Oppo Find N hands-on review

Design and handling

The Oppo Find N is an incredibly beautiful smartphone. It looks a lot like your typical foldable smartphone, not that these are widespread, but still. But a few things immediately stand out - the unorthodox size, the gap-less design, and the all-glossy finish.

Indeed, the Find N is different from the Galaxy Fold by offering a standard-sized smartphone display on the outside - it's a 5.49" AMOLED screen with 18:9 aspect ratio and minimal bezels. It has a great pixel density of 402ppi and is great for your day-to-day browsing, calls, emails and messages. There is a proper selfie camera within a small, centered punch-hole just below the earpiece.

We still cannot decide whether this front camera is necessary or not - you can rely on the entire tri-camera setup on the back for a high-quality selfie experience when using the Find N unfolded.

The inner display is a 7.1-inch foldable AMOLED made by Samsung. It has the same sharpness as the Fold3's - about 370ppi, but it is more, well, square-ish, with an 8.4:9 aspect ratio. Another cool thing is the crease or the absence of it - when the screen is fully opened, you can neither see nor feel where the fold is.

Which lead us to our next observation - the gapless design. When the screen is completely closed, it leaves no space for dust and other particles, mainly due to Oppo's proprietary Flexion hinge with a waterdrop-shaped shape. Plus, it looks much better than the slightly V-shaped Galaxy Fold3.

The foldable AMOLED supports a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate and can switch between 1Hz and 120Hz on the go. There is a small perforation for the selfie camera around the top left corner. Oh, and it can work in semi-folded state, and the ColorOS supports a few tricks when operating the Find this way.

And, finally, there is the all-glossy design, which is not a good thing per se. The Find N looks marvelous, no two words about that. It's a dual-glass foldable smartphone with an aluminum frame and hinge. The screen glass is a flat Gorilla Glass Victus, while another slightly curved Victus sheet covers the back panel. Then there is the camera island, which is a made of ceramic. But this enormous glossiness, while eye-catchy, is terribly slippery. It also gets in the way when trying to open the Find.

Speaking of the camera island, it contains three snappers - a 50MP primary, a 16MP ultrawide shooter, and a 13MP zoom snapper. There is also a dual-LED flash on this ceramic tile and a microphone. The whole thing is jutting out just a millimeter, but it's enough to make the Find N wobble on a desk a bit.

The Find N has no ingress protection, at least on paper, but an Oppo rep confirmed for us that the phone meets the necessary TUV standards for humidity, sweat, and light drizzles.

Let's look around the closed Find N.

There are microphones on its top and bottom; the bottom one is used for calls. The bottom also hosts the USB-C port, the SIM tray and the two speakers.

The speakers' placement is a bit odd - they are super close when the Find N is closed and cannot produce a nice stereo separation. Even when unfolded, the speakers are either at the bottom, or at one of the sides, and the stereo effect isn't that convincing either.

The left side is the hinge, which disappears completely when you open the Find N.

You can spot the volume rocker and the power/lock key on the right. The fingerprint scanner is on the power key and is always-on. If you are using the Find N unfolded, it's quite comfortable to have the volume control on the left side and the power key - on the right.

But we had some issues with touching the power key and its fingerprint reader when the Find N was folded as the volume and lock key are next to each other. This proximity works great for when you are taking screenshots, though.

And lastly, let's talk handling. The Find N is incredibly comfortable to use, both folded and unfolded. We find its smaller size more appealing than the Fold and Mate, and if we had to choose a size, we'd probably go for the Find for being more compact. And we've already established it's also quite beautiful.

But the Find N is extremely slippery - it doesn't provide any grip whatsoever. And worse, if you don't get the white model, you are in for an awful smudge mess that will require regular wiping.

We can find reasons to live with both of these design specifics - the lack of grip and the smudges - but we are on the fence about the way it opens. There is just no easy way to unfold the Find N!

See, because of the glossy frame and the gap-less design, there are no grippy spots where you can place your fingers and open the Find. Worse, it's not that easy to stick your fingertips and force it open either because of the lack of gaps.

Don't get this wrong, we love the design, but the only way to open the Find N is to use the volume rocker, and the matte lock key as thumb rests and apply pressure on them to separate the two halves.

The Find N will be available in White, Purple and Black. The first two are all-glossy versions, while the Black one is supposed to be with a sandblasted-like rear glass with a bit rough feel and shimmering effect. Maybe this version could provide some additional grip, though we've handled quite a few matte glass phones already and that's often not the case, on the contrary.

Overall, we are fans of the Oppo Find N's size, looks and build - it's both beautiful and unique. We'd only wish for Oppo to have designed it with unfolding in mind.