Gadget Bridge has been testing Foldable phones since Samsung released its first folding phone five years ago. Samsung has great dominance in the market as it was the first to come up with a foldable device. Every other smartphone brand now offers foldable smartphones except for Apple. Recently we got our hands on the OnePlus’s first foldable smartphone — the OnePlus Open. It has been our daily driver for the past few weeks and we are surprisingly pleased with its performance. The device is also much cheaper than Samsung’s latest foldable Galaxy Z Fold 5 and is priced higher than Tecno’s Phantom V Fold. However, it definitely gives tough competition to Samsung’s fold. To know how let’s find this out in the OnePlus Open Review.
In This Article
OnePlus Open Review: Design and Display
If you are bored of using a regular smartphone then we would recommend you to give foldables a try. These are very different from a smartphone as they can be used as a normal phone and also transform to a bigger screen to be used as a mini tablet.
As we mentioned earlier Gadget Bridge has used every foldable smartphone that has been released so far, including the most recent Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5.
We knew right away that the OnePlus Open was going to be a serious challenger we first held the phone in our hands and saw its design.
At only 245g, it is among the lightest folding phones available. We have the Voyager Black colour variant for the review. The back of the phone has a vegan leather finish, that gives it a more upscale appearance. Its design has been further enhanced by the thin, graphite-grey aluminium frame. The company has used a Flexion hinge for its foldable, which gives it a gapless design between the two portions of the display when closed. The device is 11.7mm thin when folded and 5.8mm slim when unfolded.
Also Read: Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max Review: Max Performance
You can see that it looks quite classy with symmetrical finishing with no gap when it is closed. It feels really good in the hand as well.
OnePlus Open has the largest external display looking similar to a normal standard smartphone, which features a 6.3-inch cover screen that is both wide and easy to use, so there’s no need to constantly unfold it. The bigger external display means the internal display is also bigger but the best part is that this one’s crease is nearly undetectable, making for a nearly smooth viewing experience. The primary screen is square and symmetrical.
Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review (long term): A foldable delight
Note that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is taller and is less wide compared to the OnePlus Open. Believe us, when you use the outer screen of this phone you will not feel as if you are using a foldable phone. This is why the external screen of OnePlus’s foldable has been used by us most of the time during our review. The internal or the primary display was used when we had to do some productive work.
Coming back to the rear of the phone you see a very big Hasselblad branded triple camera setup. The sensors are housed inside a spherical module. Therefore this sets the phone apart from other foldable phones, however, it may wobble because of the massive rear camera bump. We also really liked how the metal frame on the side and the back looked.
The book-style foldable phone has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which doubles as a power button. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack. The phablet features OnePlus’s iconic Alert Slider, too. There are a total of four speakers on the device two each on either side. The company has provided reality speakers with noise-cancellation support and Dolby Atmos on the foldable.
Let’s now talk about the display specs in detail. OnePlus Open features a wide squarish 7.82-inch LTPO 3.0 Flexi-fluid AMOLED primary display with 2,440×2,268 pixels of resolution. The inside screen offers a 2K resolution with 426 ppi pixel density along with an aspect ratio of 1.0758: 1 and a screen-to-body ratio of 89.6%. The display has support for dynamic refresh rate ranging between 1-120Hz and a touch response rate of up to 240Hz. In addition to this, 1,400 nits is the typical screen brightness and 2,800 nits is the peak brightness. The display also supports sRGB, DCI-P3, 10-bit Color Depth and TÜV Rheinland Intelligent Eye Care protection.
Whereas, the secondary display looks like a regular smartphone screen featuring 6.31-inch Super Fluid AMOLED with LTPO 3.0. The 2K display has 2,484×1,116 pixels of resolution. The remaining details of the outer display are the same as the inner display.
During our usage, we never used a cover or a screen protector. The back of the phone is as good as new and is in fantastic shape, as is evident. Also, no scratches were noticeable on the displays.
A screen guard that feels like tempered glass is pre-installed. For the primary display, the company has used Ultra Thin Glass and Ceramic Guard protection on the secondary display. The screen visibility on both the outer and the inner screen is excellent and is clearly visible under direct sunlight.
If you binge-watch content on YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video then this is a great option. So both the displays are stunning, bright and smooth. The colour, and contrast levels are superb while touch sensitivity and haptic feedback are excellent too and this is what we expect from a flagship device to look like and feel like. The fingerprint sensor on the side is also quick to unlock the phone and is reliable.
This fantastic phone comes with an outstanding set of stereo speakers. We enjoyed watching videos and listening to music on this machine. The sound output is clear, balanced and loud. Just awesome.
Also Read: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 Review: Flip it good!
OnePlus Open Review: Performance and Cameras
Coming to the performance, OnePlus Open carries the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform with Adreno 740 GPU. The same processor has been used on the Galaxy Z Fold 5. It comes with 16GB LPDDR5X with RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. It also supports RAM VITA allowing you to expand RAM up to 12GB.
You can play high-end games on this phone thanks to the most powerful chipset it comes with. It is really easy to multitask and play games on this gadget. The device does not overheat however gaming for a longer duration makes the phone warm, especially around the camera module. Games such as PUBG New State, BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 9 ran smoothly without any hiccups, lags or frame drops.
On the OnePlus Open, the UI experience on the screen is like a regular OnePlus phone. But it completely changes when it is unfolded. A lovely animation occurs when you shut and open the foldable screen. As said earlier the UI feels similar to that of a PC and includes a taskbar containing all of the apps and menu items. We enjoyed gaming on the big screen but the moment you switch to the smaller screen, the screen resolution takes a hit.
On the software front, the book-style foldable phone comes with OxygenOS 13.2 based on Android 13. Dual splits and fast focus, Drag and drop sharing, and Triple splits are some of the features. The biggest advantage of the fold phones is that in a compact form factor, you get a PC-like experience.
You can use it as a normal phone for day-to-day usage and use the bigger screen for productive work. The dual split option allows you to run two apps simultaneously. You can also run a third application as well for easy multitasking.
One can also switch from the primary display to the secondary screen or vice versa while gaming or watching videos. We ran almost all the apps on this foldable phone and as of now, we haven’t noticed any app compatibility issue. The haptic feedback is excellent thanks to the X-axis motor.
In terms of photography, the foldable device has a triple rear camera setup tuned by Hasselblad. The camera unit includes a 1/1.43-inch 48MP Sony LYTIA-T808 “Pixel Stacked” CMOS primary sensor with Autofocus (1.12 μm, f/1.7 aperture, 85-degree FoV and OIS). There is a 1/2-inch 48MP Ultra-Wide lens (0.8 μm, 114-degree FoV, f/2.2 and EIS) and OmniVision OV64B 64MP Telephoto with OIS, 3X optical (0.7 μm, f/2.6, Up to 120X digital zoom). The camera features a Hasselblad Camera for Mobile, Nightscape, Dolby Vision, Smart Scene Recognition, Portrait Mode, Pro Mode, Panorama, Tilt-Shift mode, Long Exposure, Dual-View Video, Retouch, Movie Mode, XPan Mode, Focus Peaking etc. For videography, there is support for 4K video at 30/60 fps, 1080p video at 30/60 fps, 720p video at 30/60 fps, Dolby Vision HDR at 4K, 30 fps and more.
The company has provided two cameras for selfies 20MP primary (inner) and 32MP secondary (outer).
OnePlus has not only won praise for having a simple user interface, but it has also never let users down when it comes to camera performance. OnePlus gained a lot of popularity in its initial years for its pro-level cameras giving Apple tough competition at better pricing. This time again the company has worked hard on its optics.
Outdoor shots
We used the OnePlus camera to shoot images both indoors and outdoors. The daytime images appear beautiful with a good amount of dynamic range. The images are full of details and the output you get is amazing. It can easily differentiated between the object and the foreground.
Indoor shot
You can also shoot images in Pro Mode if you would like to. You can also use the rear camera to shoot some incredible selfies in normal and portrait modes. The clarity is good and colour reproduction is also quite impressive. We also liked the edge detection in portraits and background blur.
As per the company, the telephoto lens on the OnePlus Open is comparable to that of Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra which supports up to 100x digital zoom. The OnePlus foldable has an advantage in this department not even the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 since none of them can zoom up to 120 times. Outstanding!
OnePlus Vs Samsung
Here are some telephoto shots. Do let us know in the comments which one’s 100x digital zoom is better OnePlus Open or Galaxy S23 Ultra’s (Review). You can zoom in to take images of a distant object, or signboard or even take a picture of the moon.
OnePlus Open camera also did a good job in low-light photography. Check out some image samples here.
The camera quality and stability are excellent when it comes to videography.
Vs
With Night Mode on
The battery capacity is 4,805mAh and an 80W charger is given in the box however the phone supports 67W fast charging. During our testing, the battery life lasted for a day which included extensive gaming, binge-watching for camera testing and more. But it can be stretched to one and a half days on average usage.
The good thing is that this foldable phone comes with fast charging support. There is a Type-C cable in the box. We always mention in our reviews that, unlike Samsung and Apple phones, the Chinese companies include a supported charging brick along with a cable.
One thing that we do miss in this foldable phone is the stylus compatibility. How we wish a supported stylus came with the device just like Galaxy Z Fold 5. Although normally users don’t require a stylus it would have been great if the company had provided it at this pricing. Maybe this is why it is priced significantly less than Fold 5.
Verdict
Along with other aspects, we find the OnePlus Open’s form factor and display to be impressive. But the hardware performance is outstanding. The phone is well-optimised and there were no issues during multitasking, gaming and camera testing. The phone does heat up when playing games for long hours and when the camera app is being used for a longer duration. But cools down very quickly as soon as you shut these apps.
For multitasking, you can run multiple applications together thanks to the dual split option. This experience you usually get on a desktop only. So this is the big reason why people are moving from regular smartphones to foldables.
The battery life is also good. OnePlus has undoubtedly exceeded our expectations with this foldable, especially as it is the company’s first. OnePlus Open is priced at Rs 1,39,999 in India. Do tell us in the comments which foldable phone would you buy OnePlus Open or Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5.
