It’s not just Samsung with a foldable or flippable phone, as Oppo shows what it has on the way for the new year.
If the year of smartphones has seemed rather dull and unexciting, you’re not alone.
We’ve seen some great phones this year, but largely for the camera and usability features, with the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max making things interesting in how you make the big full-screen and camera notch fun, but not a lot of amazing things happening outside of it.
In fact, in the world of Android, things have been a little, well, meh. There have been new phones, for sure, but few really pushed boundaries outside of the camera, and even that fun new world of foldable and flippable phones has largely felt like we’re seeing upgrades for upgrade’s sakes. The Samsung Z Flip 4 was something, but it wasn’t much of a change from last year’s Flip 3, and going on specs alone, the Fold 4 looks to be more of the same.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. It is still possible for phone manufacturers to innovate, and at the end of 2022, we may well be getting a taste of what 2023 has in store for foldables, and the news could be exciting.
While Moto used the end of the year to launch an updated Razr flip phone, Oppo is using the end of the year to talk about what’s coming in the new year for both foldables and flippables, and it will have one of each.
For the foldable, Oppo will offer the Find N2, a phone sporting a 7.1 inch screen on the inside held together by materials including carbon fibre, which helps keep the weight of the tablet-phone hybrid down and made with fewer components than Oppo’s first foldable, which wasn’t released outside of China.
Weighing just 233 grams, the Find N2 is lighter than what you can find from other big phones, notably the Samsung Fold 4, as well as the iPhone 14 Pro Max which weighs 240 grams. What’s more, Oppo says the hinge can be folded up to 400,000 times based on its lab tests, and there’s another screen on the outside, with a big 5.54 inch screen on the outside, as well.
The Find N2 foldable won’t see Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but will see the still-recent Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, just like what we saw on the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro, plus some Hasselblad-tuned cameras like on this year’s Find X5 Pro. Notably, it’ll cover a 50 megapixel main camera, a 48 megapixel ultra-wide that also works as a macro, and a 32 megapixel 2X telephoto camera, as well.
It’ll be accompanied by the Find N2 Flip, which as the name suggests is a flip-phone style of folding phone, not unlike the Moto Razr or Samsung Z Flip models. There will be a different chip inside, with Mediatek’s Dimensity 9000+ on the inside, plus a 4300mAh battery, which could make it a flippable to last all day, or more than the 18 hours you might expect other flip phones to handle.
The Find N2 Flip will see a smaller screen on the outside and inside, with the former being a 3.26 inch display, while the latter will see a 6.8 inch foldable display on the inside. It will offer fewer cameras, though, with a 50 megapixel main and 8 megapixel ultra-wide, plus a 32 megapixel selfie camera.
Sadly, there’s no word on pricing for either in Australia, though Oppo does expect to launch the phones outside of China in the new year.
