Oppo Find N3 Flip review

Introduction

Oppo has launched the Find N3 Flip - the next compact foldable smartphone with an improved design, hinge, performance and camera experience. It's merely an evolutionary upgrade compared to the Find N2 Flip, but it is also shaping up to be one of the best smartphones in this niche.

The Find N3 Flip introduces a refined design over the N2 Flip with new glass panels, more curves and enhanced durability thanks to a newer Gorilla Glass Victus protection and IPX4 splash resistance. The two screens remain the same - a large 6.8-inch foldable LTPO AMOLED and a 3.26-inch external OLED with a 17:9 aspect ratio.

The new Find N3 Flip is powered by the latest available Dimensity 9200 chipset with an improved CPU and GPU over the Dimensity 9000+ inside the N2 Flip and one of the top three chips on the market right now. The N3 Flip comes with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and either 256GB or 512GB UFS4.0 storage.

The Hasselblad-enhanced camera on the back now houses three imagers - a 50MP OIS primary, a 48MP ultrawide/macro, and a 32MP telephoto with 2x optical zoom. The front camera is also a 32MP shooter, but given how you can use the rear setup for selfies, we doubt many people will use it for anything other than video calls.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip comes with a 4,300mAh battery capable of 44W fast wired charging. There is no wireless charging.

Let's scroll through the Find N3 Flip specs and then proceed to unbox this Flip.

Oppo Find N3 Flip specs at a glance:

Body: 166.4x75.8x7.8mm, 198g; Plastic front (unfolded), glass back (unfolded), aluminum frame; IPX4 splash resistant.
Display: 6.80" Foldable LTPO AMOLED, 120Hz, HDR10+, 1200 nits (HBM), 1600 nits (peak), 1080x2520px resolution, 21:9 aspect ratio, 403ppi; Cover display: AMOLED, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, 3.26 inches, 382 x 720 pixels, 250 ppi, 800 nits (HBM), 900 nits (peak).
Chipset: Mediatek Dimensity 9200 (4 nm): Octa-core (1x3.05 GHz Cortex-X3 & 3x2.85 GHz Cortex-A715 & 4x1.80 GHz Cortex-A510); Immortalis-G715 MC11.
Memory: 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM; UFS 4.0.
OS/Software: Android 13, ColorOS 13.2.
Rear camera: Wide (main): 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm, 1/1.56", 1.0µm, multi-directional PDAF, OIS; Telephoto: 32 MP, f/2.0, 47mm, 2x optical zoom, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 48 MP, f/2.2, 14mm, 114˚, AF.
Front camera: 32 MP, f/2.4, 21mm (wide), 1/2.74", 0.8µm, AF.
Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30/60/240fps; gyro-EIS; Front camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30; gyro-EIS.
Battery: 4300mAh; 44W wired, 50% in 23 min (advertised), Reverse wired.
Connectivity: 5G; Dual SIM; Wi-Fi 7; BT 5.3, aptX HD; NFC.
Misc: Fingerprint reader (side-mounted); stereo speakers.

The Find N3 Flip seems like an all-round Flip foldable by just looking through its specs sheet. It is not IPX8-rated, meaning while it can last the occasional rain, it is not suitable for water submersion, which could be a potential deal breaker. But other than that - everything seems thoughtfully picked.

Unboxing the Oppo Find N3 Flip

Oppo ships the Find N3 Flip packed into a large and thick paper box. Inside, you will find the phone, an overqualified 67W-rated SuperVOOC charger and an 8A-rated USB-A-to-C cable.

Oppo has also bundled a quality two-piece case that color-matches the Mist Rose colorway.

Oppo also sent the optional Blicca case with a figurine and strap and the PU leather hand strap case. The Blicca case is, well, unique, and we can imagine it will appeal to a certain crowd.

The leather hand strap, on the other hand, is quite clean and nice to touch.

Design, build quality, handling

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is quite similar to the N2 Flip, and that's hardly a surprise - the phone comes just nine months after the N2 Flip launch. Oppo still tweaked enough to make those different in a meaningful way.

Oppo Find N2 Flip and N3 Flip

Let's start with one of the major improvements - the IPX4 shielding. The Find N3 Flip model is splashproof, which is a very welcome upgrade. While the IPX4 rating doesn't cover water submersion, it still means the N3 Flip can survive 360-degree low-pressure water jets - like rain or shower - and this should be enough for most of the potential buyers out there.

Then we have the improved cover screen protection - Gorilla Glass Victus vs. Glass 5 on the N2 Flip.

The two rear panels now use glass instead of plastic, another step towards what has been widely considered a premium build.

Oppo Find N2 Flip and N3 Flip

Another change is the now thinner aluminum frame, which made space for even curvier panels and, hence - arguably, a fancier shape. Oh, and there is a new control on the frame coming from OnePlus - the Alert Slider - with three different positions.

The gapless Flexion Hinge has been enhanced, and it's now allegedly more durable thanks to a new stainless-steel core. It is now rated to last over 600,000 folds or more than 16 years if you fold the N3 Flip 100 times each day.

Other than these minor but important improvements, the N3 Flip looks similar to the N2 Flip. It's a compact foldable smartphone with glass rear panels, aluminum frame, what looks like a solid and sophisticated hinge mechanism, and a large foldable OLED with a special cover sheet on top of it.

Oppo Find N2 Flip and N3 Flip

And now, let's take a closer look at the Oppo Find N3 Flip.

The 6.8-inch foldable LTPO AMOLED is the centerpiece of the N3 Flip, rightfully so. The first impression is that this is a lovely screen, colorful, bright, and of high contrast. The tiny punch hole is also appreciated.

The foldable panel has no visible black bezels before it reaches the plastic housing. Of course, this thick plastic border is enough of a bezel itself, though one that is yet impossible to get rid of. It acts both as housing and additional protection against tiny particles, as it sticks out a bit, and when the N3 Flip is closed, it doesn't allow dust to get in.

There is technically a crease you can see at a certain angle, but unless you press with your finger, it is actually a tough job to feel it. We've experienced the same thing on the OnePlus Open a.k.a. Oppo Find N3. Samsung can learn a thing or two from the competition.

There is one long dotted grille on the plastic housing just above the screen - this is one of the sound outlets of the top speaker for earpiece purposes. There is a second outing at the top of the phone, too.

As we mentioned already, the Oppo Find N3 Flip closes perfectly and leaves no gaps.

The back has two glass panels with curved edges and a glossy finish. Fingerprints do stick here, but they are not obvious on the pink and gold models, while we suspect the Black one should eventually become a giant smudge magnet.

The top part of the rear panel envelops the new triple-camera setup, the dual-tone dual-LED flash, and the 3.26-inch cover OLED screen. This OLED is perfect for an external viewfinder for the main camera and is ideal for video-capturing purposes. It also offers a lot of nice features, including running a dozen full-blown apps.

The camera housing is sticking out of the back, and it's surrounded by a textured metal ring that imitates the ring of a professional camera filter.

This setup contains the 50MP OIS primary, the 48MP ultrawide/macro, and the 32MP 2x tele cameras. You can spot the Hasselblad logo here.

The dual-LED dual-tone flash is outside this setup, and it appears there is a color-temperature sensor next to those LEDs, too.

When the Find N3 Flip is closed, you can see and feel the bottom of the Flexion hinge. It has a brushed finish.

Finally, let's look around the sides of the Find N3 Flip. The volume and the power/lock keys are on the right. The power button also contains the always-on fingerprint scanner, which is incredibly reliable.

The new alert slider has a cool texture, too, and it has three positions - Ring, Vibrate, and Silent. It offers excellent tactile feedback.

The top has one of the microphones and the second sound outlet for the top speaker.

The bottom has the other speaker, the primary microphone, the USB-C port, and the dual-SIM tray.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip measures 166.4 x 75.8 x 7.8 mm and weighs 198 grams, which is about the same footprint as the N2 Flip, but 7g heavier. When folded, the N3 Flip is 16.5mm thick, which is not bad at all.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is an excellent foldable smartphone that not only looks luxurious but also delivers a premium build and hinge; plus, we appreciate the new glass panels and IPX4 rating for splash resistance.

The Fine N3 Flip is easy to handle and use when opened, but in a closed state, it is quite slippery. It is not as slick as the P50 Pocket, for example, but you still need to be careful, especially when you handle it this way.

Like any other foldable of this form factor, the larger screen frame can get in the way of the smooth swiping and scrolling, especially around the crease and the hinge. But it is something you get used to rather quickly.

Overall, we liked what Oppo has done with the Find N3 Flip, and it can easily stand proud among the best in this segment. Plus, there are some cool cases to make the N3 Flip feel grippy and safe in your hands.

Displays

The Oppo Find N3 Flip has two displays - a 6.8-inch foldable LTPO OLED with a thin protective film on top of it and a 3.26-inch AMOLED serving as a cover screen with Gorilla Glass Victus protection.

Let's start with the small screen. It's a 3.26-inch AMOLED with 720 x 382 pixels (250ppi) and a neat 17:9 aspect ratio, which should be ideal for portrait and video selfies. The screen has a typical brightness of 500nits and a peak brightness of 900nits. It cannot run all Android apps, but Oppo offers a rich selection of supported mini-apps, as well as a number of proprietary features and widgets for this little fella. We will explore those on the next page.

Then we have the real showstopper - the 6.8-inch foldable LTPO AMOLED of 2,520 x 1,080 pixels (403ppi), which makes for the usual 21:9 aspect ratio. This screen supports a dynamic 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling, and 1440Hz PWM dimming. The screen is HDR10+ certified, and the official brightness specs are 500nits for typical, 1,200nit for maximum auto, and 1,600 nits of peak brightness.

We can confirm the small display does reach the promised 500 nits of maximum manual brightness and does become quite bright under direct sunlight, enough to see what's on it.

We've completed the display measurements on the main screen, too. The maximum brightness in manual mode was 495nits in Vivid color mode and 520nits in Natural color mode. The maximum auto brightness also varies depending on the color mode - 939nits for Vivid and 989nits for Natural. That is not exactly 1,200 nits, but it is not that far, either.

The minimum brightness was just 1.9 nit.

Color accuracy

The Find N3 Flip supports sRGB and DCI-P3 color spaces and switches between those on app/content bass. Its display options offer three color modes - Natural, Pro and Vivid.

Color modes

Vivid is the default one with soft and mostly accurate colors, except for the slightly bluish whites and grays. The Natural, on the other hand, has superb accuracy with a D65 white point. Finally, the most accurate mode is Pro Cinematic, with an outstanding accuracy to DCI-P3 color space.

You can tune the color temperature via a dedicated slider in each mode.

Refresh rate

The Oppo Find N3 Flip has three Refresh Rate modes - Auto, High, and Standard.

According to the official description, Auto switches automatically between different modes and can do from 1Hz up to 120Hz, but it also aims to improve balanced battery life. The High always aims for the maximum 120Hz refresh rate, when possible, while the Standard one does the same but only goes up to 60Hz for longer battery life.

Unfortunately, we couldn't test this as the integrated Android refresh rate indicator only showed 120Hz or 60Hz.

What we can confirm is that the refresh rate drops down to 60Hz for video playback and gaming.

Streaming and HDR

The foldable display on the Find N3 Flip supports HDR10 and HDR10 formats. The screen is recognized by all popular streaming apps as HDR10-capable. And thanks to the Widevine L1 support, they all stream high-resolution content hassle-free.

Visual enhancements

The Display options menu offers three visual enhancements - Image Sharpener, Video Color Boost and Bright HDR Video Mode.

Image Sharpener enhances the clarity of low-quality photos and videos. It uses more battery, naturally, and we are not sure when it really activates, probably across compatible installed apps, but we didn't have any.

Video Color Boost tries to widen the color gamut in SDR content and increases battery consumption. It is available in a limited selection of apps, and, once again, we had no such apps.

Visual enhancements

Battery life

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is powered by a 4,300 mAh battery. It has an LTPO OLED screen and runs on the latest flagship 4nm Dimensity 9200 chipset.

We have completed our battery life test, and the results are great. The N3 Flip offered over 15 and a half hours of web time and nearly 17 and a half hours of video playback.

The call time is also plenty enough at over 27 hours.

So, with an average standby of 210 hours, the Find N3 Flip scored a total endurance rating of 92 hours, which is better than most foldables in this form factor and mostly in line with the Find N2 Flip.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

The Find N2 Flip gauged a slightly better total endurance rating because it clocked more video runtimes and 24 more standby hours.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging speed

The Oppo Find N3 Flip supports up to 44W fast wired charging even if it ships with a 67W Super VOOC charger. Its battery is split in two halves inside the phone.

According to the official press materials, the Find N3 Flip should go from 0% to 58% in 30 minutes with the supplied charger.

Well, in our testing, the charger recharged 36% of the N3 Flip's battery in 15 minutes, while another 15 minutes got us to 65% - even more than what Oppo has promised.

A full charge took exactly 51 minutes, which is the fastest among the competition.

The Find N3 Flip, much like the Find N2 Flip, doesn't support wireless charging - that seems to have died with the original Find N in the Oppo foldable lineup.

The battery options include features like Power Saving mode, Improved Standby (puts some apps to sleep automatically), and Optimized Charging.

Optimized Charging allows the Open to adapt its charging curves to your charging patterns (mostly related to overnight charging and your sleep routine), so it minimizes the time the battery spends at 100%. It will charge quickly up to 80% and will then only finish things off just before it thinks you're going to need the phone.

The Optimized Charging can be off, all day on, or enabled just for overnight charging.

Optimized Charging

Speakers

The Find N3 Flip borrows its hybrid stereo setup from the N2 Flip. There is a dedicated speaker at the bottom of the Flip and another one is at the top with two sound outlets - one top- and one front-facing.

In Oppo's implementation, either speaker will also output the other speaker's channel, at a much lower volume. Otherwise, they will observe the phone's orientation in space to assign the correct channel to the correct speaker, with the earpiece taking on the left channel when in portrait orientation.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test. It sounds better than most of the compact foldables with some bass, good vocals, and well-presented high frequencies.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Android 13, ColorOS 13, widgets on the cover screen

The Find N3 Flip runs Android 13, with an in-house layer of ColorOS on top, v.13.2. Oppo has promised 4 years of major updates and 5 years of security patches, which is a most welcome development.

But before we get to the main UI, let's talk about the cover screen's capabilities. You can have an always-on display on there, with a whole lot of different clock styles, color options and other settings (date and notifications are optional, for example).

You can add various widgets here, which are quite similar to the ones we've seen on lockscreen of Apple's iOS.

A good old wallpaper can also be used, of course.

Cover screen settings

The interactive pets have been updated with cooler pets and even cooler animation. This pet clock style displays an animal that lives on the lockscreen, past the AoD. You get to choose between eight animals, and they'll be doing something different every time you wake up the cover screen (well, not every time, but they do change their activities). Tapping on the animal will make it react in some way. Thankfully, you don't need to feed them or care for them in any way.

Interactive pet

You can wake the cover screen with a double tap and send it back to sleep the same way. The only option for unlocking is with the fingerprint, and if for any reason you max out the unsuccessful attempts, you need to either wait 30 seconds or open the Flip and use whatever backup method you have set up inside. We'd say there's plenty of room on the cover screen for either a numpad or drawing an unlock pattern, and we wonder why these options don't exist there.

And you need to unlock the screen in order to be able to pull down from the top to access the quick toggles or pull up from the bottom to get to the notifications. Both of these can normally be done without unlocking on most phones, so it's a weird distinction that the cover screen here requires it.

You can toggle settings on or off, but there doesn't appear to be a way to rearrange them or to replace the default ones. Also, you can't change the Wi-Fi network from here, it's just on or off. That said, we may be overly critical here - the quick toggles allow quick basic actions without needing to open the phone, and more complex operations will likely require a keyboard or more screen estate. It's also a nice touch that hitting the flashlight toggle doesn't immediately light up the LEDs at your face but gives you a 3s delay.

Similarly, you get a basic interaction option for your notifications with predefined quick replies where available - essentially the expanded view you'd see on a normal phone if you tap on the arrow to the right of the notification card.

Lockscreen • Quick toggles • Notifications • Weather

Past this lockscreen, there isn't a full-fledged UI, but rather a selection of compatible mini apps. The available from the system are Camera, Weather, Timer, Events, Wireless Earphones, To-Dos, Alarms, Spotify, Calculator, Recorder and GameSnacks app that is full of small games.

There is also a Lab section, where you can enable even more apps like all Google-made apps (Maps and Wallet included), Netflix, YouTube, YouTube Music, TikTok. And we are talking about their full-blown versions, not some limited functionality.

Mini apps

But wait, there is more! You can also go to Other supported apps and find even more compatible apps that would run in mini mode like Strava, Nike Run Clun, MyFitnessPal, Telegram, X, Reddit, Outlook, among others.

All compatible apps that can run on the cover screen

As for the intricacies of the camera app on the outer screen, we've covered those in the camera section of the review on the next page.

Mini apps

And now for some more casual ColorOS 13 stuff. There is an entire Wallpapers & style page in Settings, where in addition to the AoD settings, you can change wallpapers (live and static), switch to different icon packs, different quick toggles icon shapes, change fonts (there's an 'exclusive' Oppo sans), and choose completely different colors that will change the entire UI look. You can even turn on/off Edge Lighting, which is independent of the Always-On Display.

Personalization options

The launcher has regular homescreens, a simplistic and clean notification/toggles area, and an easy-to-use task switcher. An App drawer is available, too, and it is as clutter-free as one could hope for. You can opt out of the app drawer if you prefer.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Google Discover • Notifications • Quick toggles • Task switcher

The launcher supports Large Folders and Dynamic Widgets. Any folder can be enlarged or shrunk. Split-screen and Floating Window types of multi-tasking are available.

Multi-tasking

There are many powerful tools within the settings menu if you want full control over your Find N3 Flip. The features are wide-ranging but generally carried over from previous ColorOS versions. A host of screen-on and screen-off gestures are available, the Smart Sidebar is a handy pane of shortcuts you pull from the side, split-screen and Flexible windows are available.

Assorted features

Multimedia apps such as Photos, Music, and Videos all come courtesy of ColorOS. There is also a revamped File Manager and a Phone Manager app to keep track of battery, storage, app permissions, and whatnot.

Photos • Music • Videos • File Manager • Phone Manager

ColorOS also includes the Zen Space app to help you focus without the phone distracting you by simply preventing you from using it. There are a few predefined modes such as Deep Zen, Light Zen, Work, Study, but you can make your own thing, too.

There's also the O Relax app, which includes a variety of comforting music tracks and ambient nature sounds to relax.

Zen Space • Zen Space • Zen Space • O Relax • O Relax • O Relax

Finally, there is also a dedicated Games center with a special performance mode, game toolkit, and granular game management. There are some new features like the Championship mode and music playback control.

Games

The Find N3 Flip supports a semi-opened state. The phone is aware that it is in this state and lets the Android OS and any running app know. In this sense, a special UI will trigger behavior already baked into modern versions of Android, specifically designed to make apps more aware of the current state of foldable displays, allowing them to adapt their UI.

So far, we found it to work only on YouTube and within the Camera app.

Flex mode

Performance and benchmarks

The Oppo Find N3 Flip employs the top-of-the-line Dimensity 9200 chipset. It is fabbed on the 2nd Gen TSMC 4nm process (N4P) and brings plenty of improvements over the Dimensity 9000 inside the N2 Flip.

The Dimensity 9200 chipset features an octa-core processor with newer core models - there is a prime Cortex-X3 core @ 3.05Hz, 3x Cortex-A715 cores @ 2.85GHz and 4x Cortex-A510 @ 1.8GHz.

The SoC utilizes the ARM Immortalis-G715 MC11 GPU with hardware-based ray tracing engine. The new flagship graphics unit brings Variable Rate Shading (VRS), double machine learning performance compared to the predecessor and ARM Fixed Rate Compression (AFRC) for reduced bandwidth usage.

MediaTek is also bringing a sixth-generation AI Processing Unit - the APU 690, which brings a 35% improvement over its predecessor in the ETHZ5.0 benchmark app. The chipset also enables support for speedy LPDDR5X RAM with support for up to 8,533Mbps memory and UFS 4.0 storage for blazing-fast data transmission and direct storage access to the CPU cores.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip we have for this review packs 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB UFS 4.0 storage. A 512GB version is also in circulation.

And now, let's run some benchmarks.

The Find N3 Flip has this High Performance Battery mod, just like other ColorOS-running phones. We tested the Flip in both its default state and in 'High Performance' mode. The latter allows the CPU to run at its full potential with little consideration for battery efficiency and higher thermal thresholds. The 'regular' mode (not a setting, strictly speaking, just with 'High performance' turned off) imposes some limitations on the processor, and the phone returns CPU benchmark scores lower than the expected for the Dimensity 9200. The GPU isn't affected by this, and it's always working at full power.

The default CPU scores are lower on the N3 Flip than on phones with a similarly powerful chipset (Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, vivo X Flip). But using the High Performance mode allows the CPU to reach the same scores.

Unfortunately, BBK phones cannot do High Frame Rate gaming and the Find N3 Flip is no different. All games and benchmarks are capped at 60FPS unless a special partnership or boost has been arranged between the developer and Oppo.

Other than that, the Dimensity 9200 GPU is only bested by the one inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, meaning the phone has as flagship hardware as it can get.

Finally, the AnTuTu scores are great, though a bit lower than the competition's when not using the High Performance mode.

The Oppo Find N3 Flip has one of the best chipsets on the market and it will allow it to exceed in everything you can throw at it.

The phone did not heat up during any of these benchmarks, it didn't even become that warm, which is yet another aspect we can praise.

That is, of course, because the Flip 3 throttles the performance when necessary. Our CPU stability test revealed that the OS limits the CPU power down to 67% after 15 minutes of peak performance. That is in line with other compact foldables, which are typically extremely overcrowded on the inside.

The GPU throttling is even harsher - down to 38%. While that is a huge drop, it is also in line with phones of similar build and power. The Dimensity 9000 inside the Find N2 though had much better stability - 80% for CPU and 57% for GPU, but let's not forget that's a less powerful SoC.

CPU test • GPU test

Overall, the Find N3 Flip is a powerful smartphone with top-notch performance, but its stability isn't impressive due to overheating prevention methods. The phone never throttled outside our stability testing, even after playing a regular game for straight 5 hours, but we suspect a more intensive action game, especially multi-player ones, will require some tweaking for long sessions.

Three high-end cameras

The camera setup on the back of the Oppo Find N3 Flip has seen the biggest upgrade since the Find N2 Flip. The most notable update is the first-ever telephoto on a Flip phone (32MP 2x), but the N3 Flip can also brag with a 50MP OIS primary and a 48MP AF ultrawide with macro capabilities.

The primary camera on the N3 Flip uses the same Sony IMX 890 sensor - it is a 1/1.56" imager with 1.0µm pixels and a 50MP nominal resolution (Quad Bayer, so 12.5MP resulting images). It is coupled with a 24mm-equivalent f/1.8 aperture lens, also identical to the N2 Flip's, but it is now optically stabilized (OIS).

The ultrawide camera relies on a 48MP Sony IMX581 1/2.0" sensor with 0.8µm pixels. It is coupled with a 14mm f/2.2 lens. Autofocus is available, and so is macro photography, starting from just 4cm away.

The telephoto camera is rather basic, but still interesting, and also a first on a modern Flip phone. It uses a 32MP Sony IMX709 RGBW 1/2.74" sensor with 0.7µm pixels, and it saves 8MP images. There is a 47mm f/2.0 lens here for 2x optical zoom. Furthermore, this camera supports up to 5x high-quality magnification via in-sensor zoom.

Finally, the N3 Flip has the same selfie camera as the N2 Flip, which uses the same sensor as the telephoto, but saves 32MP images instead of 8MP. So, the Sony IMX 709 sensor (32MP, 1/2.74") is paired with a 21mm equivalent lens with an f/2.4 aperture. The selfie cam focus is fixed.

All cameras support 4K30 video capturing and electronic stabilization.

Camera app

The Oppo/OnePlus-Hasselblad collaboration has made it to the Find N3 Flip, which means that the Swedish camera company has pitched in with some color science or similar.

The Hasselblad influence can also be more readily seen in the viewfinder of the camera app, where the accent has turned orange. Other than that, the app is not much different than what you'll find on any OnePlus, Oppo or Realme.

Camera app

The camera interface has 0.6x, 1x, 2x, and 5x toggles. The macro toggle appears automatically if you are close enough for such a photo. In the advanced settings, you will find options for the 1x toggle to default to 24mm equiv. (1x), 28mm equiv. (1.2x), or 35mm (1.4x). Those are crops and upscales from the standard output. You cannot switch between those on the go as you can on the new iPhones.

Camera settings

There is one small shortcut around the upper left corner of the UI. It shows a preview on the cover screen - this way, your friends will see themselves while you are taking photos of them.

But, if you launch the camera from the cover screen, you can use the rear setup for taking selfies. It gives you Photo, Video and Portrait modes, as well as zoom controls. There are no options available here except for timer and Interval Shooting. But you can scroll through the Gallery from here, too.

Camera viewfinder on the Cover screen

We want to point out that you can use the Flex mode (the halfway opened position) for tripod purposes. If it's not windy, it's a great way to take timelapses and group photos with you in them.

Daylight photo quality

The main camera saves 12.5MP photos by default, and they look great. The resolved detail is abundant, there is no noise, the white balance is spot-on, and the color reproduction is accurate.

The photos show high contrast and adequate, often wide dynamic range.

But what makes those shots so good is the incredibly balanced processing and the lack of excessive sharpening - all photos look incredibly natural; all high-frequency detail (foliage in particular) look true-to-life.

Main camera, 12.5MP

The High-Res mode shoots 50MP images with the main camera, but those look like upscaled from the 12.5MP default images.

Main camera, 50MP

The 8MP 2x zoomed photos taken with the telephoto camera are outstanding. They offer plenty of resolved detail and have no visible noise; the white balance and color rendition are a match to the primary camera and true to life.

We remain impressed with the balanced processing and the natural look of the images; they are contrasty and have a wide dynamic range.

Telephoto camera, 2x zoom 8MP

Since the telephoto camera uses a 32MP sensor, it also offers up to 5x (sortof) lossless zoom via a crop from the center. We expected 4x zoom instead of 5x, but we guess Oppo was confident enough with the upscaling.

Well, it turned out the 5x zoomed photos we took with the Find N3 Flip are nothing short of impressive, given the rather basic kit it packs. Sure, those are a bit softer than the 2x ones, naturally, but they still turned out a lot better than we expected them to be and still clean of noise.

The images we took offer enough detail and good sharpness, the dynamic range is wide, and the colors are accurate and realistic. Those photos were treated with the same balanced rendition as the other cameras and modes.

Telephoto camera, 5x zoom 8MP

The High-Res mode for the telephoto camera also saves upscaled shots.

Telephoto camera, 32MP

Next, the ultrawide camera. It saves 12MP by default, and the photos are incredibly wide and yet with proficiently rendered corners - sharp enough and straightened very well.

The ultrawide shots are detailed, and with just the right sharpening level, there is low, if any, noise, accurate colors, and the same balanced rendition we saw across the other cameras.

Ultrawide camera, 12MP

The autofocus capabilities of the ultrawide camera allow for macro shooting from as close as 4-5cm away. The closeup shots we took are lovely, with superb detail, excellent sharpness, lively colors, and wide dynamic range.

Macro with ultrawide camera

High-res mode is available to the ultrawide camera, too, but it also saves upscaled 12MP images.

Ultrawide camera, 48MP

Portraits

The Portrait mode on the Find N3 Flip offers two zoom levels - 1x and 2x. The 1x zoom should mimic the Hasselblad XCD 30mm lens - meaning a wider field of view and artistic look for the bokeh. The 2x zoom corresponds to Hasselblad CXD 65mm lens for natural half-body portraits and beautiful bokeh.

Whatever mode you select, if there are no light sources in your background, you won't see a big difference in the bokeh. Furthermore - you can always tweak it in each mode.

No matter which mode you select, the portraits would always be excellent - the subject is detailed and sharp, with natural skin tones, well-exposed, and with accurate colors. The subject separation is proficient and the faux bokeh looks great.

Portraits, tele 2x default

Portraits, main 1x zoom

Selfies with rear cameras

You can use the rear setup for selfies thanks to the large cover screen, and the main camera shoots the better selfies with lovely natural background defocusing, detailed and sharp subjects, accurate colors, and good dynamic range. Those may be a bit over-exposed at times, though.

Selfies with main camera

The 2x selfies are shot with in-sensor zoom on the primary camera. They are a bit soft, but solid nevertheless.

Selfies, 2x zoom

Of course, if you want to fit everything around you in the shot - you can use the ultrawide AF camera - the selfies with it are quite good.

Selfies with ultrawide camera

The Portrait mode will save superb portraits, especially the default 1x ones, and you should definitely use it for portrait selfies for its sharp photos, with lovely colors and bokeh.

Portraits: 2x • 2x • 1x • 1x

Selfie camera

The inner camera offers three zoom levels - 0.8x, 1x and 2x, and the selfies come out at nominal 32MP. The native field of view is achieved at the 0.8x setting in the viewfinder, and that's indeed wider than most - Oppo says 21mm equivalent, and that looks about right. The 1x zoom corresponds to 25mm equivalent and the 2x zoom - 49mm equivalent.

The photos are alright; you can tell they were upscaled from 8MP due to the average detail and overall soft look. But they are colorful, with well-exposed subjects and a wide dynamic range.

Selfies: 0.8x • 1x • 0.8x • 1x

The more zoom you add, the worse those get, unfortunately. If you really need your mugshot taken at 2x zoom, best use the rear cameras.

Selfies 2x zoom

Low-light photo quality

The Oppo does with the Night Mode as Apple does - a moon icon goes yellow if the camera app is going to use Night Mode or stays white if not. Tapping on the moon icon will enable/disable the Night Mode. There is also a dedicated Night Mode in the More tab, which behaves the same way, more or less.

The low-light photos we took with the Auto mode on the main camera are top-notch. They are incredibly detailed, there is no noise, the colors are realistic and lively, and the dynamic range is rather wide.

No matter if the Night Mode did fire or not, it always took about a second to shoot each photo.

Main camera, Auto

Opting out of Night Mode will not shorten the photo capture time - it will still take a second to take the shot, and it will come off with similar quality to the Night Mode one, but with lower dynamic range evident by some blown highlights.

Main camera, NM OFF

The telephoto camera is quite picky at night and rarely, if ever, triggers. It did not fire across all nice scenes, and we always got digitally zoomed photos cropped from the main camera, no matter if 2x or 5x zoom was used. While they are bright and colorful, they are soft and lacking in detail.

2x • 2x • 5x • 5x

We were able to force the telephoto camera via the Pro mode (with everything left at Auto). The 2x photos have enough detail, and the noise is tolerable, low at times even. The colors are slightly desaturated but still realistic, while the dynamic range is narrow. Unfortunately, the photos come out quite dark.

Tele camera 2x, forced with Pro mode

The ultrawide camera always used 2s Night Mode. The photos it took are very good - they are well-exposed and quite detailed for this sort of camera, with low noise, excellent color saturation and wide dynamic range.

Ultrawide camera, Auto

Disabling the Night Mode will get you darker photos with not as lively colors and lower dynamic range but with well-cleaned noise and an overall likable, realistic look. Still, we prefer the Night Mode ones here.

Ultrawide camera, NM OFF

Finally, all cameras support Tripod Night Mode on paper, but the app never really uses the tele one.

The ultrawide and 1x photos shot with the help of the Tripod Night Mode are outstanding across the board. So, if an occasion arises and you can use this mode, you should try it.

Tripod Night Mode: Main • UW

And here's how the main camera stacks up against the competition in our extensive Photo compare database.

Oppo Find N3 Flip against the Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Moto Razr 40 Ultra in our Photo compare tool

Video recording and quality

The Oppo Find N3 Flip supports 4K30 video capturing with all four cameras - primary, ultrawide, telephoto, and selfie. 1080p@60fps is available for all but the selfie cameras.

There is always-on electronic stabilization working across all cameras, and it works great when available, that is. We will explore this for each camera.

Finally, audio is always captured stereo with 260Kbps bit rate and the quality sounds excellent.

Main camera

The main camera captures great 4K videos. They offer a high amount of resolved detail, accurate white balance, true-to-life colors and wide dynamic range. There is no visible noise or over-sharpening, and overall, we enjoyed yet another example of Oppo's natural rendition.

We have seen a few more detailed videos from other phones, that is for sure, but those here would still make it among the top 5.

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The electronic stabilization does a solid job on the main camera.

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The low-light videos from this camera are pretty good, too. The detail is enough, the exposure is true to life, the color rendition is accurate, and the noise is kept low. The dynamic range is adequate, too. They are not the best low-light videos, but they are way above the average.

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Here are some snapshots from the videos.

Daylight • Low-light

Telephoto camera

The 2x zoomed videos from the telephoto camera are good - they have enough detail, wide dynamic range, lovely colors and overall realistic rendition. The detail looks a bit artificial, probably because of some debayering process or something else, but still - we liked this video and considered it above-average quality.

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EIS is working on this camera, but while it wasn't exactly intended to handle walking, it sure does a good job when panning.

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The 2x zoomed videos at night are good - not that detailed, but realistic looking and free of noise. The color saturation is great, and the dynamic range is enough.

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Check the snapshots below.

2x zoom: day • low-light

There is an option for 5X videos, but they are incredibly poor when it comes to detail, and we don't recommend using this zoom option no matter what.

5x zoom: day • low-light

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera does an outstanding job when shooting videos in broad daylight. The clips we got were excellent across the board - detail, noise reduction, extreme corner handling, color rendition, and dynamic range. Overall, we have no complaints.

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In fact, the same goes for the low-light footage, too. The video is likable, even if a bit softer than the rest.

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The electronic stabilization works great on this camera.

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You can check our snapshots, too.

UW: day • night

Selfie videos

Let's start with the 4K video from the inner 32MP camera, which is supposed to serve as a selfie shooter.

The 4K video from this camera is good - it has a well-exposed subject, accurate colors, high contrast and low noise. The dynamic range is a bit narrow, but this works fine for a selfie camera. The detail is average and best, though, and the video appears upscaled from a 1080p output.

The biggest problem with this video is not the average detail, though, but the omission of stabilization. For some reason, the electronic (EIS) stabilization is not working on the selfie camera, no matter the resolution.

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And here is a snapshot.

4K selfie snapshot

You can use the dedicated Stable mode, so you are not without options. It switches to 1080p@30fps and works rather well.

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Unfortunately, using the rear camera with the cover screen as a viewfinder will yield you 1080p videos without stabilization, too. If you want to have the best possible selfie video with stabilization, you need to open the Flip, run the camera, enable the cover screen preview, and then start capturing a video. It will still switch to 1080p@30fps for some reason, but you will have the best 1080p video you can squeeze out of this phone if you want to look at the viewfinder, of course. It's all a bit of a hassle and an odd limitation.

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Here's how the Find N3 Flip compares to other devices in our vast video compare database.

Oppo Find N3 Flip against the Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Moto Razr 40 Ultra in our Photo compare tool

The competition

The Oppo Find N3 Flip is an excellent foldable smartphone with top-notch design, screens, chipset, and cameras. Oppo advertises it as the first ever Flip with a zoom camera, but we think it is also the one with the fastest charging.

Indeed, the Flip N3 gets so many things right, and we suspect few people would think twice before getting it. Still, let's explore some of its alternatives.

While the €1,000 Oppo Find N3 Flip is theoretically a global smartphone, it has quite a few markets where BBK, which Oppo is part of, isn't selling, or worse - has been banned from due to patent disputes.

This is where Samsung pretty much dominates the markets. And its popular Z Flip5 and Z Flip4 are now far cheaper than the Find N3 Flip - the most current Z Flip5 costs about €800, while the previous model can be found for about €500. Those two feature IPX8 complete water-resistance and better selfie cameras, while the Z Flip5 runs on faster hardware and comes with a larger cover screen, too. Those phones are no-brainer options if you are after a Flip phone and Oppo isn't available in your market. Note that none of these offers a telephoto camera, their charging is lower, and their battery life is inferior.

Vivo's X Flip is quite an interesting device with similar specs. It doesn't offer the splash protection or the telephoto camera, but it has better battery life and far better chipset stability. It could also be cheaper than the N3 Flip where available.

Finally, the €900 Motorola Moto Razr 40 Ultra is available worldwide, and it deserves serious consideration for its iconic design, faster display, wireless charging and clean Android OS. It has inferior splash resistance (IPX2 vs IPX4), no zoom camera and not as fast charging, though.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5 • Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 • vivo X Flip • Motorola Razr 40 Ultra

Our verdict

The Oppo Find N3 Flip seems like the most all-round Flip phone on the market right now. It has a useful cover screen and a great foldable one, a sturdy design with splash proofing, great battery life with super-fast charging for this segment, and the best camera kit among the Flips to date. Plus, the rear cameras excel in everything, and their photos are among the best we've seen.

The Find N3 Flip impressed us with performance and software, too, and we are glad Oppo will be taking care of this phone for five years. It definitely deserves flagship treatment, just like any other phone.

The Find N3 Flip is not perfect; no phone is. High-refresh rate gaming is absent on the N3 Flip, much like on all other BBK phones, and the phone throttles big time as an overheating prevention measure. Another very BBK thing is the mediocre selfie camera that uses a Quad-Bayer sensor and then saves upscaled photos.

But even with these issues, the Oppo Find N3 Flip is still one of the best Flip foldables right now. It has some niceties that no competitor has - such as the speedy charging and the 2x zoom camera, while the IPX4 splash-proofing and new glass panels are welcome build quality improvements.

Overall, we liked the Oppo Find N3 Flip a lot as it managed to surprise us more than once. It's a solid smartphone with the most feature-rich Flip specs sheet, and even better - it delivers on the official promises.

There is only one thing that stands in the way of the Find N3 Flip - its limited availability and sale bans in some countries. It is not that cheap, either. But, if you want one of the best Flip foldables out there and you are set on getting the most out of this form factor and your money, the Find N3 Flip will deliver.