Fantastic foldable that you can’t buy

I am a huge fan of folding phones. There is nothing better than having a phone that you can fold open to transform it into a tablet. Over the last few months, I have tried a lot of folding phones: the HONOR Magic V3, the HUAWEI Mate X6, and my favorite, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

The OPPO Find N5 is billed as the world’s thinnest foldable phone, and in the hand, this rings incredibly true. It’s almost too thin. It beats Google’s contender, Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6, and the previous title holder, the HONOR Magic V3.

Folded, the Find N5 is 8.93mm thin, and it also has a 6.6-inch display, which is similar to a regular flagship Android phone. It’s nice and easy to use this phone when it is closed, too. But when unfolded, the Find N5 measures just 4.21mm thin. OPPO told me that it had to make some special tweaks to the USB-C port to even fit that in here.

Personally, I’m on the fence about the thinness of folding phones, because the thinner they are, the more fragile they usually are. But OPPO has thought about that as well. The claim is that the Find N5 has a 70% stronger inner display than the Find N3, and that the hinge is also 30% stronger. I have accidentally dropped this phone already when fully open, and it still seems to be holding up pretty well.

Beyond its thin silhouette, that folding display is undoubtedly the star of the show. At 8.1 inches, it’s huge and is easily my favorite folding display that I’ve used. One of the big reasons for this is its lack of reflections in direct sunlight. The other big reason is its lack of a noticeable crease. I usually don’t worry about creases, as they’re just one of the compromises you make when you get a folding phone, but it’s noticeable that OPPO has smoothed out the screen to such an extent.

More importantly, I can’t even feel what remains of the crease when using the phone. When I do occasionally run my finger across the middle of the display, on other folding phones, there’s a small distracting divot. But with the Find N5, it never crosses my mind.

Sure, there are a few things I don’t like about the OPPO Find N5’s folding display. For one, its peak brightness isn’t as high for me as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This is an overall minor complaint but it’s noticeable when screen legibility is tested.

However, I do think that its lower brightness helps the phone in the battery department. The Find N5 has a 5,600mAh silicon carbon battery, which, so far, I have not been able to kill. I’ve been using that big folding display most of the time, and I’ve only gotten down to 20% in one day. I’ve watched loads of videos and multitasked on this, and it’s just held up better than any foldable I’ve used in the past.

When I eventually get to the point where I need to charge this phone quickly, it has 80W SuperVOOC charging. Granted, that might not be the fastest charging speed you can get in any phone, but it can still get you full in just 55 minutes.

Part of the phone’s efficiency chops is down to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. I’ve tried to throw a lot at this phone in the past couple of days to see how it deals with it, and it’s dealt with it well, even if most of that has been a bit of gaming with Call of Duty Mobile. Even though this particular device uses the 7-core version of the chipset, it remains more than powerful for my needs. I don’t believe the more powerful 8-core version was necessary, especially since the Find N5’s heat dissipation would be truly tested. That would start impacting battery life and overall performance, too. I think OPPO made the right choice here.

Often cameras on foldables leave me wanting more, but the main 50MP wide-angle and 3x telephoto do a decent job. The results aren’t memorable, but they’re adequate for my needs. You also get the AI telescope zoom feature that kicks in after 10x. This does a pretty good job, especially up to around 60x. It helps to add details at further distances, and does make the photos usable. Then there’s the telemacro photography mode that uses the 3x telephoto to grab macro shots, which I find far more convenient than a dedicated macro lens.

You’ll notice a third camera on this, but there is a reason I didn’t mention it. It’s only an 8MP ultrawide sensor, and even in well-lit situations, the details are lacking. The camera becomes even worse in low-light situations, and 8MP just doesn’t allow me enough data to play around with.

You can check out all my samples in the video at the top of this review.

Video capture is also nothing to shout home about, either. It can do 4K at 60fps, but the dynamic range is just not as good as I’d hoped, and it struggles with too much noise in low light for my liking. If I were going to take any video with a foldable, I’d rather use the Pixel 9 Pro Fold with its Video Boost smarts.

The Find N5 has a couple of other things that annoy me. Let’s take face unlock, for example. Its functionality and reliability leave plenty to be desired. The volume buttons are way too high up the phone to use comfortably with one hand. I’d need seven fingers to reach them. Not being able to double-press the power button to open the camera is annoying, too. OPPO’s shortcut demands double-pressing the volume down key, which is odd, especially since I can’t even reach that.

Moving to ColorOS, I find several decisions baffling. Not being able to add five apps in a row is a strange choice. This is a folding phone; there’s loads of room on that display, so let me maximize the number of apps I can add to my home screen. Suggested apps just aren’t as good as Google’s solution either, while the taskbar also has silly limitations.

The O Plus Connect app is a big selling point of OPPO’s at the moment, and it’s still here. It was introduced on the Find X8 series and essentially functions like AirDrop, so you can send and receive files from iPhones easily. Now OPPO has taken it a bit further, and you can get O Plus Connect for Mac. This lets the Find N5 browse and take files right from my computer and move them to your phone. I think it’s brilliant and works pretty well. It smooths out the often annoying process of transferring content from an Android phone to a Mac or vice versa.

The other feature of Oplus Connect on Mac is controlling my Apple machine remotely. This means I can access my Mac from my N5, complete with a multi-touch touchpad. I’ve played with it a couple of times and even tried to edit a bit of a video on Final Cut. The latency between the phone and the Mac is low, so it is doable, but I admit it is a gimmick.

It’s not something I’d use to edit my videos daily, but I can see why this might come in handy for some people who, say, want to control a PowerPoint running on their Mac. In some use-case scenarios, people will find a use for this, but it’s not one for me.

Overall, I think the Find N5 is probably the best-designed foldable I’ve used. It barely has a crease, its flat sides are really comfortable to hold, and I’m not scared of breaking it like I am with other foldables. It feels solid despite being the thinnest foldable you can get. Battery life, processing power, and its telephoto camera are all positives, too. At the same time, the O Plus Connect functionality will likely appeal to a select few who dream of Android/Mac seamlessness.

Given its positives, I feel like I can look past a few of those annoying quirks that I mentioned. However, it’s held back by the limited camera performance, and one ridiculous decision that leaves it dead in the water for most people: OPPO has made it incredibly difficult for users to purchase this device.

The foldable will not be available for users in the US or Europe, which dulls its otherwise bright shine. That means that even if you are able to purchase it, prepare to pay much more than its Samsung and Google rivals due to import fees, and you’ll also have to struggle with network compatibility issues.