OnePlus Open review: The best foldable phone in America

The OnePlus Open is being marketed as the debut foldable phone by the Chinese brand, but anybody who follows the smartphone scene closely knows this is not a first-generation device. The Open is actually a rebranded Oppo Find N3, the third-generation foldable by one of Asia's top phone brands. This is great news for foldable fans in America because the first two Find N phones were excellent and offered arguably best-in-class foldable hardware at the time of release. The OnePlus Open is no exception. In terms of hardware, it's clearly superior to the Google Pixel Fold and arguably better than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5.

The OnePlus Open is thinner, lighter, has a visibly superior main screen, and packs newer and larger camera sensors. It’s also priced lower than Samsung and Google’s foldable offerings. But none of that is news to anybody following the Chinese foldable scene. Phones from the likes of Oppo or Xiaomi always offered better hardware for less money than Samsung, but a lack of availability outside China and unoptimized software kept them from getting mainstream Western recognition. The OnePlus Open has polished software that has native support of Google’s apps and services, plus a robust multitasking system that can rival Samsung’s best-in-class UI.

When I break it down like that, it’s hard to argue that the OnePlus Open isn’t the best foldable phone available right now, particularly in America, although there are factors like its high price, lack of major carrier support, and brand power that'll keep it from threatening Samsung's market share too much.

About this review: OnePlus provided XDA with an Open for testing and did not have input in this review.

OnePlus Open: Pricing and availability

The OnePlus Open is available for preorder now and will be fully available on Oct. 25. In the U.S., the phone is available at Amazon, Best Buy, and OnePlus' online store at a price of $1,699. If you buy from OnePlus' online store, there is a trade-in offer that will take any phone in any condition for at least $200 off.

In Canada, the phone is priced at CAD $2,099 at the same outlets. The OnePlus Open is also launching under this branding in India and as the Oppo Find N3 in other regions such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Design and hardware

Best-in-class screens that can survive a hard drop

The two existing foldable phones in the U.S. right now take on opposing philosophies on display aspect ratio: the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 in phone form is tall and skinny, and the Pixel Fold is short and wide. When unfolded in tablet form, the Fold 5 keeps a portrait orientation while the Pixel Fold becomes a wide screen.

The OnePlus Open is literally the happy medium between the two. When folded, it has a 20:9 aspect ratio that is the same as conventional slab phone screens, and in tablet form, the OnePlus Open is almost a perfect square.

Valid arguments can be made for which shape or aspect ratio is better. Some say they prefer Samsung’s narrower phone form for easy one-hand use, while others (like me) feel that the screen is too cramped to type on. The Pixel’s wide tablet form can be considered optimal for watching movies and running two apps side-by-side, but it's otherwise very awkward to use for social media by itself. It's all subjective, but what is inarguable is that the OnePlus Open screens are just flat-out better than Samsung’s and Google’s.

Both the Open’s main 7.8-inch and secondary 6.3-inch screens are LTPO 3.0 panels with refresh rates that vary between 1-120Hz, and both get up to 2,800 nits. These specs trump the Fold 5 and Pixel Fold. But beyond just numbers, the Open’s main screen also has a far less noticeable crease than the other two phones, and it’s also less reflective.

The clip below shows off all three phone screens against bright light. The Pixel Fold screen, in particular, looks like it’s a couple generations behind.

The Open’s hinge feels sturdy and well-constructed, but it isn’t quite as good as the Fold 5 hinge. The latter can stay in place at a wider range of angles than the Open, and it also feels stiffer in a good way. It requires a bit more force to open or close than the Fold 5, which gives the hinge a more rock-solid, reassuring feeling. Unfortunately, the Open only has an IPX4 rating, which means it's only tested to be resistant to water splashes and rain, while the Fold 5 has an IPX8 rating, which means it can survive being submerged in water briefly.

The OnePlus Open screens are just flat-out better than Samsung’s and Google’s.

The Open comes in two versions: a black version with a vegan leather back that I’m reviewing, and a green version with a glass back. The black model is slightly lighter at 239g than the green model’s 245g but marginally thicker at 5.9mm (unfolded) to the green's 5.8mm. Either model is thinner and lighter than Samsung and Google’s offerings, but it's not the absolute best in the industry. The Honor Magic V2 is even lighter and thinner. So the Open isn't particularly sleek to me, but American users who only know Samsung and Google will likely be impressed.

While the previous two Find N phones had a curvy design aesthetic with a curved outer screen and rounded hinge corners, Oppo/OnePlus has given this new device a flatter, boxier design with thicker frames. The side frame houses a power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner, volume rocker, and the OnePlus alert slider.

I must admit I find the in-hand feel to be less comfortable compared to the last two Find N phones due to the sharper edges, but it likely results in a more durable device. I can vouch for the Open’s toughness because I dropped it onto a Los Angeles street concrete while cycling. I caught the drop on my 360 camera, and you can see in the clip below that the phone tumbled onto the floor and bounced twice on the ground.

I didn’t have a case on the phone, but miraculously, the Open survived with only noticeable damages to the steel frame. The display, which is not using Gorilla Glass but Oppo's proprietary "Ceramic Guard" material, had no visible signs of damage. I don’t think a Find N2 with a thinner frame and subtly curved display would have survived that same drop.

Inside, the OnePlus Open has all high-end components: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. The 4,800 mAh battery is also large for a foldable and can be charged at 67W speeds with any 80W charger (one comes included in the box). Most of these specs and numbers compare favorably against Samsung and Google’s foldables. The only exception is that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor here is slightly inferior to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy in the Fold 5, which is essentially a Snapdragon 8 Gen Plus Gen 2.

Cameras

Awesome hardware, inconsistent exposure

The OnePlus Open packs five cameras: a triple-lens array on the backside housed in a gigantic circular camera module and a selfie camera embedded into each screen. The rear-facing camera system packs awesome hardware, with newer and larger sensors than what’s found in most foldable phones. The system is headlined by a 48MP camera using Sony’s brand new LYTIA T808 sensor that was announced just last June. The LYTIA line differs from Sony’s IMX line in that it uses pixel-stacking technology that sees pixel transistors and photodiodes stored in stacked layers instead of side-by-side along the same plane as in other camera sensors. This, according to both Sony and OnePlus marketers, allows the sensor to take in more light.

I can vouch for that from my testing. The OnePlus Open's main camera rarely needs to use the night mode trick. Even in nighttime scenes, the shutter snaps the image immediately (compared to the iPhone or Pixel, which require you to hold still for a second to allow night mode to process). The image below of the Broad Museum didn't even need night mode.

Most photos captured by the main camera looked full of details, and with the relatively large sensor, there's shallow depth-of-field if there's a subject in the foreground.

It's not all great, however. Because the sensor takes in so much light, OnePlus' software has to make adjustments when it's shooting under very harsh conditions, like the mid-afternoon LA sun. The OnePlus Open doesn't fare too well here, overexposing shots occasionally. In the below samples, I prefer the Pixel Fold's images better, simply because the exposure is more balanced even if the OnePlus shot is technically superior when you zoom in.

The color and exposure consistency are good on all three cameras despite the triple-lens system using three sensors from two manufacturers.

Other than the slight overexposure, which can often be fixed in post, the OnePlus Open's main camera can hold its own against the best slab smartphone cameras. In the image below, the Open more than keeps up with the Pixel 8 Pro in taking low-light images.

In fact, when I zoom in to 100% and pixel peep, the Open handedly beats the Pixel 8 Pro in details and clarity.

But the star of the show is the telephoto lens. Every phone worth its salt has a capable main camera in 2023, so telephoto is the new battleground. The Open's 1/2-inch 64MP periscope zoom lens is superior hardware to the competition in the foldable space. I love the 3x images snapped by the Open, and the phone will also use in-sensor crop to produce a 6x zoom (144mm) that's nearly lossless. I'm a fan of street photography, and the 3x and 6x focal lengths have proven very versatile.

Below are either 3x or 6x images snapped by the Open, and they handedly beat Samsung's 3x lens and hold up very well against the Pixel Fold's 5x lens, with OnePlus winning in details but the Pixel Fold winning in exposure. In less-than-ideal lighting situations, the Open's 6x zoom often outperforms the Pixel 8 Pro's 5X periscope zoom.

The final camera in the triple-lens system is a 48MP ultrawide with an f/2.2 and 1/2-inch sensor, and it's also quite capable, but it's the weakest of the three lenses.

There are two selfie cameras, one on each screen, but the best way to take selfies is with the main camera system, using the outside screen as a viewfinder. Image quality is clearly superior when shooting with the rear-facing main camera. The two selfie cameras produce images that are softer on details with less bokeh. At night, the selfie cameras will also need night mode, while the rear-facing camera will not.

Video performance is good but not great. The main camera is fine in most conditions, but the videos with the telephoto lens suffer from poor stabilization, at least when compared to the best slabs like the iPhone 15 Pro Max or Xiaomi 13 Ultra.

Software and performance

Multitasking machine

As I said earlier, Chinese foldables have offered awesome hardware for a few years, but they were never optimized for Google apps, which made them harder to use for audiences outside China. Almost all Chinese foldable phones suffer from similar software flaws. They couldn't summon Google Assistant via voice, Gboard couldn't display in split keyboard mode, and often had delayed notifications due to aggressive battery management that didn't recognize the importance of some Google apps, among many other things.

The rear-facing camera system packs awesome hardware, with newer and larger sensors than what’s found in most foldable phones.

The OnePlus Open runs OxygenOS, which was built for a Western audience and does not suffer from any of those issues. Everything here works like it would on a Galaxy Z Fold 5 or Pixel Fold, and in some ways, it's better. For example, OxygenOS' multitasking system is more versatile than the Pixel Fold's since it can run apps in resizable floating windows, which isn't an option at all on the Fold. The gestures to quickly jump into split-screen mode are also more intuitive than Samsung's.

Like the Fold 5, the OnePlus Open introduces a new taskbar at the bottom of the screen when the phone is in tablet mode. The taskbar will display your favorite apps and most recently used apps, just like Samsung's, but OnePlus does one better by putting a "recent document" folder in the taskbar that I found very useful. It features all the recent files you've either snapped with your camera or downloaded from the web. It makes it easy to open a file from this folder in a smaller floating window and drag and drop it into another app like Gmail. My work requires me to send PDFs and word files around often, saving me so much time.

The OxygenOS here runs on top of Android 13, which is technically old software, but Android 14 isn't a major overhaul, so you won't miss out on much. As is the case with OnePlus flagships, OxygenOS feels smooth to use with fluid animations. I've long been vocal about OxygenOS (and its Oppo counterpart, ColorOS) as being my favorite Android skin because it's more customizable than other Android software, and nothing has changed.

The only software "shortcoming" (if we can call it that) compared to rivals is that the Fold 5 can display to an external monitor thanks to DeX, while the OnePlus Open cannot (although it can mirror its screen to an external monitor).

Performance is obviously great

With the newest Qualcomm SoC and 16GB of RAM, do we really need to talk performance? Obviously, the Open scores high on benchmarks and can run daily apps without issues. One of the more intensive phone tasks that I do these days is putting together Instagram Reels, which requires splicing together a bunch of clips within Instagram's UI. The OnePlus Open, like the Fold 5, can handle this fine. I mention this because the Google Pixel Fold cannot. Tensor G2 on a thin foldable without space for heat dissipation hampers that chip's performance.

Elsewhere, haptics are solid. There are four speaker grills located symmetrically on the top and bottom of the chassis for strong audio output. I got cell reception perfectly fine both in the U.S. and in Singapore (the phone has dual physical SIM and eSIM support). I did find the phone getting warm during use under very harsh Singapore sun, but it didn't seem anything out of the ordinary. The Open passed 3DMark's 20-minute Extreme Stress Test.

Battery life has been satisfactory, with this phone able to last a busy 14-hour day of being outside and make it home with over 20% of battery to spare. The lack of wireless charging doesn't bother me since it can be charged via the included charger so fast. However, during a U.S. media briefing, several reviewers sounded very disappointed with the lack of wireless charging, so your mileage will vary.

Should you buy the OnePlus Open?

You should buy the OnePlus Open if:

• You want the best combination of foldable phone hardware and software
• You want a daily device for serious multitasking
• You have wanted a foldable phone but were waiting for the price to drop slightly

You should not buy the OnePlus Open if:

• You have an existing Samsung Z Fold and don't mind the crease
• Don't need the best camera
• You want a phone that, if broken, can be easily fixed right away

I've been a fan of foldable phones since day one. My biggest gripes over these years have been that foldable phone cameras lack a good zoom lens, and I either have to put up with inferior hardware (Samsung) or inferior software (Chinese foldables). OnePlus Open finally fixes both of those issues, and it's almost everything I hoped for and more.

I do think the OnePlus Open is coming too late in the release cycle to make a big sales splash. Another obstacle is the lack of carrier presence for the Open, with the phone only selling on Amazon and OnePlus' website in the U.S. There's also the concern of after-sales services since OnePlus doesn't have physical retail stores or a wider distributor network like Samsung.

The OnePlus Open is almost everything I hoped for and more.

Even though OnePlus is the sub-brand of Oppo, which usually implies it plays second fiddle, the Open is the more important release because it's selling in the U.S. It's an important market not just in terms of potential sales but because American tech pundits drive the mainstream narrative of mobile trends, for better and for worst.

For years, I have been saying that Chinese foldables have better hardware than Samsung’s Z Fold series and that Samsung can and should do better. My opinions were mostly met with shrugs or even skepticism by peers because Chinese foldables were virtually non-existent outside of China. Now that the OnePlus Open exists in the U.S., you can't deny it anymore.