Tag Archives: foldable

OnePlus Open Joins The Folding Phone Club

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OnePlus LogoAt a launch event coming from Mumbai, India, OnePlus unveiled the Open, a flagship smartphone that unfolds into a tablet. Unlike some of the popular phones that fold neatly in half, the Open has dual screens – a normal exterior 6.3″ display and an interior screen that unfolds to a 7.8″ picture with an almost square aspect ratio. Look at these pictures.

Let’s get some of the key specs out of the way before turning to the hinge and the Open’s other new features. When folded, the phone itself is 73 mm wide and 153 mm tall. It’s a smidge under 12 mm thick and weighs in at 245 g for the UK version. For comparison, the OnePlus 10 Pro is 74 x 163 x 8.6 mm and 201 g. It’s impressive how little the Open adds in size and weight. The Open is very pocketable.

There’s no doubt OnePlus is very proud of their new Flexion hinge. Co-developed with OPPO, it has only 69 parts, yet allows the phone to fold together perfectly with no gap. Made with titanium alloys it’s strong and lightweight and a carbon fibre lattice supports the screens on either side. The crease is almost imperceptible – OnePlus wants purchasers to have  confidence in the hinge and folding display: in tests, the Open was subjected to 1 000 000 test-folds by the TUV organisation. Even if you opened and closed your phone 100 times a day for three years, that would be 11% of the tested folds. There’s no doubt that this is an expensive phone and you’re going to want it to last. This is reassurance that it will.

Android’s not known for its good use of larger screens on tablets, though it is getting better. Fortunately, OnePlus have developed an extension to OxygenOS 13.2 called Open Canvas which brings productivity extensions to allow display of up to three apps simultaneously while avoiding any weird stretching of the windows .

A taskbar along the bottom let’s you keep track of the apps and commonly used configurations of apps can stored for quick launches into desired layouts. It’s pretty nifty and shows how much OnePlus have thought about how to use the Open as an effective tool rather than just something that’s nice to look.

The Open’s cameras are pretty obvious with a large circular camera array on the rear, not terribly dissimilar to the OnePlus 11. The partnership with Hasselblad continues and the main camera is powered by Sony’s new Lytia “Pixel Stacked” technology. The main camera is 48 MP sensor using the LYTIA-T808 with OIS. There’s a 64 MP telephoto camera with up to 120x zoom and a 48 MP ultra wide camera. For selfie fans, there’s a 20 MP camera inside, but thinking about the form factor, it’s more likely that camera will be used for video conferencing and selfies will use the rear camera but with phone open. See the picture below to see how usage might change.

Inside is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, with 16 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB of UFS 4 storage. The outer screen is a 6.31″ AMOLED display with 120 Hz refresh; 1116 x 2484 giving 431 ppi. The inner screen is 7.82″ when unfolded. It’s a Flexi-fluid AMOLED, also with 120 Hz refresh and 2268 x 2440 (426 ppi). Both those screens are going to be lovely and are protected from damage by Ceramic Guard.

The Open is powered by a pair of asymmetric batteries giving a total of 4800 mAh that are good for at least 1600 charging cycles. That means you could fully discharge and recharge every day for over four years. 67 W charging will take the battery from flat to full in 42 minutes. Sadly, there’s no wireless charging.

As revealed earlier, the Open’s OnePlus pedigree is revealed by the alert slider, which is now a little bit bigger.

Even before the launch, the Open was selling like hot cakes and the first batch is already sold out, according to OnePlus. Several pre-launch deals had offered incentives that reduced the price and these look to have been popular. In terms of price, here’s the bottom line…the OnePlus Open will sell for UK£1599, US$1699 and 1799€. There’s no doubt that’s the most expensive OnePlus phone ever but it’s competitively priced against the Google Pixel Fold and the Galaxy Z Fold 5, both of which are about £250 more expensive for similar devices.

I can’t wait to get my hands on one. Full launch event below:

OnePlus and OPPO Set to Launch Same Smartphone

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OnePlus LogoOnePlus has been teasing a foldable smartphone since MWC back in February, and as Pete Lau holds senior roles at both OnePlus and OPPO, it’s not entirely unsurprising that OnePlus and Oppo are going to launch the same foldable smartphone. Both companies are part of the BBK empire and I think we can assume that the different brands will play to their strengths and sell in separate territories.

OPPO already has two foldable smartphones, the pocket-sized Find N2 Flip and the larger China-only Find N2, though OnePlus touts its lineage on the new device with the presence of the much-loved alert slider. I think it would be fair to see this as co-development rather than simply rebadging, as each company brings its strengths and experience to the new phone. OPPO with the hardware, OnePlus with the software?

An image has been released and you can see the slider on the side of the phone in the top right. It’s pretty hard to see much else in the photo – maybe volume and power on the other side?

Foldable devices are new and I think everyone worries about the hinge and screen, so OnePlus and OPPO have been at pains to explain all the work, technology and patents that have gone into perfecting the experience. It’s entirely gapless when the phone is closed and 35 patents arose from the development of the hinge mechanism, which built on the foundation of the Find N2’s hinge.

As to a name, the money’s on OnePlus Open and perhaps the OPPO Find N3. No details on price at this time but for comparison, the smaller N2 Flip sold for UK£849. I think we can look forward a folding flagship in the not-too-distant future.