Oppo Find N long-term review

Refresh rates, brightness

Let's start out this section with the few niggles we had with the Find N's displays and then proceed to rave about them right afterwards. There's no escaping the difference in refresh rate between the internal and external screen. There's no way you won't feel this in day-to-day use, and of course, it's especially obvious when you use one screen and then immediately switch to the other. We really don't think the price savings of going with a 60 Hz panel for the outer display are worth it since this is an expensive device anyway (not compared to most other foldables, yes, but just overall).

Don't get us wrong, the outer screen is one of the smoothest feeling 60 Hz panels we've ever used, but physics is physics. The internal display is buttery, and the external one just isn't. This is a weird mishap in what is otherwise a very well-put-together package.

Inner screen refresh rate

Neither display has amazing visibility in direct sunlight - in fact, we'd call it average, which isn't that much of an issue on the inner screen, but much more so on the outer one since we assume that's the one you'd use most when out and about. It is legible, it's just not as easily legible as panels from flagship slab-type phones, and that's rather strange since this isn't billed as a mid-range foldable.

Finally, for display niggles, we have to mention the auto brightness curve, which is the worst we've come across in the past 18 months compared to the devices we've reviewed long term. It just doesn't seem to make any sense at all. It always makes the screen way too dim outdoors unless the sun is directly hitting it, and a lot of times, it does the exact opposite while indoors, being too bright.

These past few weeks have been a constant game of manual adjustments, and we can't say we enjoyed that. Theoretically, these should be saved, but we're not sure that's actually happening on the Find N - maybe the Chinese software is to blame? We definitely hope that if this ever launches internationally, it will have a better auto-brightness algorithm.

Screen quality

Now that those things are out of the way, let's get to the nicer bits. Both screens are high quality, and they both go dim enough when in dark environments, so they're comfortable to use even in a pitch-black room. The outer display's curve on the right edge makes using the Back gesture very nice feeling indeed, and although there's a lack of symmetry at play here since the left edge can't be curved because of the hinge, we'll take this any day over a non-curved right edge. It's a very subtle curve, after all, and it's never impeded our use by allowing for accidental touches.

The external screen is also nicely devoid of big bezels, and its curved corners are symmetrical, which is nice to see, especially if you have some form of OCD. Not just that, but the app drawer, when you pull it up, also has curved upper corners to match those of the screen - a nice touch although the curves don't line up 100% - close enough, still. That's about all we can say about the outer display, it feels nice to touch thanks to the Gorilla Glass Victus, and now let's switch to the main star of the show.

The flexible OLED inner screen is a joy to use, and while there is a plastic protector on top (which you should not remove, as that will most likely kill the panel), it's not a terribly bad feeling sheet of plastic. Foldables have gone a long way since the first Galaxy Fold in this respect. And while you'll obviously be able to tell that you're not touching the glass, it's not bad at all.

The crease, which we've all been used to from Samsung's foldables, is much less pronounced in the Find N, owing to the special design of the hinge. There still is a crease, mind you - but it's barely there. You will, of course, feel it when you swipe across it, but it's much less of an inconvenience than in most of this phone's competitors. So kudos to Oppo for making this happen.

The inner screen is surrounded by a raised plastic bezel, which takes a few days to get used to, especially if you're coming from a curved-screen slab, where it feels like there simply aren't any side bezels, but it's nothing too bad.

Display settings

As we've mentioned before, both screens are really high quality, and you can, of course, pick a preferred color mode, with your choices being down to Vivid, Natural, and Pro mode. Both Vivid and Natural come with a three-point slider to pick between Cool, Default, and Warm color temperature, while Pro mode has the same but adds a toggle between Cinematic and Brilliant - the former being designed to match the Display P3 color space, while the latter apparently provides the widest possible color gamut. Honestly, all of these profiles are pretty eye-popping, thanks to the great OLED panels in use, so which one you choose will depend on how saturated you like your colors to look.

Blue light filter

As with any other modern smartphone, the Find N has a blue light filter called Eye comfort, and it's the usual ColorOS fare. You can schedule it, customize how warm the screen color temperature gets, and pick between full color and black and white.

Eye comfort

There's no paper-like texture option or one for light colors as in MIUI, but that blue light filter is pretty much in a league of its own right now, so we can't fault Oppo for its implementation here; it's on par with everything else out there, and it works really well.

Always-on Display

There is an always-on display (AOD), of course, and this is actually shown on both screens - the outer one if the phone is closed, the inner one if it's opened. That's neat since they're both OLED panels, but the problem here is that you won't see any notification icons on the AOD, except for missed calls and perhaps SMS (we don't get any of those, so can't check).

Always-on Display settings

Not from any other app, which sort of defeats part of the purpose of an AOD - yes, the clocks are nice (and there are a whole lot of designs to choose from), as is knowing the date and charge level, but most people also use AODs in order to be able to quickly glance at them and see if there are any new notifications waiting. That's not a thing here, but since global builds of ColorOS on other phones don't have this behavior, we're assuming it's a quirk of the China build on offer in the Find N.

Performance, smoothness

Performance has been outstanding throughout our time with the Find N. Sure, looking at it in 2022, you'd probably feel that it should have been powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, but in all fairness the Snapdragon 888 shows absolutely no signs of being superseded.

It just makes the Find N fly no matter what you throw at it, and in day-to-day use, we haven't noticed any slowdown whatsoever. Heavy gaming might be different, of course, but if you're a heavy gamer, you should probably look at a dedicated gaming phone - those usually have much better cooling than non-gaming devices, and thus are able to sustain maximum performance for much longer even in the most demanding titles. So, for most people, the Find N will never not feel like a bleeding edge, top of the line device, and that's exactly what we were expecting, but it's nice to have it confirmed.

Smoothness is a mixed bag, however, because it's inevitably influenced by the screen refresh rate. So if we only think about the internal screen, we'd call the Find N the smoothest device we've ever tested (compared to the ones we've reviewed long term before), but the situation shifts when considering the outer screen. The 60 Hz refresh rate simply can't compete, so we can't give the Find N the crown. In its defense, the outer screen is probably the smoothest 60 Hz panel we've ever used on an Android device, but it's still no match to the 120 Hz internal one.

ColorOS continues to be one of the smoothest Android skins around, and we have no doubt that a lot of optimizations went into making the outer screen feel as smooth as possible, but at the end of the day, you can't really cheat physics. That said, overall, we were happy with the Find N's performance and smoothness and just wish that Oppo would've gone all-in with 120 Hz on both screens.

Battery life

Battery life has been very good, and exceptionally so compared to our expectations going in. This isn't, after all, a very large capacity battery, and it also has to deal with an internal screen that's bigger than on any slab-type phone out there. And yet, the numbers we've gotten in terms of screen on time are really good, if nothing record-breaking. Then again, they couldn't have been record-breaking considering the limitations we just mentioned.

We have to say that some of this endurance definitely comes from the very aggressive way in which this ColorOS build, meant for the Chinese market, handles background activities - more on that in the Software section. But anyway, we were pleased to see that, with a mix of using both screens (about a 60/40 split in favor of the inner one indoors and 95% the outer one outside), we managed to always be around the 7-hour screen on time in a day, with slightly upwards of 8 hours possible too on some lucky occasions.

Now, obviously, if you use the inner display 99% of the time, these numbers will go down, but there's plenty of headroom for them to drop further and still not arrive into bad battery life territory.

Battery life samples

Our average day consists of 12-16 hours off the charger with primarily Wi-Fi connectivity, an hour or two on mobile data, location and Bluetooth always on, half an hour or so of GPS navigation through Waze, an hour or two of Bluetooth streaming music or podcasts, and an hour or so of phone calls also via Bluetooth earbuds.

While the battery life was impressive, we're underwhelmed by the charging speed topping out at 33W, which is surprisingly low for the company that brought us ultrafast 65W and 80W charging on its flagships over the past two years. Going from zero to 100% takes a little bit over an hour.

So, a letdown of sorts, which we assume is explained by the folding nature of this phone somehow, since we otherwise can't see why Oppo would be content with 33W. This isn't a bad charging speed compared to Samsung's foldables, by the way, in fact, it beats them, but hopefully, the next Find N will find (excuse the pun) a way to do it faster. Wireless charging is available too if you want to use it, and that's a welcome but expected feature at this price point.