Oppo Find N2 Flip review: A thoughtfully considered Galaxy Z Flip 4 rival

With the launch of the Oppo Find N2 Flip, Samsung should be worried. After years of being pretty much unopposed in Europe when it comes to foldable phones, it was about time another company entered the ring and offered up some fresh competition.

READ NEXT: Best smartphone

The cheaper price doesn’t exactly paint the recent Galaxy Z Flip 4 in a favourable light, either. As a clamshell foldable, the Oppo Find N2 Flip functions largely the same as Samsung’s handset, so why would you bother paying extra?

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: What you need to know

Oppo has been keen to mention that the prototyping stage for the Find N2 Flip started way back in 2019. As such, it claims that this particular clamshell foldable was actually the first of its kind – beating Samsung to the post.

But of course, we’re currently three generations deep into the Galaxy Z Flip family, all of which have been available for some time now. I’d say being the first (and second, and third) to market beats the first to the prototyping stage but I’ll let you be the judge of that.

What’s great about the Oppo Find N2 Flip, however, is that it does a great job of differentiating itself from the Z Flip 4. Sure, the form factor is roughly the same, folding vertically into a pocket-sized square when closed and turning into a regular 6.8in smartphone when unfolded, but it’s the size of the outer front display that sets it apart.

Measuring 3.26in across the diagonal, it’s much larger than the one on the Z Flip 4 and it’s in portrait orientation as well, meaning you can use it as a normal phone screen – at least to a minor degree.

The inner display is an AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,520 x 1080 and a 120Hz refresh rate. The phone is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset, paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. A 50MP main camera sits on the outside cover, above an 8MP 112-degree ultrawide. A 32MP selfie camera is embedded in a hole punch notch at the top-centre of the screen.

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Price and competition

With a launch price of £849, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is the cheapest folding smartphone we’ve reviewed thus far. Contract prices are reasonable, too, with the phone going for around £30 a month with a small upfront cost and plenty of data. Currently, though, it’s only available on EE, Vodafone, O2 and Sky Mobile in the UK.

As a point of comparison, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 was previously the cheapest folding phone around, and its launch price was £150 more expensive than the Oppo, at £999. It hasn’t dropped much in price since release, either.

At that price, you’re looking at competition from non-folding phones as well. The Apple iPhone 14, Samsung Galaxy S23 and the terrific Google Pixel 7 Pro all cost the same as the Find N2 Flip (£849).

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Design and key features

The Find N2 Flip might bear a resemblance to Samsung’s flippable handset in a number of ways but the good news is that, after three years of development, there are just enough differences between the two to help it stand out.

The first and perhaps most obvious distinction is the Find N2 Flip’s large 3.26in portrait cover screen. Bigger than the Z Flip 4’s slim 1.9in landscape display, this orientation more closely resembles a traditional smartphone screen, with its increased size allowing the phone to display more notifications at a time (up to six), as well as offering a larger preview viewfinder for camera selfies. You can also load up this screen with a set of swipeable widgets, displaying the weather, your schedule or any active timers.

Arguably the best thing about the cover display, however, is that you can add Tamagotchi-like animated pets. You can choose a bird, hamster, rabbit, cat or dog, and they perform a set of animations whenever you press the power button. Each has different moods depending on the time of the day, too – they’re sleepy/grumpy in the morning, for instance.

As for its physical attributes, Find N2 Flip uses what Oppo calls a “Flexion” hinge with an “improved waterdrop design”, which the company says is thinner, smaller and stronger than the previous hinge found inside the original Oppo Find N last year.

For obvious reasons, I was unable to fully test the strength limits of the Oppo Find N2 Flip’s hinge but it does feel sturdier than previous foldable phones I’ve reviewed. What you do (or don’t, in this case) notice is that this new hinge has also drastically reduced the thickness of the inner display crease.

In fact, it’s barely noticeable in most day-to-day circumstances, and you really have to be looking for it to spot any imperfections. Clearly, I can’t tell what this will look like six, or twelve, months from now, but at this early stage I can confidently say it’s the best implementation of a flexible screen in a smartphone yet.

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Display

Speaking of which, the Oppo Find N2 Flip’s foldable AMOLED inner screen has a resolution of 2,520 x 1,080 and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, although the cover screen is only 60Hz.

It’s one of the best-looking flexible displays I’ve tested, generating 94.8% of the sRGB colour gamut and scoring an average Delta E of 0.98. In terms of colour accuracy, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Brightness is a strong suit, too. The Find N2 Flip’s inner display peaks at 533cd/m2 in auto brightness mode, and during HDR playback it reaches a respectable 1,108cd/m2.

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Performance and battery life

As I mentioned earlier, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is powered by an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 9000 Plus chipset, clocked at 3.2GHz. This is the first time we’ve encountered this CPU in our tests, and it’s fair to say that performance figures are sadly a bit mild for what is expected of a flagship smartphone today.

READ NEXT: Best phone battery life

The Find N2 Flip comes off as the worst of the bunch in the Geekbench 5 single- and multi-core CPU processing tests. And while it almost matches the Pixel 7 Pro it lags considerably behind the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Apple iPhone 14, which is disappointing.

The GFXBench Manhattan 3 and Car Chase gaming benchmarks sadly don’t give us much to go on but it’s fair to say that more work could be done to speed things up in this area, too. Topping out at 60fps in both tests – despite using a 120Hz display – the Find N2 Flip isn’t a huge gaming performer, with frequent stutters in Genshin Impact when playing at high settings.

There’s only one configuration in the UK and it comes with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage plus a small-ish 4,300mAh battery. Sadly, that holds things back in the stamina department, with the Find N2 Flip lasting a mere 13hrs 45mins in our video rundown test. That’s around seven hours shorter than the Galaxy Z Flip 4, which is a huge shame.

One thing to briefly mention before I continue is the Find N2 Flip’s software. For the most part, ColorOS 13 (layered on top of Android 13) works rather well but there’s an awful lot of bloatware to sift through when you first set it up. The preinstalled Netflix and Facebook apps might not be too onerous but the Amazon Shopping, Joom and selection of naff pre-installed games just clog things up.

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Cameras

Rather than filling the Find N2 Flip with lenses, only two cameras are located on the phone’s cover, with a 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX890 main sensor sitting above an 8MP 122-degree ultrawide unit. A third 32MP f/2.4 camera can be found on the inside, which sits inside a small circular hole-punch notch at the top of the inner display.

READ NEXT: Best phone camera

The good news is that the Find N2 Flip’s main camera is capable of producing punchy, detail-rich still images right out of the gate. Even in tricky, low-light conditions, I was very pleased with the results, especially when it came to the use of HDR when the sun was setting.

Portraits are rather good, too, with nice separation between my subject and the background, even in tricky areas such as wind-wisped hair and glasses. And the phone’s night mode
did a fantastic job at boosting the overall brightness of the image without losing too much detail.

As is often the case, the ultrawide camera isn’t quite as impressive. Sure, you get the option to squeeze more stuff into the frame but there’s a noticeable drop in detail. Notably, the image looks rather soft when using this sensor and there’s some annoying lens distortion at the edges of the frame.

Thankfully, things pick up again when it comes to video. Footage maxes out at 4K 30fps – though 1080p can be shot at 60fps – and it’s rich with detail with barely a single judder during quick pans. One weird quirk, however, is that video recording when folded (using the cover screen as a viewfinder) is weirdly limited to 1080p, though I suspect this is a potential heat-limiting measure.

Oppo Find N2 Flip review: Verdict

The benefit of being the cheapest folding handset might instantly place the Find N2 Flip in a strong position but it’s welcome to see that it’s also a strong performer in key areas. Design-wise, it’s the loveliest clamshell foldable I’ve used, with all sorts of consumer-friendly touches sprinkled throughout. That portrait cover display, in particular, is a real highlight.

There are some aspects in need of improvement, however. Performance is disappointing for a phone at this level, and battery life isn’t great, either. And a flagship phone shouldn’t be launching with this much bloatware, either.

Still, with a folding phone as well-priced as the Find N2 Flip, these issues can be excused to some degree. If you were thinking about signing up to the folding flip phone revolution, the Oppo Find N2 Flip is where you might want to start.