These days, foldable is the standard. Following Samsung’s lead a few years ago, a slew of new smartphone makers have joined the fray, the most recent being Oppo. The Oppo Find N, a foldable smartphone from the Chinese company, has finally been unveiled. It starts at 7699 yuan ($1,207) in China.
The Oppo folding smartphone is a smaller replica of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold concept. For persons with little hands, the smartphone appears to be a suitable solution. Even if the camera bulge is rather noticeable, the Oppo Find N comes with a triple rear camera system, which may make it difficult to put the phone flat on a surface.
Because of the high price tags and inconsistent quality, consumers have been sluggish to adopt foldable phones, one of the industry’s most significant advancements in recent years.
Apple Inc. has stayed away from the area so far, although Samsung and Huawei Technologies Co. have had devices on the market since 2019. Motorola, a subsidiary of Lenovo Group Ltd., entered the fray in 2020 with a foldable version of its famous Razr, but it, too, appeared to be premature. Xiaomi Corporation debuted its first product this year.
Samsung’s more affordable $999 Galaxy Z Flip 3 had strong sales in 2021, encouraging rivals and maybe heralding a flood of smartphones the following year.
“Rival device makers are hoping that their Z-Flip and Z-Fold models will expand on Samsung’s market-making efforts,” said Ben Wood, principal analyst at CCS Insight. “In 2022, we’ll witness a spate of folding cell phones.”
The OPPO Find N could be a potential competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold range of smartphones, thanks to its high quality and low pricing. Samsung, on the other hand, doesn’t have to be concerned just yet because the Find N will initially be available only in China. If OPPO decides to make the Find N available to a bigger worldwide audience, Samsung could be in for a genuine struggle.
The Find N from OPPO is a surprisingly well-designed phone. The Find N is similar in size to Samsung’s newest Galaxy Fold 3, but it has enough differences to distinguish itself as more than a clone of Samsung’s offering.
The OPPO Find N foldable display smartphone isn’t just a nice first foldable; it’s a very good folding smartphone in its own right. This isn’t entirely surprising, given that OPPO spent four years researching and developing the Find N, filing over 100 patents in the process.
The price of the Find N makes it even more appealing to users. Starting at 7699 yuan (about US$1,200) for the 8GB RAM / 256GB storage model and 8,999 yuan (approximately US$1,400) for the 12GB/512GB version, it undercuts Samsung’s flagship Z Fold 3, which costs $1,799.
Foldables demand has been restricted by price, durability, and production capacity, but Samsung’s push below $1,000 has lowered the entrance barrier. Oppo claims that its hinges were custom-designed to prevent the problems that Samsung had with its first-generation Fold and that the Find N will be able to resist being opened and closed over 200,000 times.
Oppo, like Xiaomi and Vivo, is investing aggressively to fill the hole left by Huawei, which has all but disappeared from the market as a result of US sanctions that have cut off its supply of critical American components. According to IDC data, Oppo is now the second most popular smartphone brand in China, and it is tied with Vivo for fourth place globally.
Oppo’s Find N is priced to compete with premium smartphones and boasts a long list of features, including a variety of cameras, 5G and Wi-Fi 6 connection, wireless charging, up to 512GB of storage, and Qualcomm Inc.’s Snapdragon 888 processor.
Final Words:
According to Anshel Sag, a mobile analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, foldable phones might become a must-have for the premium tier and as durability and costs improve, it will become a reasonably typical form factor.
