If you’ve always wanted an alternative to Samsung’s fancy flip phones, now there’s another in the shape of the new Oppo Find N2 Flip that’s hitting the shops in Singapore.
Featuring a foldable screen, the Oppo phone resembles Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 4, and some of the marketing videos during the Oppo launch event yesterday also reminded me of the Korean company’s offering.
The Oppo Find N2’s dimensions (85.5 x 75.2 x 16mm) and weight (191g) are similar as well to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4. It’d be hard to guess which phone is which just by the physical size alone.
That said, Oppo would like to think it has designed a better flip phone than its Korean rival. With a hinge it designed, the Find N2 Flip phone can clamp together without any gap. The ridges and bumps across the screen when the phone opens into a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen are also not obvious unless you go looking for them.
Even though you can feel the slight bump when swiping across the screen, it does not bother me much as my thumb interacts with the bottom half of the screen most of the time.
The new Oppo phone comes in two colours – black and purple. I prefer the frosted back of the black version over the glass back of the purple as it just offers a more luxurious feel.
What about photography? Pictures are quickly taken with the button on the screen. Alternatively, you can use an open palm gesture to initiate a shutter countdown. Pretty intuitive, if you ask me.
The 3.26-inch cover screen has built-in widgets to get you quick information about the weather, calendar events and incoming messages. I can even reply to messages with emoticons or standard replies without opening the phone.
More importantly, in terms of image quality, the Find N2 Flip shows promise as a capable camera phone. Onboard are the same Marisilicon X imaging processor and 50-megapixel Sony sensor found on the flagship Find X5 Pro.
The new phone also retains the 32-megapixel front-facing camera, even though the back-facing main camera does a much better job for selfies and wefies.
The lack of a telephoto camera may count against the Find N2 Flip as the phone has to resort to “digital zoom” to get close in some situations. Its ultrawide angle camera with the 8-megapixel sensor also captures fewer megapixels than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4’s 12 megapixels.
Under the cover, the Find N2 Flip has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space, sufficient for most users. Its 4300mAh battery is the largest in its class, and together with the more frugal Mediatek Dimensity 9000+ processor, the smartphone should last a day easily.
While this MediaTek chip is less popular than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips, it should perform well, with similar benchmark results to the Oppo Reno 8 Pro‘s Dimensity 8100-Max chip.
The new Oppo flip phone also supports a dual-SIM tray setup as well as e-SIM, so having two numbers on the phone is not an issue. Just remember that using the e-SIM function would render the second SIM slot inoperable.
The phone also has multiple antennae all around for faster connectivity. Paying for your purchases using Google Pay and Paywave or passing through an MRT gantry using the Near Field Communications (NFC) sensor should not be a hit-and-miss affair.
Finally, being foldable, the Find N2 Flip slips into a handbag or trouser pocket without fuss. Its powerful selfie camera should appeal to fashionistas too. This is one S$1,299 flip worth checking out, which we will do with a more in-depth review soon.
