Oppo Find N3 Flip review: Premium foldable phone with feature-rich camera

It's been two years since Oppo began selling commercial foldable phones in India. Within a short span of time, it has garnered good response from the public.

With each new iteration, the company has improved hardware in terms of build quality, processor chipset and camera. This time, though the design language of the Find N3 Flip is similar to the predecessor, it has a lot of upgrades inside.

Here are my thoughts on the latest foldable phone from Oppo.

Design, build quality, and display

Our review unit is the Cream Gold variant. The glass-like material laced over the cover has a pearl-like shine and the premium metallic rails around the display and the hinge. The latter has visually appealing wave-like engraving. It shows how much Oppo gives attention to details while designing a premium phone.

The physical buttons are sturdy and tactile. When you hold the Find N3 Flip, it evokes novelty appeal similar to how we see the newly purchased jewelry. The company also offers Find N3 Flip in Sleek Black colour as well. It also looks good too.

However, the glossy cover and even the display both the outer and the inner panels can get stained quite easily with dust and smudges due to sweaty fingers.

. As far as the build quality is concerned, the company has used premium materials. As I noted earlier, the device is like a piece of jewelry and has to be taken good care of, while using it. The company has incorporated a special strip of seal around the flexible display's edge for protection. The flexion hinge is very sturdy and is well designed to ensure particulate matter doesn't enter from spaces between two panels. Inside too, the foldable display doesn't show any discernible crease in the middle. One has to look at certain angles to see it.

. On the front, it sports a 3.26-inch vertical cover display with a Gorilla Glass Victus protective shield and features the trademark circular camera module with Hasselblad branding at the left.

With software optimization, the company has ensured that most of the popular apps can function normally as on the cover display.

With a 17:9 aspect ratio, it supports 40 plus apps including Uber, Outlook, Gmail, and even Google Maps for navigation.

. However, the screen is just good enough for doing instant replies with smart suggestions from apps such as Gmail. The keyboard for obvious reasons, is too compact and it will some time to quickly type without errors.

But for navigation guide through Google Maps on the small screen is manageable, but most importantly, it saves battery life compared to when used on wide screen.

. Inside, it has a wider 6.8-inch full HD+ (2520 × 1080p) E6 AMOLED display, supports 1-120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and 403 (pixels per inch).

The display is of good quality and with peak brightness up to 1600nits, it is good to binge on multimedia content, and even read messages and news articles even under direct sunlight with less hassle.

As I noted earlier, the crease on the middle is almost invisible and the aspect ratio of 21:9 is perfect just like any regular premium phone. Other branded flip phones are a little narrow and come with an odd aspect ratio, not good enough to watch videos in landscape mode.

. But, with Oppo Find N3 Flip, users will be able to comfortably scroll through social media platforms for hours in portrait (up straight) mode and watch movies in landscape mode without any issues.

It also houses a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which also acts as the power button, a volume rocker, a Type-C port, stereo speakers, and dual-SIM slots. The biometric sensor is amazingly good and not even once, I encountered false rejection.

. Performance

It is powered by a 3.05GHz MediaTek Dimensity 3200 octa-core processor with Immortalis-G715 11-core GPU, backed by 12GB LPDDR5x RAM with 256GB UFS 4.0 storage.

The phone works smoothly without any issues. Even when playing games too, it just performs showing no sign of lag-ness as such.

It runs on Android 13-based ColorOS 13.2. In addition to core Google apps, it comes with a handful of third-party apps such as Facebook, Spotify, and Netflix along with a few useless apps. But, thankfully, the base device has enough storage to accommodate hundreds of apps and also still has space to add thousands of photos and videos taken from the camera.

. With a 4,300mAh battery, it can deliver a full day with normal usage. One can indulge on OTT apps to binge on a favorite TV series for an hour per day. Even on long journeys, one can watch an entire movie (downloaded and streamed offline) without any anxiety of draining the battery before reaching the destination.

The company offers a 44W SuperVOOC flash charger with the retail box. It takes less than 45 minutes to fully charge from zero to hundred per cent. With 23 minutes, it can reach 50 per cent capacity.

. Photography

Oppo Find N3 Flip houses a Hasselblad triple-camera module--main 50MP (wide-angle Sony IMX890 sensor, f/1.8) + 48MP 114-degree ultra-wide (with Sony IMX581 sensor, f/2.2, support 4cm macro) + 32MP telephoto camera (with Sony IMX709 sensor, support 2X optical zoom).

. It performs in all conditions be it indoors with controlled light or without in the night outdoors or bright sunny days. As you can see in the sample photos, the Find N3 Flip aces all tests with grace.

. It does an amazing job in natural sunlight conditions in the middle of the day, particularly if the subjects are flowers. They tend to be a little warmer and bright, but visually stunning to the eyes.

. Even with portrait mode, the Oppo phone does great with getting the edges around the petals captured pretty clearly without any smudges.

. With close-up macro shots, the subjects such as insects and minute strands of flowers are captured in great detail and sharp.

. The ultrawide angle mode does a fine job of covering a wide area of the landscape within the frame.

. As far as the Zoom feature is concerned, the photos captured in 2X and 5X modes are really good without any noticeable loss of quality. But, beyond that the noise begins to accumulate and by the end of 20X Zoom, the photos end up looking like artwork made using a brush and paint.

. However, the night mode pictures are stunningly good, way better than most of the premium phones above Rs 1 lakh. It takes instant photos without any delay in shutter speed. They look natural and beautiful.

. Inside, it features an autofocus 32MP (RGBW Sony IMX709 sensor, f/2.4). It takes pretty decent selfies. It should be noted that this phone does an amazing job of processing the smoothening of the human face. You don't even need any editing tool to clear your acne scars.

. And, thanks to the bendable form factor and software optimization, users can just place the phone on the table at 90 degrees, with the lower half sitting flat on the surface and the top half up straight, facing them, to attend video conference hands-free.

This is one of the perks of owning foldable phones. It just not 90-degree, the phone's hinge is flexible to turn wide angles and stay in that position.

. Also, the native camera app offers an option for phone users to switch 32MP cameras to the primary triple-camera module to get even better photos for selfies. It does not disappoint at all and takes amazing pictures worthy to be used for display pictures for social media platforms.

. Both the primary and selfie cameras support 4K recording at 30 frames per second (fps). They do a fine job in getting stable high-quality videos thanks to gyro EIS (Electronics Image Stabilisation).

The primary camera can also record full HD (1080p) at 30/60 fps too. And, it can record slow-motion videos in 1080p resolution at 240fps.

Final thoughts

Though the Find N3 Flip retains the design language of the predecessor, I am still happy with it. The big cover display is good enough to read a full message and even reply with less hassle.

. And, the foldable display inside is of top-notch quality. Yes, it is a fingerprint magnet, but the crease in the middle, the part where the screen bends, is not easily visible. You have to look for it and only with the touch, one can feel its presence.

Also, the camera is impressive too. It takes brilliant photos in almost every light condition.

The company is offering Find N3 Flip in two colours-- Cream Gold and Sleek Black-- for Rs 94,999 on Oppo store, Flipkart and authorised retail stores.

It can be purchased for less on certain e-commerce sites through exchange deals.

Oppo Find N3 Flip review: Premium foldable phone with feature-rich camera

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