Late in 2022, Oppo announced two new flexible, folding smartphones coming to its range:the Find N2and the Find N2 Flip. While the former was launched exclusively in China, Oppo stated at the time that its first clamshell smartphone would be launching globally early in 2023. That moment has now arrived.

Oppo has announced that it will be bringing the Find N2 Flip to the UK and Europe now, and that it will cost under £900 when it’s available to buy, undercutting the original launch price ofthe Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4and offering a few features that will make it more appealing to some buyers than the Samsung. With O2’s pre-order scheme, the phone cost works out to be near enough £870. The official RRP from Oppo is £849 in the UK.

The big talking point - of course - is the style and size of the cover display on the outside of the phone. It’s a vertical rectangle display that takes up nearly half of the cover’s surface area, makingit considerably biggerthan the small Samsung cover screen.

Oppo’s reasoning for choosing this layout and style of display has to do with usability. When notifications and messages come through, you can see multiple lines of text, so you can read entire messages and even respond to them without having to open the phone.

It can - of course - also be used as a monitor for the camera, allowing you to take selfies and shoot videos with the primary external cameras. With it being a rectangular display of a similar ratio to regular smartphone screens, you get to line up the frame more accurately.

A big motivator for Oppo in building the Find N2 Flip was improving some pain points and compromises usually present in foldable smartphones. For instance, the huge 6.8-inch display inside features a 21:9 cinematic ratio, so it’s less narrow than the market leader. Similarly, it’s got a beefy 4,300mAh battery inside, near enough matching what you’d find in a regular candy bar style phone, and equipping it with 44W wired charging to ensure you can top it up quickly when empty.

It’s powered by theMediatek Dimensity 9000+ chipset, offering flagship-level performance and 120Hz refresh rates for smooth animation.

Other details include the dual camera setup on the front, compromised of a primary 50-megapixel camera and an 8-megapixel ultrawide, plus an internal 32-megapixel selfie camera punched into the display. It also runs ColorOS 13 based on Android 13, features stereo speakers and side-mounted physical fingerprint sensor.