OPPO Find N3 Flip Review – A Flipping Fun And Improved One

This is not OPPO’s first foray into the Flip phone releases. The Find N series started two years back with their foldable phones in China and slowly they introduce their Find N and Find N Flip series worldwide with quite a few improvement over the usability.

Lets look at the OPPO Find N3 Flip, a new entry that is introduced together with it’s Find N3 Foldable not too long ago. For those who had not read the Find N2 Flip review, click here to read it.

Unboxing Content

• The OPPO Find N3 Flip Phone
• Casing/Cover
• SuperVOOC Charger (67w)
• USB A to C Cable
• SIM Ejector
• User Manual

Design

OPPO has made a few changes that is based on their improvement and user’s feedback from the community, one of the most notable ones is the curved body all around from front to back with aluminum frame, which is a welcomed change that enable users to grip on the phone comfortably and makes it less slippery. It brings in some new sense of design too, with the Micro-Carved Flowing Hinge which brings some light changes when shined on the body of the phone, but the glossiness is still there but resulted in less fingerprint smudges.

Lets get to the hinge part, OPPO calls it the Flexion Hinge, this hinge also applies to the OPPO Find N3 model which integrates aircraft-grade steel and an industry-leading waterdrop design, and this resulted in gapless view when folded, preventing dust from interfering or foreign small objects from going in the main display while when unfolded, it can hold well with it’s borderless looks. However the N3 Flip is just IPX4 rated for water splashes, do just keep that in mind not to drop it in a pile of water or use it in a heavy dusty areas.

There is a slider located on the left too that gives user easy access for muting/silent the phone, this is evidently found in most of the OnePlus phones as well, and that’s no stranger as OnePlus and OPPO is part of the BBK Group. Remaining placements such as the Power Button with fingerprint, Volume buttons, USB C Port for Data & Charging, Dual Speakers, SIM card door, and dual microphone are all placed at the convenient location for familiarity and easy access with an overall weight of 198 grams.

Display & Audio

I will start from the Cover Display, It’s a 3.26 inch AMOLED display that is placed vertically, protected by Gorilla Glass Victus. It runs smooth at 60Hz, since you dont need a high refresh rate for that and it is customizable, from placing live wallpapers, interactive pets, as a camera display, take a look at the latest weather status, reply messages and adding mini apps that is compatible with the Cover Screen. Of course you can also look at your recent notifications.

Unfolded, you get a large 6.8 inch tall display with LTPO AMOLED, dynamic refresh rate up to 120Hz, HDR10+ and it can peak up 1200nits, which is perfect for both indoors and outdoors. Towards the experience of the inner display, it is vibrant and clear throughout day and night while colors are pretty well vibrant most of the time with acceptable viewing angles. However should you need customization, you can do that from the display settings from multiple profile to choose from along with ambient lighting support and blue light filter. Also, when viewing over the main screen, you dont really feel the crease in the middle of the screen, unless when touching on it, that is also slightly noticeable only with OPPO claims that it will survive over 1 million folds, that’s comfortably over 5 years of usage.

The OPPO Find N3 Flip can produce good audio with the both down firing and earpiece speaker however it comes with a limited variety, with good loudness that can cover a small room, however lacks slightly on bass but performs well in detailed instruments sound, vocal and treble, this is not a completely let down as it is still perform as expected. For those who love customization, there is Dolby Atmos profiles you can choose from.

Camera

The camera is in fact one of the strongest selling point for the OPPO Find N3 Flip. This time around the rear camera is equipped with 3 cameras, a 50MP wide OIS camera, 32MP telephoto lens and a 48MP ultrawide lens, all tuned by Hasselblad Camera for Mobile with BGGR color format.

Day time pictures

Night Time Images

I will start with the rear camera experience, no doubt if you are taking pictures during day time, it is all well and a pretty much great at all times and able to zoom up to 20X (digital), with fast post processing and the AI takes up the job swiftly with good natural tones to it. Colors are vibrant as well with good amount of details captured. Turning on the 50MP mode performs admirably well although upscaling is being used, with some compression in file size with details retained at best. The XPAN camera option allows you to capture up to 65:24 aspect ratio giving it a retro wide format that mimics pictures taken from a classic film roll camera.

Here comes the night time, as long you are capturing something steadily, and plus you are not moving much, I would say the outcome can be well acceptable, although my overall experience is most images taken during night time, or low light can be slightly on the softer part, especially the colors, however the details are good with low noise and shadows that is accurate for the most part.

Towards selfie, based on my experience with the previous N2, the N3 does make an improvement with much clearer, improved selfie images with 2x portrait, however since we can selfie with the main camera via the Cover Display, I would prefer to use that anytime, any day.

Lastly, the OPPO Find N3 Flip supports video recording up to 4K at 30FPS that is pretty standard for most smartphones placed at this price range however I was hoping for at least 4K at 60FPS but still, quality is on par with most phones around the price.

Performance, Software, Experience

The OPPO Find N3 Flip is equipped with a flagship class MediaTek Dimensity 9200 SOC with 12GB of LPDDR5x RAM, 256GB of fast UFS 4 storage. Such configuration has taken one of the alternative approach, as most top flip phones are using SOC from Qualcomm, but nevertheless, it is still a good SOC there with modern support and your day to day task is still going to be fast and smooth, whether it is for work, casual, gaming or just simply browse around with your favorite social media contents. Should you need more memory, you can extend it with the virtual memory from your internal storage up to another additional 12GB maximum.

Since this is a newly launched phone (at the time of this review), its well equipped with Android 13 with ColorOS 13.1 and quite a handful of features are being added since this is a flip phone, improvements are well made to make the cover screen to the main screen app transition pretty seamless. While there is quite a number of ColorOS features such as Add Cards (for NFC), Smart Sidebar, Split Window, Game Tools, Themes, etc, the rest pretty much looks like carry over from the AOSP stuffs, except for a few bloatwares which can be uninstall by the user easily without much hassle. In other words, the UI is quite balanced between the OS. You will be expecting under normal usage the phone will last you about over a day at most and recharging it with the supplied charger will get you full and going in less than 1 hour and 45 minutes in average.

Now to the last part over benchmarks and also my experience in performance, most MOBA titles, lighter games will work well without a hitch, even games like Call Of Duty will go on steadily even on high settings, while games like Genshin Impact will likely hit the throttle after 25 minutes, however putting it at 60FPS with all medium graphical settings will keep things running smoother with longer gameplay before it throttles, so it is entirely up to you how you wanted to keep the performance balanced and in check.

Benchmarking seems pretty much what I would have expect, hence suffice to say it gets a pass from us over the results, and much like other flagship SOC out there, this phone can keep things up close to the other competing phones.

Technical Specifications

Who is this for ?

Well, most likely if you are someone that wanted something different from others, but still cares about the fast speed processing and good camera in mind, then this is for you, with designer cases and third party casing that is widely available, it allows the user to change according to your mood and liking. It is great for the casual users who likes fashion with style on the go.

Verdict & Conclusion

The OPPO Find N3 Flip is undoubtedly brings us another perspective on how a Flip phone can be, contributing in the improved tri-camera system, with ColorOS UI that further refined some of the experiences, however with the price tag of RM4399, this is also one of the pricier Flip phones out there but here’s the thing, it almost fits everything a normal flagship class phone should have, making it one of the top flip phones that you can find today, minus wireless charging and WiFi 7. If you can live with the minor compromises, it can be your next favorite, if not the OPPO Reno10 Pro+ could be part of your considerable list for a non Flip phone released earlier this year with a slightly affordable price tag.

For more information on the phone, CLICK Here to find out or to buy one if you decided to do so.