Galaxy Z Flip4 vs. Find N2 Flip: Our long-term Flip review

Brightness, polarization

The Flip4's main display has good brightness, considering it's of the folding variety. It doesn't hold a candle to the brightest panels on normal, non-folding smartphones, but that's probably a 'tax' you pay for the folding capabilities. It gets bright enough to be seen even outdoors on a sunny day, though some squinting will be required, and if the sun hits it directly it doesn't perform great. It's legible, but barely.

Still, this is good performance for a folding screen, and much better than the first such panels were at this. On the other hand, it's not any better than the Flip3's display according to our lab tests, which isn't very reassuring for future developments. Maybe now that there's more competition in this space Samsung will think about making a leap forward with the next generation? We'll have to wait and see.

Flip4: Display settings

The N2 Flip has a bright inner screen too, even brighter by a tad, on paper, than the Flip4's, although in day-to-day use you aren't likely to notice that difference, we'd wager. The same caveats apply, then - this is definitely not on par with any mainstream flagship's display in terms of brightness, but mostly gets the job done. Even so, on the brightest of sunny days, there will be struggles to make out what's on the screen. Shade is your friend.

N2 Flip: Display settings

At the other end of the spectrum, the Flip4's display gets dim enough to be used comfortably in pitch darkness, and if that's not enough you also have Android's Extra dim feature - which does exactly what the name implies. It dims the screen even more, with a slider of its own. That might be useful to apply just before bedtime, for example, but you can also simply ignore it. We like that it's there as an option, especially since it isn't present on the N2 Flip. Oppo's device does get dim enough in low light for most people even so, thus this is not a huge omission, but one that exists nonetheless.

The auto brightness algorithm has generally been good on the Flip4, although it has a weird quirk: when entering a pitch dark environment, it never goes to "zero" on the slider, it's always just a little bit brighter than the minimum brightness which you can thus only achieve by manually sliding the slider all the way to the left. It's a minor annoyance, this one, but it is an annoyance and we have had to resort to manual adjustment of this nature every single day, despite the fact that the setting should have been remembered after the first time we manually tweaked it. This remembering of settings does work for every other ambient light level, so it feels like this behavior isn't a bug and instead was created on purpose, but we can't figure out what purpose it was supposed to serve.

The N2 Flip's auto brightness is about as good as the Flip4's. Neither of these are the best we've seen, but they are better than most, and of course, if they don't suit your particular taste, you can always go the manual adjustment route.

The biggest problem with the Flip4's screen is the way it's polarized. It's a very weird polarization that basically means you will always get a huge rainbowing effect when you're wearing polarized sunglasses, no matter which orientation you're holding the phone in. The screen never appears black, but the rainbowing is incredibly distracting, for example, when driving if you're using the phone for GPS navigation. Samsung generally polarizes its non-foldable screens very well, with minimum to zero impact for people wearing polarized glasses, so this is very disappointing to see.

We'd go so far as to say that if you have polarized sunglasses and don't want to give them up, and are interested in the Flip4, you should go to a store and test the way the screen looks through the glasses, because if we were in your shoes we simply wouldn't buy it. Then again, we have about 5-6 months of bright summer around these parts when sunglasses are pretty much a must, so we're going off of that. Your situation might be different, but do factor this in.

On the N2 Flip's inner screen, there is a tiny amount of rainbowing showing when you're looking at it in portrait orientation through polarized sunglasses, but it's nothing compared to the Flip4. And if you use the phone in landscape, it's all gone completely, the screen is perfectly clear. This means the N2 Flip has the upper hand when it comes to usage in the summer, if said summer involves polarized sunglasses. Otherwise, the two are tied here.

Crease

Both inner screens have a crease. However, thanks to the different design of the insides of the hinges, the Oppo's crease is longer, vertically, which means it's less noticeable. Distinctly so. On the other hand the Samsung's crease is much shorter vertically, and that makes it much more pronounced. That's more of a problem for this style of foldable than it is for the Galaxy Z Fold-type devices since most of what you're doing nowadays on your phone involves vertical scrolling.

And every single time, with every single scroll, your finger will hit the crease. And the Flip4's will always be felt, it's never subtle. Of course you do get used to it in a few days, but in this regard the N2 Flip wins hands-down. Yes there's still a crease there, but it's so subtle that after a few days we can say you'll either barely feel it or completely forget about it.

Refresh rate

Both phones' inner screens can do 120 Hz. The Samsung goes with two options - Adaptive and Standard, the latter locking to 60 Hz and the former going all the way down to 1 Hz and up to 120 Hz, though not always, of course.

Refresh rate settings: Flip4 (left), N2 Flip (right)

On the N2 Flip the choice is between High and Standard refresh rate, and the idea is exactly the same. Truth be told, the implementations might differ ever so slightly between the two, but in day-to-day use we felt like both were equally smooth when it comes to scrolling and the likes. So for refresh rate it's definitely a tie, and a high-end one at that.

Color settings

Samsung's simplified color settings are present on the Flip4 too, and there are only two main choices - Natural, which is accurate to the sRGB color space, and Vivid, which corresponds to DCI-P3. Only the latter has extra settings, though, such as a white balance slider, the former is of the 'take it or leave it' variety. We really appreciate the simplicity on offer here, and other companies could learn a thing or two from the way Samsung does color settings nowadays (cough... Xiaomi... cough).

Flip4: Screen mode settings

On the Oppo side of the fence, there's Vivid, there's Natural, but also a couple of "Pro modes": Cinematic and Brilliant. Natural is spot-on for sRGB according to our testing, as is Cinematic for DCI-P3. The other two... are just there, for some reason. On the N2 Flip you get a three step cool/default/warm color temperature slider regardless of the setting you pick.

N2 Flip: Screen color mode settings

We went with Natural in both cases, since most content online is still sRGB, and honestly, both of these screens offer outstanding color accuracy in the aforementioned modes. Therefore, it's a tie here, although Oppo should probably simplify its color settings too.

Blue light filter

Both phones offer blue light filters, of course, as has become the norm these days. Samsung's is called Eye comfort shield, and it can automatically adapt the colors based on the time of day, with significantly warmer tones at night. Or you can go custom and use a slider, as well as the scheduling function.

Flip4: Eye comfort shield settings

The N2 Flip's Eye comfort mode (no shield here) is similar, and while it's missing the auto-adapt mode, it does have another trick up its sleeve - the ability to choose between full colors or a black and white mode. That's all fine and dandy, but we found that the N2 Flip's Eye comfort mode is quite buggy, and has remained so through multiple updates received while we've had this phone.

N2 Flip: Eye comfort settings

The main issue is that it never seems to stay on upon a reboot, but despite the fact that it's actually off, the Quick Setting tile shows it being on. If you tap the toggle twice, you can then turn it on, although we have also had a few random occurrences when it would just randomly, and seemingly for no good reason, simply turn off by itself. There are no such bugs on the Flip4, so it wins this one.

Always-on display

As you'd imagine, both devices offer some sort of always-on display, though in both cases it's rather redundant since their outer screens already act as something similar. On the Flip4, you can set it to always show, show as scheduled, tap to show, or only show for new notifications, and we think that pretty much covers most possible use cases you might have. You can even choose the AOD's orientation, whether auto brightness should be in effect, and pick from nine clock styles and 12 colors. Additionally, you can place stickers, AR emoji, Bitmoji, or an image on there if you so wish.

Flip4: Always On Display settings

The N2 Flip's AOD can do custom text, custom text and a custom image, Bitmoji, and canvas drawings, on top of the built-in 10 analog clocks, 15 digital clocks, and ten images. Thus, it's overall more customizable than the Flip4's, but its main drawback is that it can't be set to use auto brightness, so if you have the phone opened in a dark room and AOD on, it will literally light up the place. That's why, in the end, we'd call this category a tie - Samsung's strength is auto brightness, Oppo's is sheer customizability (comparatively, of course, it's not like the Flip4's is lacking customization features).

N2 Flip: Always-On Display settings

Main display quality winner: Tie (unless you use polarized sunglasses).