Oppo Find N3 Flip review

The first thing you notice about the Find N3 Flip after opening the box is the premium finish with a textured hinge that puts on a display with its smooth wave-like play of light. The Find N3 Flip has a more rounded design compared to its predecessor, making it smooth to handle with one hand. The three cameras are enclosed in a ‘Cosmos Ring’, as Oppo calls it, complete with a straight-knurled frame, which the brand calls the Starlight Track. The unmissable Hasselblad logo bisects the camera island, adding to the premium look. The back surfaces are protected by Gorilla Glass Victus panels, and the glossy surfaces do attract a lot of smudges and fingerprints. So you would be better off using the back cover included in the kit. The cover screen has the same rectangular design with a wide aspect ratio. The device borrows a knurled alert slider from OnePlus phones. The N3 Flip is available in Cream Gold and Sleek Black finishes, and we received the Gold.

The phone is optimised for single-hand operation and the new Flexion hinges make it easier to fold and unfold. Oppo claims that the hinge has been tested to withstand 6,00,000 folds, and we don’t have any evidence on the contrary to dispute this. The brand has managed to keep the crease minimal and near-invisible. The phone is IPX4-rated for protection from water splashes but doesn’t offer protection from immersion. The colourful and interactive cover screen pets add a nice touch to the folded experience.

The main screen is a 6.8-inch AMOLED LTPO display with 2520 x 1080-pixel resolution and dynamic refresh rates up to 120Hz, making it a fast, responsive and crisp display for gaming and entertainment. It offers a peak brightness of 1600 nits. The 21:9 aspect ratio makes widescreen movies come alive. This display also offers 240Hz touch sampling rate. The N3 Flip’s vertical cover screen has a 17:9 aspect ratio, almost close to that of the main display. This 3.26-inch AMOLED display offers 720 x 382 resolution and 900 nits of peak brightness with support for HDR10+. Oppo uses a new polariser-free screen structure to reduce display power consumption, and an anti-reflection film reduces reflections considerably, though it doesn’t eliminate them entirely.

While the main display functions like any premium screen, the cover screen is what impressed us the most. This display’s mini apps feature now includes support for third-party apps and is hence more usable. You might not like the idea of watching action movies on a small display, but this one really got us hooked. With the phone securely in the palm of your hand, it lets you catch up on your favourite Netflix shows while travelling on a metro. Think how tabloids became a staple on Mumbai local trains. And if you are home and don’t want to use headphones, the dual speakers support Dolby Atmos and do full justice to those afterburner crackles in Top Gun: Maverick. The vertical cover screen also provides a full view while taking selfies.

The Hasselblad co-developed triple camera unit is the main highlight of the N3 Flip, and Oppo claims that this is the only foldable phone with a telephoto camera. Going with the latest trend, Oppo has equipped the N3 Flip with a 50MP main camera with OIS, which is complemented by 48MP ultra-wide and 32MP telephoto cameras. Overall, the cameras produced sharp images with colours true to the original. High-resolution mode allows you to crop a small part of the image without affecting the quality of output. The cameras rely much on computational photography to deliver the results, and it’s not perfect for every situation. Night mode disappointed with almost no perceptible difference between images taken with and without it. However, there are situations and subjects that make this combination deliver, such as portraits.

Hasselblad-signature customisations are the hallmark of these cameras, and these include some nice filters and effects. The XPAN mode offers a panoramic cropping similar to the iconic film camera and presents film-development-type animations while you wait for the results, and you can have the image in colour or BW. Our favourite, though, has been the portrait mode, which affords soft and natural-looking bokeh. You can choose to use the retouching slider to remove blemishes and imperfections, but keep the skin texture intact. The results look quite close to natural. The Hasselblad filters offer classic film looks, and we were hooked on to the BW filter, which renders deep blacks and fine gradation, similar to the fine-grained medium format films of old.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip uses a MediaTek Dimensity 9200 octa-core processor with ARM Immortalis-G715 GPU. The device houses 12GB LPDDR5x RAM and 256GB UFS 4.0 storage. The device offered reliable performance with smooth gaming with medium to high graphics settings. We didn’t experience any heating even while charging or recording videos. Even with a 4300 mAh battery, the charge lasted a long time, with moderate use, probably because only the smaller cover screen is active while folded. The 44W SuperVooc charger included in the kit tips up the battery quite fast.

The device uses Android 13 under the ColorOS 13.2 wrapper. The interface comes with its share of bloatware, but many of them can be uninstalled. There are app and game suggestions, which are pushed inside two folders so that you can go around with your daily chores without bothering about them. However, these are quite unnecessary.

The Find N3 Flip appeals in many ways. It may not be the best-performing phone out there, and it has its flaws. However, the camera quality, battery life and the crease-free hinge offer enough reasons to like this phone. Color OS needs much improvement, but the reduced bloatware is a welcome step. The phone is nice and comfortable to handle in the folded state.