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OPPO Find N3 Flip Review

OPPO’s latest flip phone, the Find N3 Flip, is a 3rd-generation smartphone with a bendable screen. In an industry where regular bar-type phones fight for a crowded market, OPPO is betting on their foldables as the flag carrier.

So far, the trend points to flip phones as the more favorable form factor and the OPPO Find N3 Flip wants to be the top choice.

Design and Construction

You’d normally expect that a newer model in the series would be engineered to be a little thinner and lighter than the predecessor, as every other manufacturer would want. However, the Find N3 Flip is actually the opposite.

The dimensions: the N3 Flip is a bit thicker – 7.8mm compared to the 7.5mm on the N2 Flip.

The weight: the N3 Flip is, once again, a bit heavier – 198 grams compared to the 191 grams on the N2 Flip.

Our best guess is that these differences are all attributed to the additional camera sensor on the N3 Flip. The 3rd camera on the N3 Flip, including the large circular lens barrel around it added to the weight, while the larger telephoto sensor forced engineers to make the body a little thicker.

That’s the best guess we can offer for the changes in dimensions and weight. In any case, they’re quite insignificant anyway and you would not notice it offhand.

Again, not much has been changed here. You know what they say – “don’t fix what ain’t broken”.

One of the major inclusions in the FInd N3 that is actually a surprise is the Alert Slider. This a feature we normally find in flagship OnePlus devices and now included in both the Find N3 and N3 Flip. Goes to show how much collaboration OPPO is having with the OnePlus team.

Our review unit is in this Sleek Black colorway, and it is very shiny or glossy compared to the Astral Black of the N2 Flip. We liked it a lot, but it is such a fingerprint and smudge magnet. It won’t be a big bother once you slap on a cover case on it.

That large lens barrel (referred to as the Cosmos Ring) protrudes quite a bit and the case designers made it a point to add an equally thick guard rail along the barrel to avoid it being scratched.

Placements of the ports and buttons are where you’d expect them to be – volume rocker on the right side along with the power button that serves as a fingerprint sensor; Alert Slider with a textured surface on the left; at the bottom end are the USB Type-C charging port, primary speaker grill, mic and SIM card slot for the dual nano SIM trays; and up top, the secondary noise-canceling mic and second stereo speaker grills.

We were hoping they would also include an IR blaster, just like in the Find N3 18 we reviewed earlier, but no luck here. Perhaps, not enough room for the module?

Gone is the OPPO engraving found on the Flexion Hinge that we saw on the N2 Flip. And speaking of the hinge, OPPO claims they made some more improvements on this front – making the crease depth on the display less than 0.15mm deep and while we can actually see the difference between the N2 Flip and the N3 Flip, we’ve been using the N2 Flip for over 6 months now and the N3 Flip for just less than a month so we can’t definitely say at this time.

Also, the Flexion Hinge has been tested for up to 600,000 times of folding and unfolding. There’s just IPX4 rating here, though, unlike the Z Flip5 which is IPX8 rated for water resistance. That’s the only feature we wished the N3 Flip also had.

Display, Multimedia and Biometrics

Folded, the Find N3 Flip has a 3.6-inch Cover Display with a 382 x 720 pixel resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection.

The Cover Display now supports a lot of widgets and apps – YouTube, Tiktok, GMail, Netflix, Keep Notes, Maps, YouTube Music and Google Wallet and OPPO is continuously adding more popular apps to run on the Cover Screen.

There are also more Cover Screen styles you can choose from – Static and Live Wallpapers, a Weather widget or Interactive pets that look like tamagochi but don’t really interact with you that much.

Unfolded, you get the same huge display as before – a 6.8-inch AMOLED screen with full HD+ resolution of 2520 x 1080 pixels and SCHOTT UTG screen protection. This is an ultra-thin glass made by Schott so it’s not easily scratched.

The main display has an LTPO variable-frequency display with a minimum of 1Hz up to 120Hz while the Cover Display can only be set at either 30Hz or 60Hz.

Expect nice vibrant colors, nice contrast and good enough brightness even in the outdoors for the main screen. The Cover screen can be a little lacking in terms of brightness in certain situations or angle, especially in the outdoors.

Camera

The focus of this iteration is mainly on the triple camera setup which was co-engineered with Hasselblad. This is the first triple-camera system on a flip phone, which demonstrates how OPPO has managed to out-match competitors such as Samsung which pioneered the foldable smartphone market.

The main camera is Sony IMX890 50MP F1.8 main with PDAF and OIS. This is paired with a Sony IMX581 32MP F2.0 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom and PDAF. The third camera is
a Sony IMX709 48MP F2.2 ultra-wide, with AF support.

The main camera does a great job at taking detailed and accurate photos. Even low-light or night shots produce even and details are still distinct with a little bit of sharpening. The vibrant colors look warm and skin tones appear natural. There’s a noticeable difference in image quality between the main camera, wide-angle camera and telephoto cameras as shown here but it managed to maintain the color at close to similar levels with minor contrast differences.

For video, the maximum resolution is 4K @ 30fps and comes with EIS and OIS so you get smooth and stable clips.

The front camera is the same – a 32MP wide-angle lens with f/2.4 aperture, but this time around, it can now shoot 4K @ 30fps and has a gyro-EIS support for more stable selfie shots.

In many cases, you can actually use the primary cameras for shooting selfies since you can simply fold the phone halfway to set it in tripod mode and use the Cover Display as your viewfinder in framing your shots.

Gesture controls allow you to trigger the shutter and take your shot even if you are far away from your phone. This is perhaps one of the most practical and fun features of a flip phone. You can even take photos with the main camera even while the device is completely folded, like so!

Performance and Benchmarks

As for the main hardware of the Find N3 Flip, the chipset has been upgraded to a Mediatek Dimensity 9200 with an ARM Immortalis-G715 MC11 GPU. You also get more RAM at 12GB plus another 12GB of RAM Expansion for a total of 24GB.

We’re already satisfied with the performance of the N2 Flip in the past 6 months, and we’re more than happy to get this performance bump on the N3 Flip. In terms of real-world experience, we can’t really feel the difference, to be honest.

Antutu Benchmark V10 – 977,585
Antutu Storage: 3,303MB/s (read), 2,954MB/s (write), 1,175MB/s & 779MB/s (random read/write)
GeekBench 6: 1,254 (Single), 3,334 (Multi-core)
PCMark Work 3.0: 9,678

With the 256GB internal storage running on UFS 4.0, read and write speeds are blazing fast. There’s no expandable storage here so some people might find the storage lacking.

Games played well and running multiple apps is a breeze. Mobile Legends and Asphalt 9 all played really smooth and heavier games like Genshin Impact still managed to get some pretty decent frame rates at high settings.

OS, Apps and UI

Running on the Find N3 Flip is OPPO’s ColorOS 13.2, which is based on Android 13. A lot of the changes here are focused on the Cover Display, camera, and system performance, including the latest Android security updates.

Also, since our review unit is for the Thai market, there might be some differences we’re not aware of. Not a lot of bloatware here, too, except for the pre-installed Lazada app.

Another major update on the Find N3 Flip is the software side, mostly on the Cover Screen. OPPO is continuously adding more popular apps to run on the Cover Screen. As of the latest update, a few more apps were added — YouTube, Tiktok, GMail, Netflix, Keep Notes, Maps, YouTube Music and Google Wallet.

OPPO reps have stated that they are also working on making this feature updates available on the Find N2 Flip.

Connectivity and Battery Life

For connectivity, it’s all present here – 5G support, WiFi 6, Bluetooth, NFC and GPS. There’s eSIM support for those of you who are interested. The fingerprint sensor on the power button is the ideal placement and works flawlessly, and you can also use face unlock for biometric security.

And lastly, the battery – it’s still the same at 4,300mAh but better than other competitors, and you also get a 44W fast charging support with reverse wired charging included. It can last you the whole day, but that really depends on your usage behavior.

In our PCMark Work 3.0 battery test, the N3 Flip managed to score 16 hours and 55 minutes. In our video loop test, the FInd N3 Flip lasted 24 hours and 20 minutes. Both tests were done at 50% brightness, zero volume and in airplane mode. These are very good results for the battery life and significantly better than the ones we got from the Find N2 Flip.

The box comes with a 44W SuperVOOC 2.0 Flash Charge and claims up to 50% battery in 23 minutes.

Conclusion

All things considered, the OPPO Find N3 Flip is a great well-rounded flip phone. OPPO has latched on to its strength in this category – nice design, big battery, good performance and a great user experience.

Where it mainly focuses on this time around is the camera. With the Hasselblad partnership and OPPO’s engineering experience, it managed to make a camera system worthy of a flagship phone despite the obstacles and challenges presented by a foldable device. The Find N3 Flip is a testament to that. It’s not a perfect one, noting the lack of a proper IPX rating but a great flip phone, nonetheless.

The OPPO Find N3 Flip is available in Cream Gold and Sleek Black and comes in a single configuration of 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. Check out the pre-order details here 20.

With a suggested retail price of Php64,999, that is a 30% jump in price tag compared to its predecessor (the Find N2 Flip had an SRP of only Php49,999 when it came out). OPPO is kind of overreaching here and this price difference is inexplicably beyond us. Well, except for one possible reason — OPPO wants to go head-to-head with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip5 and see if can match the brand’s equity with their own engineering feats.

Ultimately, consumers will be voting with their pockets and OPPO will soon find out if they made the right bet this time around.

OPPO Find N3 Flip specs:
6.8-inch FHD+ (2520 x 1080) AMOLED main display, 403ppi
3.26-inch (720 x 382) AMOLED cover display, 250ppi
SCHOTT UTG (main), Gorilla Glass Victus (cover)
120Hz refresh rate (main)
120Hz (cover), 240Hz (main) touch sampling rate
1600 nits peak brightness (1200 nits under sunlight)
MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chipset
1x Cortex-X3 3.05GHz + 3x Cortex-A715 2.85GHz + 4x Cortex-A510 1.8GHz
Arm Immortalis-G715 MC11 @ 981MHz GPU
12GB LPDDR5X RAM
256GB UFS 4.0 internal storage
Triple-rear Hasselblad-tuned cameras:
50MP F1.8 main camera with PDAF, OIS, Sony IMX890
32MP F2.0 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, PDAF, Sony IMX581
48MP F2.2 ultra-wide, AF supported, Sony IMX709
4K @ 30fps, gyro-EIS
LED flash
32MP F2.4 front camera, AF, 4K @ 30fps, gyro-EIS, Sony IMX709
Dual-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
WiFi-7, WiFi-6
Bluetooth 5.3 A2DP, LE, aptX HD
NFC
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO, QZSS
USB USB-C 2.0
Fingerprint scanner (side)
Facial recognition
Stereo speakers
ColorOS 13.2 (Android 13)
4,300mAh Li-Po battery w/ 44W SuperVOOC 2.0
166.4 x 75.8 x 7.8 mm (Unfolded)
85.5 x 75.8 x 16.5 mm (Folded)
198 grams (weight)
Cream Gold, Sleek Black, Misty Pink

What we liked:
• Beautiful, solid design
• Great triple-camera system
• Better battery life
• Excellent performance

What we did not like:
• No microSD expansion slot
• 30% more expensive than predecessor
• Only splash-resistant, not water-resistant (IPX8)

Abe Olandres
Abe Olandres
Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.
  1. opporma says:

    How can they go head to head with Samsung when you are going to throw this expensive junk in 1-2 years? BBK electronics only offers 1-2 years of os updates, making their products disposable e-waste. So no thanks.

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