OnePlus Open, OnePlus’ First Foldable Smartphone, Enters The Folding Phone Fight

By Brian Bell  |  October 27, 2023 | 4:31pm
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OnePlus Open, OnePlus’ First Foldable Smartphone, Enters The Folding Phone Fight
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A new challenger in the foldable smartphone market entered the fray this week with the release of OnePlus’s first foldable, the OnePlus Open.

The new device is technically the company’s third hinged phone due to its collaboration with its parent company Oppo, which previously produced the Oppo Find N and Find N2 for exclusive release in Chinese markets. But the Open is the first of this line under the OnePlus brand and enters markets beyond the company’s home nation (the Open is known as the Find N3 in China).

All of that is to say that the OnePlus has plenty of development experience already invested for a company that is technically entering the market for the first time. What that produced is a smartphone that aims directly for the gaps between the two largest players in the foldable space currently, Samsung and Google.

The OnePlus Open touts a 7.8-inch AMOLED internal unfolded display with peak brightness of 2800 nits and dynamic refresh rates up to 120Hz. The cover screen measures 6.3 inches with a 20:9 aspect ratio, placing the Open’s width when closed squarely between the thinner, remote-like Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 and Google’s wider Pixel Fold. That design choice could go a long way for OnePlus as one of the lingering complaints about Samsung’s signature foldable has been how it feels to use when folded.

OnePlus’ previous work in the space translating to the Open’s design is also present in the device’s hinge, which the company said has been tested to withstand one million folds, which is much higher than either Samsung or Google claims for their flagship foldables. The Open measures 5.8mm thick when folded but doesn’t fold as flat as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5.

The Open’s camera array includes a 48MP main camera, 64MP telephoto and 48MP ultrawide camera on its circular back camera bump, complete with Hasselblad branding, while including both a 20MP and a 32MP front camera within the internal display. Users have the ability to record video up to 4K resolution with both the back main camera and front cameras with framerates varying between 30-60fps.

Powering the device is the familiar Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, the same chip family that powers Samsung’s foldables without the specific tweaks made for the Samsung-exclusive versions packed into the Flip5 and Fold5. Pairing it with a healthy helping of RAM (16GB) and a base storage of 512GB give the Open a great hardware baseline when sizing up against competitors.

That processor and OnePlus’s Android-based OxygenOS 13.2 operating system deliver all of the multitasking tools expected in a tablet-esque foldable, with the addition of a tool called Open Canvas that helps apps maintain aspect ratios on the larger displays sported by foldable phones without sacrificing efficiency or usability.

The Open also boasts a larger battery (4,805mAH) than either the Fold5 or Pixel Fold, which should set it in line with those devices in terms of battery life. And, of course, it has that unique OnePlus touch with the inclusion of the company’s alert slider.

The OnePlus Open is available for purchase now starting at $1,700 in either Emerald Dusk or Voyager Black.

 
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