Bringing the fight to Samsung

Verdict

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is a great flip phone with top-of-the-line hardware, a sleek design, and solid foldable software features. You get decent performance, all-day battery life, and a very sturdy feel that is rare with flip phones. It’s a great alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, held back by limited global availability.

Introduction

Oppo is gunning for Samsung’s crown with its foldable phones, and the third generation is something truly special. Oppo’s new flip phone, the Oppo Find N3 Flip, improves upon the already-excellent last generation foldable.

The Oppo Find N2 Flip got a lot of things right, including a big cover screen and a stellar combination of hinge and display crease (or lack thereof). The Find N3 Flip keeps those great positives while bringing great camera performance to the table. 

Oppo launched the phone globally, but it hasn’t been as widespread as the Find N2 Flip. That means you can buy it in Asia and the Middle East, but there’s no official availability in the US, EU, or UK yet. The phone comes in at S$1499/INR 94,999 (~$1126/£890) for the 12GB+256GB version in Cream Gold, Misty Pink, and Sleek Black colours. There’s also a 512GB storage version, which seems limited to China.

I had the 16GB/256GB Sleek Black model in for review. The phone goes up against the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, and it lands some heavy punches with its design, the foldable aspects, and, best of all, the camera experience. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly a top contender.

Design

• Glossy finish
• IPX4 rating
• Sturdy flat-folding hinge

Clamshell-style foldable phones have always been some of the most stylish phones around, even from the feature phone era. With their second coming, this aspect has stayed, and the Oppo Find N3 Flip is a great example of that.

In terms of the visual design, the Oppo Find N3 Flip is rather elegant. While I had the relatively muted Sleek Black colour, it still looked pretty fancy and eye-catching. The Gold and Pink colours are flashier, but the design elements look great in all the colourways.

You get rounded glass corners that go into flat edges, making this phone look rather sleek. The camera island looks like a coin, which is a nice contrast and gives the N3 Flip a unique look. Sitting next to it is the cover display, which looks very similar to that on the N2 Flip. The spine has the same wave texture on it as well, which is a nice touch.

In terms of functional design, the N3 Flip keeps all the good bits from the N2 Flip. The hero here is the screen, with a crease that is very, very subtle. You almost can’t see it, and there’s not much of a bump when running my finger over it either. The hinge is excellent and feels firm, but not so firm that folding and unfolding the phone becomes a task.

The phone also shuts completely flat, which definitely took care of any anxiety I would have typically had about carrying a foldable phone in my pocket. The side-mounted fingerprint is placed rather well and within reach, regardless of whether you’re unlocking it folded or unfolded.

An excellent addition this time is the Alert Slider. Oppo has ported over our favourite alert switch from OnePlus phones, and it is well-positioned.

Overall, the phone is very well-built. It looks sleek and elegant, but once you have it in your hands, it feels sturdy enough, and you won’t feel like you’re going to accidentally snap it. During my usage, I didn’t feel like the phone needed any more care than any other glass slab phones I’ve used, which is a significant quality for a foldable phone to possess.

The phone also gets an IPX4 rating, which isn’t the best you can get, but it’s an improvement over the N2 Flip, which didn’t have any.

Screen

• 6.8-inch FHD+ OLED screen 
• Minimal crease on folding display
• 3.26-inch 382 x 720 pixels resolution cover screen

The phone has two screens — the cover screen, and the main display. The two screens are a solid pair.

Oppo hasn’t done much in terms of the hardware with the cover screen. It’s the same 3.26-inch screen from the Find N2 Flip, running at a resolution of 382 x 720 pixels. The screen is pretty decent. It goes up to 900 nits of peak brightness, and outdoor use was just fine during my usage.

I do wish it had a higher resolution, though, if not size. While the size means that you can only realistically do a few things on this screen, the 250ppi pixel density could have been improved for a better experience. It also has lower colour capabilities than the main display, which can sometimes become apparent during usage.

However, you won’t have any usability concerns because of the relatively lower pixel density or colours. Given the size and battery life concerns, it seems like an acceptable compromise.

The main display is excellent, however. It’s a 6.8-inch FHD+ OLED screen with refresh rates between 1-120Hz thanks to LTPO tech. It also goes up to 1600 nits, which means outdoor visibility is outstanding. The Find N3 Flip is a rather tall phone, though, as most flip phones tend to be. So, even though the main display is easy to use because of the phone’s smaller footprint, it can sometimes be tricky to reach the top of the screen.

That said, it’s easily the best screen I’ve seen on a flip phone yet. That’s not just because it has great specifications on paper, but because of the near-seamless crease. I had sung praises about the Find N2 Flip’s display crease in my review, and the N3 Flip manages to improve upon that — quite a feat.

I’m also impressed by the overall feel of the screen. The lack of proper glass on top of the screen means folding displays can be tricky with the feel, but Oppo seems to have nailed the matte/glossy balance.

Overall, it certainly was a more pleasant experience using the Find N3 Flip screens than any flip phone I’ve handled before. I do wish the cover screen was a higher resolution, and maybe bigger, but it’s still plenty good for the size.

Camera

• Triple camera setup
• Decent ultrawide camera
• 2x optical zoom telephoto camera

With the Oppo Find N3 Flip, cameras have been the focus. Flip phones are sleek and portable, but that has meant that so far, we haven’t seen great cameras on them. The N3 Flip fixes that. The triple camera setup is an upgrade and has the classic Oppo quality I’ve admired as the company’s Hasselblad collaboration has matured over the last few years.

The primary camera is excellent, reproducing colours and scenes effectively. You get a good amount of detail as well, thanks to the 50MP main camera. The camera does best at capturing rich scenes with a lot of colour, as well as portraits, even when you’re not using the dedicated portrait mode.

The Ultrawide camera is pretty decent as well. There’s not too much loss in detail, and it does pretty well. I did notice that it takes a slightly cooler tone than the primary camera, but that was noticeable only in indoor scenarios with diffused sunlight. In other situations, I found that the Ultrawide could match the colour that the primary camera delivers.

The telephoto lens is the standout feature here, and it’s impressive, especially for a phone this portable. You get 2x optical zoom, with digital steps up to 5x, and it works pretty well for the most part. You get ample amounts of detail, and the stabilisation is very good.

I noticed some image processing issues in low-light scenarios at the 5X zoom step, with obviously overprocessed details. The photos don’t look terrible on the surface, but they may not look ideal when zoomed in. The 2x optical step does much better, though. The overall low-light performance is solid, and so is the overall telephoto performance.

The selfie camera is above average but could have been better. It has a bit of a haze when there’s too much lighting, with a few attempts leading to whitewashed selfies, but otherwise delivers accurate detail and colour. I didn’t find this to be too big of a deal given the cover display works excellently to let you take photos with the main cameras.

Overall, this is certainly the best camera performance you can get from a flip phone, so the Find N3 Flip delivers on its camera promises.

Performance

• Mediatek Dimensity 9200 chipset
• Snappy overall performance
• Average gaming performance

The Oppo Find N3 Flip comes with a Mediatek Dimensity 9200 chip. It’s not the fastest chip you can get, with the Dimensity 9300 now available, but it’s pretty close. It competes with the year-old Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, delivering slightly lower levels of performance overall. Regardless, that still means the Oppo Find N3 Flip has plenty of power on offer.

The rest of the hardware is also high-end. You get UFS 4.0 storage, with 256GB and 512GB options, along with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The benchmark numbers show the phone falling short of the latest phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but the performance is still pretty much in line with the rest of the foldable competition. I noticed no lag or stuttering during regular usage, and everything was smooth sailing.

The benchmark results clock below the expectations from this chip, hinting that there may be some throttling at play here. It makes sense given the phone’s form factor, since heat management and battery life would take priority.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip also suffered in the sustained performance test. I ran the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark, a 20-minute GPU stress test. The phone returned a stability figure of 60.6%, which isn’t great. 

However, given that this isn’t marketed as a gaming phone, the performance issues during benchmarks can be excused to a certain degree – mainly because the phone performs rather well in real-world usage. The phone handled perfectly fine during regular day-to-day usage, and was always snappy. 

It’s just not perfect for mobile gaming. I played Fortnite on the Epic quality preset at 75% 3D resolution with the texture quality set to high and saw a frame rate of around 50 fps with fairly frequent frame drops. The performance was much better with the low-quality preset, delivering a stable 60fps with only a few frame drops.

In Genshin Impact, I saw a bit of stuttering and lag in the first cutscene itself. The game stabilized after the cutscene and was playable, with only occasional stutters.

The gaming performance is flawless in more casual games like Clash of Clans. However, given how the phone performs in more complicated titles, I would advise serious gamers to look at non-foldable options in this price bracket instead.

Software

• ColorOS 13.2 based on Android 13
• Impressive cover screen software
• Five-year software update promise

The Oppo Find N3 Flip ships with ColorOS 13.2, which runs on Android 13. The software is pretty refined at this point, and ColorOS is easily one of the better Android skins out there. ColorOS 13.2 isn’t the latest version of the OS, though, with ColorOS 14 already out, although still in the open beta phase for this phone.

That being said, the Oppo Find N3 Flip is very usable on the software front. Everything works as expected. Memory management is great. I didn’t find apps randomly closing in the background, which is a positive. The UI is quite skinned compared to what we would call stock Android today, but despite that, the Material You theming works pretty well with the supported elements adapting to the colour of the wallpaper you choose.

I didn’t face any app crashes, freezes, or reboots either. ColorOS, overall, is pretty fantastic to use.

The foldable feature set is also pretty great. The external cover screen is a lot more useful than it was on the Find N2 Flip. Oppo has a few apps that even work full-screen like they would on the regular screen. My go-to was YouTube Music, which was excellent on the cover screen when I wanted to listen to music without flipping the phone open. Gmail was also excellent when I wanted to check email on the go. Google Maps worked quite well as well. 

Even though the cover screen doesn’t support every app, the supported apps work very well. You even have Gboard running on the screen, stretched tall, and it works pretty well for typing should you need to. I can’t think of much Oppo could do differently with the cover screen software without making the display bigger.

Oppo promises four years of major updates and five years of security patches, which is pretty good for a phone of this price, albeit slightly behind the five OS upgrades from the Z Flip 5.

Battery life

• 44W fast charger bundled
• All-day battery life
• No wireless charging

The Oppo Find N3 Flip has a 4,300mAh battery, and the overall battery performance is solid.

The N3 Flip is pretty power-efficient, providing rather impressive battery life for a flip phone. The phone consistently delivered all-day battery life, with a charge only needed at the end of my day, albeit with only around 15% left on the tank on average. My usage included a lot of social media usage via Instagram and X (Twitter), web browsing using Chrome, and some calls.

The phone gets Oppo’s excellent 44W SuperVOOC fast charging that delivers a full charge in under an hour, making for some blazing fast top-up when you need it. Even if you somehow manage to get this phone drained out before your day ends, you can get a quick top-up. Our battery tests also reflected decent battery performance.

The only inconsistency I noticed was for the Netflix video streaming, which took more power than expected. Still, it wasn’t horrible. However, the higher power draw for that scenario is an outlier since the phone held up very well under mixed testing loads. Overall, the battery life is a strong point of the Find N3 Flip.

There’s no wireless charging, however, which is a miss. The fast wired charging almost makes up for the lack of wireless charging, but it would’ve been good to have the option.