Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on review: A big step forward for foldables

A phone like the Oppo Find N2 Flip was in a way inevitable, thanks to the niche opened up and still dominated by phones like Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 4. What was less guaranteed was how good the first true Z Flip rival would be, and as it happens, it's really good.

The Find N2 Flip takes the Galaxy Z Flip 4's template and runs with it, making adjustments to make itself leaner and more effective. While we've only had a short time to test out Oppo's new foldable so far, it's made changes that we think Samsung and other wannabe small foldable makers need to copy or adapt, or else they'll face irrelevance in this category.

It's not as unique as the larger Oppo Find N2, but unlike that model, the Find N2 Flip will be available to European buyers. And if you've got the budget and the inclination to buy foldable phones, customers in Europe are likely going to be tempted by would could be one of the best foldable phones yet.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Price and availability 

Oppo is bringing the Find N2 Flip to the global market, making this its first foldable to be sold outside of China. Unfortunately, that doesn't include the U.S., but if it is available in your country, it's up for pre-orders from February 15 and goes on open sale on March 2.

You'll pay £849 ($1,025 / AU$ 1,485 converted) for a Find N2 Flip in the U.K. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 retails for £899, so the price difference between it and the Find N2 Flip is pretty negligible.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Design and displays

With its clamshell-style design, side-mounted fingerprint sensor and dual cameras, the Find N2 Flip initially looks like a close relative of the Galaxy Z Flip 4. There's one big difference though, and it's the much larger 3.26-inch outer display, inset into the glass for a perfectly smooth top surface. You can't operate the full phone from it like you can on a big foldable phone's outer screen, but you can still do more than you can on the Z Flip 4's outer panel.

Opening the phone up, you get a more typical 6.8-inch FHD 120Hz OLED inner display. Oppo promises up to 1,600 nits of maximum brightness, and also a unique anti-glare coating that helps the display look its best even in bright light.

As a foldable, the Find N2 Flip does have a crease running across the center of its display. Fortunately, it's pretty hard to notice when you're using the phone, even if you run your finger directly across it. Unless you're shining bright lights on the display trying to deliberately see the crease (as I did here), you shouldn't find it an issue.

The hinge itself, using Oppo's "Flexion Hinge" technology, lets the phone open and close smoothly and with little resistance. But it also has the option to open part-way so you can stand the phone up to take photos from a stable position or watch things hands-free, as we've seen on other foldables. The phone does rattle a little if you are moving around a lot with it open, but otherwise it feels sturdy.

Oppo promises that you'll be able to fold the Oppo Find N2 Flip at least 400,000 times without a problem, and that its ultra-thin glass inside display, supported with a steel back plate, and Gorilla Glass 5 outer display will also keep the phone in peak condition for a long time to come. The big missing feature here though is water resistance, something that currently only Samsung offers on its foldables in the form of an IPX8 rating.

Oppo will sell you the Find N2 Flip in either the matte Astral Black or the glossier Moonlit Purple (pictured). It would be nice to have more options but both of these colors are attractive.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Cameras

The Find N2 Flip features a 50MP main camera (shooting at 12.5MP or the full 50MP), an 8MP ultrawide camera and a 32MP inner selfie camera. These are similar to the 12MP/12MP/10MP cameras offered by the Galaxy Z Flip 4, but given you can get a top-quality camera phone like the Google Pixel 7 Pro for the same amount of money, you're still arguably a bit short-changed.

On top of the basic hardware, the Find N2 Flip's cameras feature Hasselblad color science like other Oppo and OnePlus phones, alongside Oppo's MariSilicon X Imaging NPU, which the company claims enhances night mode and HDR video.

In my initial testing of the cameras, which you can see in the gallery below, I really liked the main camera's performance, since it captured the setting sun over the canal and office towers of Paddington in beautiful colors. The ultrawide camera however isn't quite as impressive, making a shot of a wall of foliage look rather cold, and failing to capture the depth of color in the image looking up at a neon sign.

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A 12.5MP main camera shot from the Oppo Find N2 Flip.

A 12.5MP main camera shot from the Oppo Find N2 Flip.

An 8MP ultrawide camera shot from the Oppo Find N2 Flip.

An 8MP ultrawide camera shot from the Oppo Find N2 Flip.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Performance 

Unlike the regular Find N2 or the Galaxy Z Flip series, Oppo opted for a MediaTek-made Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset for the Find N2 Flip, rather than a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Oppo has focused its marketing on the efficiency of this chipset, which when reading between the lines, has us concerned that this chip may be lacking in power.

The gap between Dimensity chips and the standard Snapdragon chips that many Android phones use doesn't tend to be that large, and can even sometimes go in the MediaTek silicon's favor. However, this is a potential area where the Find N2 Flip could fall behind the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and its potent Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 SoC.

RAM and storage on the standard model are 8GB and 256GB respectively, which beats the base Galaxy Z Flip 4's 128GB storage. In China, the Find N2 Flip can be specced with up to 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, which would be unprecedented amounts of memory for a foldable of this size, but it's possible we won't get this model overseas.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Battery and charging 

Thanks to some clever repositioning of internal components, Oppo has stuffed the Find N2 Flip with a 4,300 mAh battery, which is quite large for a compact foldable (the Galaxy Z Flip 4's battery is 3,700 mAh). Oppo says that as a result this is the longest-lasting clamshell foldable around, a claim we're looking forward to testing properly for ourselves.

Oppo's also been generous with charging, equipping the Find N2 Flip with a 44W brick, beating the 25W maximum of the Z Flip 4, which doesn't even ship with a charger. Oppo claims the included charger will get you to 50% in 23 minutes, and 100% in under an hour. 

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Software and special features 

The Find N2 Flip runs Android 13 in the guise of ColorOS 13.0, a visually distinct version of Android but one that behaves pretty typically, beyond some fun flourishes like a shelf of widgets you can access by swiping down on the display. 

More importantly, Oppo is promising 4 years of Android updates, plus an additional fifth year of security updates. That's in line with the best Android phones such as the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Flip 4, and means you'll get plenty of new features to play with throughout the Find N2 Flip's life.

With the outer display, there's the freedom like on other folding phones to close the phone up and take selfies with the outer display, or show a preview image to your subject so they can see what they'll look like in the final shot.

You can also bend the phone in half to a 90-degree angle and then use a camcorder-style grip for a convenient preview of what you're capturing.

You also get a plentiful selection of widgets to use on the Oppo Find N2 Flip by swiping left and right on the unlocked cover display. It can let you quickly adjust your quick settings, check and send pre-canned replies to your notifications, open a camera widget for taking selfies with the main dual cameras and use miniaturized versions of other apps like Weather or Clock, all of which are easy to operate thanks to the large display size. Alternatively, you can just use it as an always-on display instead if you want to keep things simple.

Oppo Find N2 Flip hands-on: Early verdict 

We've got more work to do in order to thoroughly test the Oppo Find N2 Flip for our full review. As things stand now though, the Find N2 Flip has brought us the next big evolution of the Galaxy Z Flip 4's clamshell-style foldable design, and everything works together excellently.

We do appreciate the Find N2 Flip's better battery/charging specs, but the larger outer display is the phone's killer feature. It allows you to get more out of the device when folded up, meaning less stress on the hinge per day and hopefully fewer potential distractions for users who often find themselves drawn into browsing other apps after unlocking your phone to check just that one email.

U.S. users are unfortunately still stuck with the Galaxy Z Flip 4 in this style of foldables, which remains an excellent option. It's just that Oppo has found the cracks in the Z Flip's armor and is merrily exploiting them, and unless we find any glaring issues in our final tests, the Find N2 Flip may well be taking Samsung's spot on the best foldable phones list.