Review – OPPO Find N3 fold: Is this the best foldable phone yet?

Cautiously optimistic. That is the phrase that summarizes what I have to say about this OPPO Find N3, also known as the OnePlus Open. Both of them are the same device, just with different names. As a foldable user – the OPPO Find N3 is stepping forward in a good direction and is actually better in a few aspects, but it doesn’t have some essential features that its competitors have.

We’ll leave the comparison between the OPPO Find N3 fold and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 in another video. Do subscribe to our YouTube channel so you won’t miss that video when it comes out.

In today’s video, we will only talk about the OPPO Find N3 alone. We’ll go through our usual 8 points in this video – so let’s get started with the cover screen.

Cover screen

If you saw our review of the OPPO Find N2 from 10 months ago, you’ll realize that OPPO ditched the short and wide form factor in favor of a more traditional slab phone size. It’s a 120Hz 6.31-inch OLED screen that is a lot bigger than before, and it has an aspect ratio of about 20:9 and a resolution of 2484×1116 pixels.

I mean, this phone is definitely wide. Reaching to the other end of the screen while using the cover display with just one hand is rather difficult even for someone with a big hand like mine. While its aspect ratio is better than the Find N2, I’m not sure if it’s the “best”. We’ll talk about this again in our comparison with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 – I’m just very excited about that video.

Anyway, the cover display has excellent brightness and color accuracy – our colorimeter reports about 950 nits brightness and 96.48% of sRGB color gamut but rather low coverage for DCI-P3. At least the ΔE numbers are low.

Inner screen

How about the unfolded, bigger inner display then? It’s a 120Hz 7.82-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 2440×2268 and some might have already realized, it results in a rather squarish aspect ratio.

I’m not sure how to feel about this, honestly. Since the width of the cover display is so wide, it will double the width plus a little bit more for the hinge area when it is unfolded. That makes holding the phone with one hand pretty much impractical. It’s not impossible if you have big hands like mine – but it’s just not comfortable. The phone practically needs to be used with two hands at all times and I’m not a fan of that.

Anyway, the inner display can go up to around 1000 nits and for the color test, we’re doing it twice. One on the left half, and another on the right half. Both sides are very consistent in terms of color accuracy, but it only covers around 97% of sRGB and less than 72% of DCI-P3. That’s not good, especially for a phone with such a high price tag.

Hinge

What’s good is the hinge. OPPO upgraded its foldables to use the next-generation Flexion Hinge and it feels really snappy on this phone. OPPO managed to make the crease as flat as possible and so far, it looks and feels good. I say “so far” because I don’t know about the long-term implications as the crease depth might change as time goes by.

However, there are a few sketchy things that I need to point out. First, OPPO’s official video shows the phone getting sprayed with water. But, there is no official IP rating listed on their website.

Secondly, thanks to some other media from another country – I apologize for not remembering your name or where you’re from – that guy highlighted that the OPPO Find N3 can’t be opened 100% flat. If I place this phone on a flat surface, you can see the rocking motion.

Now, is this a big deal? Honestly, no. I didn’t even realize this until that guy pointed it out. And yes, I looked at a few different units and all OPPO Find N3 have this “issue”.

Performance

Now, how about the performance? This phone is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and it is indeed a very powerful chipset. However… as shown in our gaming test video that you can watch at the top right corner, the performance isn’t up to expectation – especially when it starts to thermal throttle. To give you a little bit of context, playing Genshin Impact at the highest graphical settings is at around 40-ish FPS average.

I also redid the test on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 using the same version of the game and I got a higher average frame rate at the same graphical settings.

There are two possible explanations for this discrepancy – first one being the difference in render resolution. The OPPO Find N3 might be running the game at a higher frame rate but I can’t confirm it since we can’t see the render resolution OPPO phones.

The second possible explanation is because of the cooling solution in the Find N3. Because it’s so thin, there’s really not much space to fit a vapor chamber or anything similar. OPPO says that this phone does have something called the “Dual-Through-Hinge Graphite” with some vague description of what this actually does, but I don’t think it helps in this case.

And that big camera bump also acts as a heat insulator, trapping heat inside the phone. This could be a big problem as the chipset is located somewhere near the camera bump.

Software

And here, we have to talk about the software. This is where I am the most cautiously optimistic about OPPO’s foldable device. OPPO introduced a new branch version of ColorOS 13.2 with special features made for foldable devices. I’m not sure what to feel about this, honestly. Let’s talk about some of the positives first.

They’re giving us a total of 4 generations of Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security patches – matching Samsung’s software update policy.

OPPO also made a big deal out of their new Boundless View feature – which can be activated by placing apps side-side-by-side, and can quickly be swapped into view quickly. Or, you can view all 3 apps at once. Currently, this is the best take on multitasking on a foldable device that I’ve seen.

App continuity between the inner display and cover display is really well done too. Every time I am using an app and decide to close the device, it’ll ask me to swipe up to continue using it on the cover display. If I don’t want to continue, then I can just leave it be for a second and it’ll lock the screen.

This gives us the flexibility to choose on a case-by-case basis rather than Samsung’s very rigid options. Again, more about this in our comparison video coming later.

The addition of an alert slider is also a big plus. I think all phones should have something like an alert slider. It’s just convenient.

While OPPO is making strides in these three aspects, I really do wish they’d improve in 3 more things.

Firstly, the taskbar. It is very limited and we can only put in like 4 items in the taskbar – apps and folders included, and only 3 recently-opened apps will show up on the right side of the taskbar. Come on now, I think we can put more apps in the taskbar. There is so much wasted space that could be used to improve the user experience.

Secondly, the edge panel. It’s a mix of some shortcuts like taking a screenshot and start the screen recording, but other than that – it’s just another taskbar. It could’ve been so much better if OPPO also included more utility to it. For example, a clipboard.

And thirdly, the power button. Someone in our comment section also shared their frustration with us about this too. You see, when we double tap on the power button, it launches something called Fineasy. A quick Google search leads us to the Fineasy website and while there is not explicit description of what it does, it seems like some sort of voucher hunter and deal hunter app.

Now, since I don’t use this Fineasy app, can disable this shortcut? Nope. Can I customize it to let’s say… launch Google Pay? Nope. How about launching the camera app? Nope. Everything is locked, and seriously – I just want a faster way to launch the camera app. I’m not even asking for much.

Cameras

Speaking of the cameras, the OPPO Find N3 has a total of 3 cameras – one of them being a periscope camera with 3x optical zoom. 70mm to be exact. I’m not sure why OPPO opted for a periscope lens for 70mm focal length since it is going to impact the aperture size. There are also many other phones using a pancake lens with 70mm focal length.

But anyway, all the 3 cameras on this phone is packed with Hasselblad’s color science and honestly speaking – I really like it.

To have a look at all the pictures and videos taken with the OPPO Find N3, watch our video at the top of this review.

Once again I have to announce that we’ll return to this topic in our comparison with the Galaxy Z Fold 5. It goes deeper than this.

Battery life

Now, how’s the battery life of this phone then? It comes with a combined capacity of 4,805mAh and we did two tests. One for the cover display only which lasts for 14 and a half hours – which is really good, but the inner display only lasts for about 11 hours.

For those who mix and match using the cover and inner displays, then you might last throughout a full day’s use.

Charging speed

As for the charging speed, we have a 67W SuperVOOC charger in the box and it can charge to 100% in slightly less than 40 minutes.

That’s great – but what’s not so great is the lack of USB-PD support.

Now, when I redid the charging test using our Ugreen 140W GaN charger, this phone can only take in 18W maximum. And it takes nearly 80 minutes to charge completely. Not the slowest, but I really want more brands to ditch their proprietary charging standards in favor of something more open and cross-compatible with other brands like USB-PD.

Design

All of the things we talked about earlier are packed within this design. It’s very thin but wide, and it comes in two colors – black in PU leather, or this gold color with a matte finish. I’m rather impartial towards the colors but I do want to ask – why this camera design?

Why does OPPO like to cosplay a washing machine so much? This camera bump is not only thick but humongous and wastes a lot of space. If we take the camera bump into account, then the OPPO Find N3 is much thicker than the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Few more things to mention

If you haven’t realized, because of how humongous this camera bump is, the OPPO Find N3 does not have wireless charging.

It still has NFC, which is located somewhere near the top of the phone.

This phone also has a USB 3 port at the bottom and transferring files is super fast. While it also has DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C, it doesn’t have a desktop mode – so it’ll just mirror the display.

The OPPO Find N3 also has an IR blaster at the top which is an amazing feature to have.

And as usual, this phone does not have a microSD card slot but it does have double SIM card slots.

Should you buy the OPPO Find N3?

So, for the price of RM7,999, is the OPPO Find N3 worth it? I’ll say yes and no. It kinda depends on what you want. I think the cameras on the OPPO Find N3 are definitely fantastic, alongside the alert slider and some of the software features. I am optimistic about this, but I am also cautious about other aspects like IP rating, the taskbar that’s oddly limiting, and the Fineasy… that needs to change.

I just think that the price of RM7,999 is definitely high, and it’ll be interesting when we put things in perspective with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 which costs RM700 cheaper for the same storage configuration. Again, that comparison will come soon.

So that’s all I have to share with you in this video. Is the OPPO Find N3 the perfect foldable device? Definitely not. There is no perfect foldable device, at least not right now.

Where to buy? (Affiliate links)

• Amazon (same phone, different name)
• Lazada
• Shopee

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