September 20, 2024
Oppo Find N3 Flip Review: Building on Basics
Oppo’s Find N3 Flip is its second foldable to arrive in India and comes with plenty of upgrades in the camera department. While its overall design remains mostly unchanged, Oppo has attempted to inject better functionality into its vertically laid out cover display, which somehow ends up falling short of expectations.

When competing with Samsung for vertical foldables, Oppo has always gone with more. More screen space, more cover display, more camera. While doing all of this, the Chinese smartphone brand has also gone with a more refined hinge, all of which worked in favour of the Oppo Find N2 Flip when I

Oppo Find N3 Flip Primary camera samples. Top to bottom: daylight, low-light, portrait mode selfie

The telephoto camera, a first for a clamshell foldable, did a fine job providing good close-up shorts with a nice natural bokeh in daylight. It loses some detail when shooting in low light conditions, but the photos are still quite usable. The images captured at 5X magnification using the in-sensor lossless zoom are also usable in daylight (with some noticeable purple fringing) but not so much in low light.

The 2X telephoto camera shoots sharp images with excellent detail in daylight

The colour tones produced by the ultra-wide-angle camera look a bit cooler compared to photos captured by the primary camera. These pack in good detail and surprisingly have good sharpness, but you cannot pixel peep. Dynamic range is quite good as well, bringing out enough detail in the shadows, but there’s noticeable barrel distortion towards the edges of the image. Macro photos came out surprisingly well, letting me get quite close to objects, the details are also quite sharp, but the colours were a bit cooler.

Oppo Find N3 Flip camera samples. Top: Primary camera, bottom: Ultra-wide-angle camera in macro mode

The phone is capable of recording 4K video at 30fps on all cameras thanks to their high-resolution sensors. However, I found the recorded videos to be a bit underwhelming in terms of detail and clarity. Stabilisation was decent, but the camera isn’t able to maintain a steady framerate while shooting. The low-light video also looked decent with good stabilisation but did have noticeable noise.

Oppo Find N3 Flip Review: Verdict

It’s quite obvious with the two foldable releases from team Oppo and OnePlus (BBK Electronics) that the two brands have put up enough of a challenge, raising the bar for Samsung’s upcoming foldables, which are expected to be called the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

I have no doubt that the OnePlus Open is a clear winner compared to what Samsung currently offers in 2023. But I have mixed feelings about the Oppo Find N3 Flip. I’m also not a big fan of its vertical cover display layout and am quite confused about whether Oppo will get rid of this layout for something better with the next model.

While the Find N3 Flip’s raw performance (including gaming), overall camera quality and battery life (including charging) are quite impressive for a clamshell foldable, it’s all stuck behind an oddly laid out cover display experience, one that will vary depending on the apps that you use on a daily basis. Pick this one if you don’t use the cover display often on your current foldable or don’t intend to on your first one.


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