Oppo Find N long-term review

Conclusion

Thanks to its unique assortment of traits, we are tempted to label the Oppo Find N the best foldable smartphone yet, but we can't actually do that without mentioning some notable caveats, so let's start with those. Maybe you need a stylus for your foldable device - it is, after all, a tiny tablet when opened - but that's not doable here. Or perhaps you'd like your foldable to have an official water ingress protection rating. Tough luck with that, too.

If you can live without those things, then the Find N is truly unique and perhaps the first-ever foldable that feels, for lack of a better word, normal. There's still an adjustment period when you come from a slab-type handset, but much less than for other foldables, and the main thing that will probably always be with you is its heft when closed - both in terms of weight but also chunkiness.

Those aspects aside, even though this is Oppo's first foldable, it's worlds apart from what was Samsung's first try in the space a few years ago. This definitely does not have a "beta" feel to it; it feels finished, it feels complete, and thus there aren't really any huge downsides to using it, and a lot of upsides stemming from the screen real estate delivered by the internal panel. The weight is something you get used to, after all, and so is the thickness when closed, because that somehow actually makes handling feel more secure. The slipperiness does try to negate this somewhat but never quite succeeds, thankfully.

To finish with the hardware perspective - the design is great, the hinge is fantastic, the zero-gap closing is a sight to behold, the minimal crease is much appreciated, and a case in the box would have been nice.

On the inside, there's last year's top-of-the-line chipset from Qualcomm, but in day-to-day use, it's impossible to tell this apart from the newer Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. There's plenty of RAM and storage, and the camera system is almost flagship level - not quite on par with the best of the best, but incredibly close when we're talking about the main shooter and slightly further off if we're thinking about the other sensors.

It's a solid first effort from Oppo, so we're baffled about its China-only launch. That may, of course, change in the future, and we're hoping it does, and the Find N will be brought to international markets. But as it is, we think the most accurate way to describe this Chinese model is to say that it's the best foldable yet, but one you shouldn't buy if you're outside China. The numerous software quirks, as well as the connectivity limitations, all covered in depth in this review, are unfortunately impossible to overlook. If you pay top dollar for your phone, everything should just work, and, owing to this being a Chinese model, that's not the case here.

Still, we very much enjoyed our time with the Find N, and are happy to see Samsung getting some real competition in the foldable space - if only in one market for now. Great competing devices will inevitably also push the Korean company to further innovate, which benefits all of us in the end. We're hoping to see "zero-gap" hinges in all foldables going forward, and perhaps other companies should experiment with more 'in-between' form factors like this one. The Find N's size is definitely one of its key selling points that's easy to overlook when reading a spec sheet but impossible to ignore once you hold it.

If, for whatever reason, the Find N forever stays confined to China, we're hoping Oppo keeps this form factor for its second-gen foldable. We also hope it will finally be a global device; there's just no reason to prevent most of the world from being able to enjoy what is an outstanding user experience. And, who knows, maybe a stylus and some water ingress protection will make the cut too, alongside the very necessary third party app optimizations that the original understandably lacks, at least right now.