OPPO Find N3 Flip Review
So, is the OPPO Find N3 Flip the best flip smartphone on the market? The answer, unfortunately, cannot be summed down to one word. The OPPO Find N3 Flip blows the competition out of the water in multiple key areas including camera versatility, battery life, and fast charging. It is undoubtedly better than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Moto Razr 40 Ultra here. Then, there are some areas where it sits in the middle of the pack such as foldable UI, software updates, and display quality. Finally, there is one important area where the OPPO Find N3 Flip lags behind considerably – performance. The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC inside the phone is being held back from reaching its full potential, allowing competitors to smoke it in terms of raw performance.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Merely seven months after the launch of the debutant OPPO Flip phone in India, the company has come up with a refresh – the OPPO Find N3 Flip. The phone largely stays the same as its predecessor in many areas, but there are three key areas where it gets upgrades. Firstly, the cameras have got a MASSIVE upgrade. The OPPO Find N3 Flip is now the only Flip phone in the market to feature triple cameras.
Secondly, the phone has an upgraded Dimensity 9200 SoC. And lastly, the phone’s cover screen is now infinitely more useful with full support for 40+ Mini apps. The design sees some minor tweaks, the battery capacity remains the same, and the displays see no change. However, with the upgrades I mentioned above, OPPO stands a chance to disrupt the position of the market leaders in this category.
Is the OPPO Find N3 Flip successful in doing that? Let’s find out in my detailed OPPO Find N3 Flip Review. The phone was launched in India at ₹94,999. So, naturally, I compared it against the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 (review) and Moto Razr 40 Ultra (review) to find out if it’s worth your money.
The OPPO Find N3 Flip nearly replicates the looks of its predecessor save for the camera module which is pretty obvious when you first lay your eyes on it. It is thicker now though; possibly to incorporate the triple camera setup. You’ve got an aluminium frame and a glossy rear panel made of glass.
Gorilla Glass Victus protects the cover display, which should make it pretty resistant to drops and scratches. The glossy body catches fingerprints and smudge marks pretty quickly and it is also very slippery when held or placed on a smooth surface. So, you’d probably be better off using the phone with a case that OPPO has bundled in the box.
The camera module’s design language has been completely altered compared to the Find N2 Flip. The triple cameras now sit in a circular camera module that features a silver metal rim around it, which looks quite stylish, in my opinion. All three cameras sit snugly inside this module and so does the Hasselblad branding. The flash is pushed outside this ring.
The sides of the device are glossy as well, and once again, attract fingerprints and smudges galore. On the right side, you’ve got the volume buttons and the power button. The buttons are nice and tactile. The power button, which also doubles as a capacitive fingerprint sensor, gets triggered incessantly causing the device to lock me out of using it until I enter the PIN. Not kidding, this happened to me almost every. single. time. *sigh*
The bottom of the phone houses the USB C charging port, the SIM card tray and a speaker. Lastly, the left side houses an ALERT SLIDER! Surprise, surprise! The feature has made its way over from OnePlus phones to OPPO devices and I love how convenient it is.
As a whole, I quite like how the OPPO Find N3 Flip looks – it’s got elegance and classiness in spades. However, there are definitely some misses such as the power button/fingerprint sensor fiasco and the lack of an IP rating. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5, on the other hand, comes with an IPX8 rating, which obviously means more peace of mind for its users.
Let’s talk about the displays. Well, there’s actually nothing much new to say since not a lot has changed. Both the Find N3 Flip and Find N2 Flip have the same 6.8-inch LTPO AMOLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support. They even have the same rated peak brightness levels of 1,600 nits. The cover display is also unchanged. The OPPO Find N3 Flip features a 3.26 AMOLED display with 382 x 720 pixels resolution and 900 nits of peak-rated brightness.
The inner display has thick bezels, as foldables usually do, but they are slightly thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5. What’s more important though is the crease, and it is barely visible on the OPPO Find N3 Flip. The ‘Flexion’ hinge on the Find N3 Flip really makes a difference.
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5’s crease straight up looks like a relic compared to this one. I could only see it clearly when I tilted the phone or when it was at an angle. The screen is rated for a whopping 6,00,000 folds but only time will tell if this rating can be trusted *cough cough* Moto Razr 40 Ultra *cough*.
The displays on the phone are pretty good though – colour consistency is great and content watched on the displays looks vivid. I recorded a peak brightness of 1,282 nits on the inner display under direct sunlight, while the cover screen gave about 702 nits. Decent, but not great for those days when there’s harsh sunlight outdoors. The phone also has a ProXDR display that allows users to view the photos clicked with enhanced and true-to-life highlights.
HDR10+ is supported on the inner display since you can only watch content when the phone is unfolded. It worked when I tried it on YouTube and Netflix. Alas, the fast refresh rate doesn’t make it onto the cover screen. It is a bit jarring when you switch from the inner screen to the cover screen and scroll through Mini apps or your X (formerly Twitter) feed.
The cover screen on the OPPO Find N3 Flip is pretty useful. You get full-fledged support for 40+ apps including Google Maps, WhatsApp, Twitter, Gmail, GPay, Google Notes, Uber, and more. And these apps are fully functional on the cover screen. Since the cover screen mimics the aspect ratio of regular screens, there are no weird distortions or black bars present, which is very nice. Additionally, OPPO has even provided a full qwerty keyboard for you to type on. Very nifty.
Unfortunately, though, some things just don’t work on the cover display including any video-playing apps (no flak here, understandable) or the Dialer app (for some strange reason?). In contrast, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 can operate almost any app on the cover screen with Good Lock installed.
Edit (13/10/2023): The cover app now supports apps such as Netflix and YouTube. As for the dialer, the icon has shown up but it keeps crashing.
The transitions on the screens when folded and unfolded are also slightly jittery; I hope OPPO smoothens this out with a future OTA update. Additionally, there is no app continuity across the folded and unfolded state. If you fold the device when working on an app – it will shut down even if it is supported on the cover screen and you would have to unlock the cover display and then restart the app.
The OPPO Find N3 Flip has changed the flip phone optics game with its camera array. It is the only flip smartphone in the market to feature a triple camera setup with none of this 2-megapixel depth/macro camera baloney. Instead, you’ve got what I believe is a flagship-grade triple camera array consisting of a 50-megapixel primary camera with multi-directional PDAF and OIS, a 32-megapixel telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and a 48 MP-megapixel ultrawide shooter.
This gives all the current-gen Flip smartphones a serious run for their money in the camera department. Now, these cameras are not the absolute best in the overall smartphone market – no. But what this does mean is that OPPO is currently leading in the flip phone camera space by providing users with the most versatile camera setup you can get in this segment.
The primary camera clicks some stellar shots in both daylight and low-light conditions. The dynamic range is impressive, the detail retention is great, and the colours look nice and vivid. Photos taken on default settings are good enough to be shared on social media instantly. Close-up shots have a bit of fringing, but it’s not a deal-breaker. 2x telephoto shots provide impressive results as well with astoundingly good colour consistency between the two lenses.
As for portrait images, when I first tried it out, the phone would falter in tricky lighting situations and create a weird sort of halo around the subject. Since then, OPPO has pushed an update which has almost solved this issue. There are still slight remnants of it in really tricky lighting but it’s not nearly as jarring as before.
Portrait images as a whole could be tuned a bit better – you can get some social-media-worthy shots with this camera but if you pixel peep, you’ll notice some softness in the shot. Additionally, the edge detection isn’t the best we’ve seen. Still, for the average consumer, the portrait images and perfectly serviceable and the 2x portrait shots look particularly aesthetic.
The ultrawide lens takes excellent images – you get minimal distortion, plenty of detail, and vibrant colours. The dynamic range could be a bit better though. You can also shoot macro images on this phone. It leverages the ultrawide shooter for this. Tthe results are quite pleasing and detailed.
As for selfies, there’s a dedicated 32-megapixel shooter in a punch-hole cutout on the inner screen. While it shoots decent selfies, there’s no reason to actually use this lens. You should rather be clicking detailed selfies using the main camera via the cover screen.
The results speak for themselves.
So far, the OPPO Find N3 Flip outclasses the market leader – the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 – in two key areas. Cameras and visibility of the crease. The Samsung also claps back with superior cover screen functionality (using Samsung’s Good Lock app). The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 proves to be superior to the Find N3 Flip in the performance section as well. At least, when it comes to synthetic benchmarks.
The phone features the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC and comes in a sole 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 256 GB UFS 4.0 storage variant.
Let me start with synthetic benchmarks. Be it AnTuTu, GeekBench, or PCMark Work, the OPPO Find N3 Flip gets left in the dust by its two main competitors – the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 and Moto Razr 40 Ultra. The same pattern repeats itself in GPU benchmarks. The OPPO Find N3 Flip lags behind in almost every test here as well.
I suspected some throttling going on since previous phones we’ve tested with the Dimensity 9200 SoC came back with significantly better results. I ran the CPU Throttling Test to confirm this and upon starting off the test, I immediately saw that the cores were not running at their maximum clock speed.
Even with throttled performance from the get-go, the phone further throttled down by another 32 per cent. OPPO could have done this to avoid overheating and lag, but it does hurt the end consumer in a small way where they may be expecting flagship-grade performance but won’t quite get it.
I also faced some unexpected stutters and lag in day-to-day which I’m not used to seeing on flagship phones. Casual users aren’t really going to notice these minute stutters though. The gaming experience is decent, but not as smooth sailing as other flip phones. The software is decent – you get low bloatware in the form of third-party apps and there are no ads being pushed. OPPO is also providing 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security patches, which is pretty good.
All in all, this is definitely not the most powerful flip smartphone on the market, but for users who value cameras over performance – what you get here in terms of power is not bad at all. Just not one of the best.
The OPPO Find N3 Flip blew me away with its battery life. It houses the largest battery on a Flip phone. It outclasses both the Moto Razr 40 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 with its massive 4,300 mAh battery capacity. Couple this with the power-efficient MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC (and the fact that OPPO is throttling the performance) and you’ve got the best battery life we’ve experienced on a flip phone.
The phone easily provides 8-9 hours of on-screen time with regular usage. The battery also drains minimally in standby mode. In our 4K video loop test, the phone lasted a whopping 16 hours and 12 minutes before dying on us. This is longer than normal candybar form factor phones such as the Vivo X90 Pro! If battery life is your primary concern, the OPPO Find N3 Flip is the BEST flip phone option right now.
The charging speeds are one of the fastest as well with the phone supporting 44 W SuperVOOC charging. The phone charged from 0 to 100 per cent in merely 61 minutes, which is pretty impressive. Sadly, there’s no wireless charging support on the OPPO Find N3 Flip though.
So, is the OPPO Find N3 Flip the best flip smartphone on the market? The answer, unfortunately, cannot be summed down to one word. The OPPO Find N3 Flip blows the competition out of the water in multiple key areas including camera versatility, battery life, and fast charging. It is undoubtedly better than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Moto Razr 40 Ultra here.
Then, there are some areas where it sits in the middle of the pack such as cover screen app support and display quality. Finally, there is one important area where the OPPO Find N3 Flip lags behind considerably – performance. The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SoC inside the phone is being held back from reaching its full potential, allowing competitors to smoke it in terms of raw performance.
So, performance junkies would probably be better off choosing the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 or the Moto Razr 40 Ultra. Both of which are smoother and faster than the OPPO Find N3 Flip. However, if you can live with slightly underwhelming performance, the OPPO Find N3 Flip will absolutely delight you with its astoundingly long battery life and its robust and versatile camera system.
The OPPO Find N3 Flip houses the best cameras on a Flip phone. Period. And that – alongside insane battery life – is where it differentiates itself from the pack.
