OnePlus confirms it is working on a foldable phone for 2023
Details are scant on the forthcoming OnePlus foldable but we do at least know that it will have flagship specifications
OnePlus has confirmed that it will be launching a foldable phone later this year after first teasing it at the OnePlus 11 launch in India earlier this month. Unfortunately it still hasn’t said all that much about it.
The confirmation, made by OnePlus COO Kinder Liu, came during its “From Fast and Smooth to Beyond” panel event at MWC 2023, was so quick that you might have missed it if you weren’t paying attention.
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And details were certainly thin on the ground. Indeed, the only crumbs of information we were able to glean from what was said is that the new OnePlus foldable will be a “flagship phone that doesn’t settle because of its folding form” and, therefore, should include a range of specifications that are at least on a par with the OnePlus 11, which we reviewed earlier in February 2023.
That means, almost certainly, that it will come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, or some variant of it, so performance should be pretty snappy.
In the absence of any other firm information you could perhaps cast your eyes towards parent company Oppo for hints of what’s coming from OnePlus later this year.
Its recent Find N2 Flip phone looks like posing the most serious threat to Samsung Z Flip 4, and we love its gapless design, large exterior touchscreen and (relatively) reasonable £849 price tag.
OnePlus could, of course, throw a curveball and take a different route entirely with a book-style folding handset like the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4. However, since these types of phones tend to be rather expensive, they don’t quite fit in with the OnePlus ethos as well as a flip folder would.
The announcement came hot on the heels of the OnePlus 11 Concept phone, a very different handset. Focusing on performance rather than form – although it does look quite a bit different from the standard OnePlus 11 – the Concept includes a unique liquid cooling system it calls Active Cryoflux. This uses micro pumps to pipe liquid around the interior of the phone, keeping temperatures down and performance levels up during mobile gaming.
OnePlus has promised to reveal more information about the OnePlus foldable in the coming months and we hope to have a unit it to review soon after. Watch this space.
