance.
• Aggressive thermal throttling.

It’s surely a good thing that the Oppo Find N2 Flip doesn’t feature a Snapdragon SoC considering the overheating issues of its previous generation and limited space of its chassis.

In terms of raw performance, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ is a bit less powerful than the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 that the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is equipped with.

In the benchmarks, the Oppo Find N2 Flip proved to be quite unstable. Oppo operates the smartphone by relying on aggressive thermal throttling to avoid overheating. The smartphone’s temperature never exceeded 34 °C, but playing your games at a constant 60 FPS will not always be possible.

Oppo Find N2 Flip camera

The Oppo Find N2 Flip packs a dual camera module with a 50 MP main lens and an 8 MP ultra-wide angle lens. The selfie camera has a 32 MP resolution.

What I liked:

• Good daytime rendering.
• Effective 2x and 5x digital zoom.
• Good night shots with the wide-angle lens.
• Quality selfies using the rear camera module.
• 4K video at 30 FPS.

What I disliked:

• The ultra-wide angle lens is not very capable.
• Disappointing front camera.

The main lens of the Oppo Find N2 Flip incorporates a Sony IMX890 sensor and has an f/1.8 aperture. This lens serves your classic photo shots as well as your selfies, thanks to the cover screen that serves as a viewfinder.

During the day, the color rendering is rather accurate. I like the colorimetry even if the colors are slightly accentuated. Focus is rather fast and responsive. The smartphone handles the dynamic range quite well, even with complex exposure under bright sunlight.

The ultra-wide angle lens has a somewhat low 8 MP resolution which left me a bit ambivalent about it, even if the colorimetry was quite consistent with the rendering of the main lens.

There is no telephoto lens to speak of here, but at the same time, I don’t see where Oppo could have found the space to store an extra lens. Of course, its digital zoom performance is not the best in the market. At 2x and 5x, the results are quite acceptable, but anything beyond that is pretty much garbage.

The portrait mode also behaved in a rather strange manner. You have to be really close to the subject for the bokeh effect to show. Sometimes, the bokeh was visible at the time of the shot but disappeared once the picture was taken. Cropping is spotty, being very clean at times and otherwise at other times. I also ran into some overexposure issues as well.

At night, the Oppo Find N2 offers the bare minimum in terms of acceptable quality. The wide-angle photos are decent enough that we do not even need the dedicated night mode. The 2x zoom quality is also excellent, but everything else goes down the drain using the ultra-wide angle lens or at higher zoom levels. The same goes for selfies with the front camera.

The 32 MP selfie camera on the internal screen probably won’t do you much good. In most cases, you’ll use the main lens with the cover screen to obtain better image quality. Perhaps when it comes to video calls, the large inner screen is better for displaying more information.

Oppo Find N2 Flip battery

The Oppo Find N2 Flip comes with a battery capacity of 4,300 mAh. It can be recharged on at 44W via a wired connection and offers reverse wireless charging.

What I liked:

• Very solid battery life.
• Reverse wireless charging.

What I disliked:

• No wireless charging.
• Not the fastest charging speed on the market.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip surprised me by offering very solid battery life, especially for a foldable clamshell smartphone. On the PC Mark benchmark, the smartphone lasted for 13:15 minutes before dropping below the 20% battery life mark.

That’s an excellent score for a normal smartphone. It’s even better for a foldable smartphone with an obviously smaller battery. You can easily make it last for a day and a half, or even two with normal use (screen time between 4 and 5 hours).

When it came to charging, it was unfortunate that I only had the charger for the China model and therefore, could not use it. The 44W wired charging should take you from 0 to 50% in 23 minutes according to the manufacturer.

With my 140W USB PD 3.0 charger, I was able to recover 60% battery life after 30 minutes of charging. It took me almost an hour for a full charge. It’s not crazy, but it’s very decent. Needless to say, it is far faster than the Galaxy Z Flip 4.

There is no wireless charging supported here but you do get reverse wireless charging. I found this to be a rather odd choice, but who knows what Oppo was thinking?

Technical data

	Technical data
Device
Picture
Design	Gorilla Glass 5 Water drop hinge No IP rating Colors; black and purple
Screen	Outer screen 6.8 inch AMOLED 1080 x 2520 pixels 120 Hz refresh rate 1200 nits (HBM), 1600 nits (peak)
	Indoor screen 3.26-inch AMOLED 382 x 720 pixels 800 nits (HBM), 900 nits (peak)
Memory
CPU / GPU	MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ GPU Immortalis-G710
Camera	Main: 50 MP | f/1.8 Ultra-wide-angle: 8 MP | f/2.2 | 112° FOV Selfie: 32 MP | f/2.74
Video
Interface/OS	ColorOS 13 based on Android 13
Battery	4300 mAh 44W wired charging Reverse wireless charging
Audio	Stereo speakers No headphone jack
Dimensions & weight	Opened: 6.54 x 2.96 x 0.29 in (166.2 x 75.2 x 7.5 mm) Closed: 3.36 x 2.96 x 0.63 in (85.5 x 75.2 x 16 mm) Weight: 6.73 oz (191 g)
Connectivity	5G | Wi-Fi 6 | Bluetooth 5.3 | NFC

Final verdict