OPPO Find N2 Flip review: Almost normal

The OPPO Find N2 Flip is the closest a foldable has come to feeling boring, which, ironically, is pretty damn exciting. It's still undeniably cool that the Find N2 Flip has a folding display, but it doesn't come off as an experiment or oddity. The quirks we've seen on other flip-style foldables have largely been sanded away, resulting in a fairly normal device. It just happens to fold.

Outright, you'll pay $1,499 for the Find N2 Flip.

You can't buy the Find N2 Flip on a plan, but here's a selection of popular SIM-only options if you're looking to change provider:

The Find N2 Flip's sense of normalcy can largely be attributed to its display. While the majority of foldable phones so far have had a significant crease in the middle of their screen, this isn't the case with the Find N2 Flip. You can still see the crease at certain angles, but it's all but negligible. In a similar vein, you can barely feel the hinge when running your fingers up and down the screen.

Creases in foldable phones aren't the end of the world, but they're still a trade-off when compared to a "normal" phone. The Find N2 Flip crease may still exist, but it's so subtle it may as well not.

On the flip side, the Find N2 Flip's external display is the largest we've seen on this form factor so far. It can display up to six notifications at a single time, but it could use a little more functionality. While you can preview messages in full, you can't do the same with emails.

There are a small number of stripped-down apps that run on the Find N2 Flip external display. These include a camera app which is particularly useful for higher quality selfies, a weather app, a very basic calendar app that only gives you the day's appointments, and a timer.

Another design highlight is that the Find N2 Flip folds entirely flat. There's no visible gap when the phone is shut, unlike what you get with its major rivals. This doesn't change how you use the phone, but is one of those design accomplishments that add to the polish factor.

One area where Samsung is still ahead in the foldable space is water resistance. The Find N2 Pro is splash resistant, but doesn't have an IP rating. It's not the type of phone that's guaranteed to survive an accidental dunk.

As a foldable, there are also always questions about durability. OPPO does however rate the Find N2 Flip for 400,000 folds, which is the equivalent of over 100 opens and closes each day for ten years. That's double what Samsung promises with its latest phones.

Of course, reality can always differ to what's on paper. The screen on my colleague's Galaxy Z Flip 3 broke within a year from normal day-to-day use. This isn't a brush I want to tar foldables with, but it is worth remembering that a phone that can literally fold in half is going to be less durable than a more conventional phone.

Battery is the other major area where the Find N2 Flip tries to solve the issues we've seen with other flip-style foldables. Thanks to a decent 4,300mAh cell, the Find N2 Flip should be able to get around 4.5 hours of screen time per charge when connected to a 5G network.

It's not going to win any longevity awards, but it's a step above what we've seen on other flip phone foldables. For example, I was only able to get about three hours of screen time on the Galaxy Z Flip 3 with 5G on, and my colleague got about four hours of screen time per charge with the latest Motorola RAZR on 4G networks.

For reference, 4.5 hours of screen time is roughly the same kind of battery life we found when testing the iPhone 14 Pro. The Find N2 Flip should last a full day, but you won't have much of a buffer left at the end of it.

If you need a top-up during the day, the Find N2 Flip supports rather speedy fast charging. You'll go from flat to 50% in just over 20 minutes, and you can recharge it entirely in under an hour.

While the Dimensity 9000+ chipset you'll find in the Find N2 Flip isn't as fast as Snapdragon's flagship Android processors, OPPO's latest still offers great performance. There's nothing really to fault here.

The Find N2 Flip has 256GB of storage out of the box; that's twice as much as the Galaxy Z Flip 4 for the same price. OPPO has also matched Samsung for software and security updates. Just like the Galaxy Z Flip 4, the Find N2 Flip will get four years of major operating system updates and five years of security updates. This will take it all the way to Android 17.

The Find N2 Flip takes the best photos you can get on a flip-style foldable. The primary camera doesn't always fare well with motion - even with decent light, but it takes reliably nice photos in most lighting conditions. Dynamic range isn't always as good as the upper echelon of camera phones (iPhone 14 Pro, Pixel 7 Pro, and Galaxy S23 Ultra), which can lead to blowout or uneven exposure if there's a strong light source in your photo.

The biggest drawback to the Find N2 Flip is the lack of versatility. The 8MP ultra-wide lens feels more like a token inclusion rather than something you'd regularly use. There's a noticeable drop-off in quality in all but ideal lighting situations. Ultra-wide photos taken indoors, for example, have a dim, smudgy quality to them. You can't use the ultra-wide lens for macro photography.

You also miss out on any optical zoom. While the Find N2 Flip can pretty decent 2x digital zoom, there's no dedicated telephoto lens. We're yet to see a flip-style foldable with a telephoto lens, but most other phones in this price bracket are now offering three rear-facing cameras.

Not only is it exciting to see a foldable as polished as the OPPO Find N2 Flip, it's fantastic to see proper competition in the foldable space.

Samsung's success with the flip-style foldables is almost certainly a key reason OPPO launched the Find N2 Flip, and in turn, the Find N2 Flip will hopefully force Samsung to step up its own game. The cycle will continue, and no matter your brand allegiances, we'll see more innovative foldables.

But stepping back to here and now, if you're after a flip-style foldable, the Find N2 Flip is the one to buy. While you're still paying a premium for the form factor, the Find N2 Flip manages to avoid the curse of being good for a foldable. Instead, it's a good phone that just happens to fold.