Having featured foldables a few days ago, and referencing the Oppo Find N, we now have a formal launch and even GSM Arena getting hands-on time - in China! The Find N may or may not make it out into the wider world, but it's a slightly different form factor and folding system to the existing (and well known) Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, so do read (and watch on).

GSM Arena has the basics:

Oppo went smaller than the competition – the Find N has a 5.49” outer display and a 7.1” inner screen. This puts it in the middle between smaller flip phones and larger horizontal foldables.

The new Flexion Hinge is a complicated piece of clockwork with 136 components, but it achieves two important tasks. First, it folds the display with a teardrop shape at the fold, making the crease 80% less noticeable (this number is according to TÜV). Second, it eliminates the wedge-shaped gap between the two halves when the phone is folded, which the current market-leading design can’t say.

The hinge also enables something dubbed FlexForm Mode. Essentially, the hinge can hold the two halves at any angle between 50º and 120º, allowing the phone to act as its own tripod for long video calls or time-lapse photography.

Let’s have a closer look at the specs, starting with the screen. It is a custom Serene Display with 12-layers. It utilizes so-called Flexion Ultra Thin Glass, which is much thinner than the competition – 0.03mm vs. 0.6mm. This makes it much more flexible. TUV-verified testing proved that there will still be “next to no crease” after 200,000 foldings.

The main layer of the display is LTPO AMOLED, which can adjust its refresh rate between 1 Hz and 120 Hz to match the content you are viewing while the touch sampling rate can go up to 1,000 Hz. Oppo calibrated the color rendering and brightness of both the inner and outer displays. They can hit a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, but it is graduated in 10,240 brightness steps, so you can always find the perfect brightness in all lighting conditions.

The outer 5.49” display is an AMOLED panel with Gorilla Glass Victus protection. It has a resolution of 1,972 x 988 px (402 ppi) and a standard refresh rate of 60 Hz. The inner 7.1” display has 1,792 x 1,920 px resolution (370 ppi) and a 1-120 Hz refresh rate.

The Oppo Find N is powered by a Snapdragon 888 chipset with 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. 

GSM Arena then they went and excelled themselves by getting brief hands-on time in China:

Will promises a 'full review' too, which will be interesting.

All very interesting, though don't give me that 'less noticeable crease' claptrap. It's just as visible when seen obliquely or when 'felt', but more spread out, as the Samsung's!

The 'China only' is the biggest caveat, of course. Distributing and supporting a top end smartphone across the world is a huge endeavour - have Oppo got the will and resources?