A lot of good things have happened to smartphones in 2025, from the arrival of some powerful new Galaxy AI features with Samsung's Galaxy S25 lineup to the emergence of an iPhone SE successor in the form of the iPhone 16e. And while we can argue about which is the more positive development, there's no mystery as to the biggest blow to the smartphone world has been so far. It's the fact that we're going to go another year without a OnePlus Open successor.
Earlier this month, OnePlus made it clear not to expect the OnePlus Open 2 at any point in 2025, with the phone maker framing the decision as a "recalibration" of its foldable phone plans.
"We’ve carefully considered the timing and our next steps in foldable devices, and we have made the decision not to release a foldable this year," a product manager wrote in a community note posted on the OnePlus website, adding that "this is not a step back."
It's hard not to see it that way, not just for OnePlus, but for foldable phones as a whole. Debuting in 2023, the OnePlus Open set a new standard for the foldable market, pushing other device makers to step up their game. Without a follow-up, there's a risk that the pace of innovation for foldable devices could taper off.
What made the OnePlus Open great
Though it debuted a while ago, the OnePlus Open remains the best foldable phone in our rankings. It delivered a thin, light design that similar phones quickly tried to mimic. A Flexion Hinge design minimized the crease that marred other foldables' appearance, and it lasted a long time on a charge — a challenge for other foldables up until that point.
But what really made the OnePlus Open stand out was its approach to multitasking. Most foldables let you run multiple apps at once, but the Open Canvas system used by OnePlus let you easily shift which apps appeared in full-screen mode as you moved to a different task. Presets also let you group together frequently used combinations of apps for boosted productivity.
Things looked even more promising for the OnePlus Open 2, provided you bought into the widely accepted ideal that the Oppo Find N5 was OnePlus' template for its follow-up foldable. (Oppo and OnePlus are part of the same conglomerate.) My colleague Richard Priday got to spend some hands-on time with the Oppo Find N5 and came away impressed by how thin the device was and how that made any crease where the display folds less noticeable than ever.
There look to be other changes with the Oppo Find N5 that would have benefited the OnePlus Open 2. Camera performance turned out to be one of the weaker areas on the OnePlus foldable. But the presence of Hasselblad-tuned lenses on the Oppo Find N5 coupled with our first-hand experience seeing how the OnePlus/Hasselblad partnership has dramatically improved camera performance for recent OnePlus models like the OnePlus 13 suggested that a new phone would address that problem.
Where's Samsung's competition?
No OnePlus Open 2 release in 2025 means we're missing out on a potentially great entry into the foldable phone world, at least if the Oppo Find N5 lives up to its positive first impression. And it doesn't help me feel better about the prospects for premium foldables when the leaks about Samsung's latest offering have been — in my opinion anyway — pretty underwhelming.
I'm referring to the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which figures to debut later this year if Samsung sticks to its usual schedule of foldable phone updates. Thus far, leaks surrounding the next version of the Fold suggest that it will be thinner and lighter while sporting a larger interior display. Those are all welcome changes, of course, but they're pretty iterative, largely because they're said to be aping the improvements Samsung made last year with the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition that it released in Korea.
Other potential changes — Samsung using an Exynos 2500 chipset rather than the proven Snapdragon 8 Elite — are less encouraging. And it's hard to see how Samsung can deliver a less expensive version of the phone after hiking up the price of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 by $100 — or even if that's much of a priority for the device maker.
Because leaks tend to focus on hardware changes, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 could still surprise us. Samsung might have new Galaxy AI features to show off just as the new AI capabilities introduced alongside the S25 models have proven to be the big selling points for those phones. And it's also possible that Samsung could take its cue from OnePlus and improve multitasking on the Fold, just like it's been making thinner foldables ever since the OnePlus Open debuted. But if there's any pressure on Samsung to innovate, it's going to have to come from inside the company, as there's no OnePlus Open 2 on the horizon to keep Samsung on its toes.
Foldable phones outlook
It's not completely grim on the foldable phone front. Rumors are picking up about a Galaxy G Fold that would have a triple-folding display, and that would be a new design at least that teases the prospect of an even more portable big-screen device. Meanwhile, between Samsung and Motorola, we're seeing promising changes to flip phone-style foldables, including the potential arrival of a cheaper model in the Galaxy Z Flip FE to take on the Motorola Razr.
Still, it's a much exciting scene with a OnePlus Open 2 in it. It gives the rest of us another option if we're in the market for a foldable phone, and it forces other device makers to keep looking for ways to set their own devices apart.
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