I Am Smitten With This Super-Thin Foldable You Can’t Buy in the U.S.

For the first time since the Galaxy Z Fold 4 launch in 2022, I have not been using a Samsung foldable to do my bidding. Instead, I’ve felt perfectly content doing it all on the Oppo Find N5 since it arrived a few weeks ago. The book-style foldable has an 8.12-inch inner screen and a 6.6-inch outer screen. It’s a larger device than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 that’s out now and even Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Its relative thinness compared to the rest of the foldable offerings makes it palatable despite the larger screen sizes. It makes us wonder if Oppo has the same plans for the brand it sells in the U.S., OnePlus, which hasn’t seen an update to its loudly lauded foldable since 2023.

That’s not to say the Oppo Find N5 is a perfect foldable. It starts at $2,500 Singapore dollars, or about $1,880 USD. It still suffers from the conundrum of using this factor in the first place, especially with small hands. It’s a hefty cradle with just the fingers! My hands are medium-to-small, I know, and were not built to act as phone holsters. However, the bigger inside screen made me realize that what I want is a folding tablet phone. I don’t want a folding device pretending to be a phone in my pocket. I like the screen space to wander, read, and deep dive into a niche subject, no matter where I am. That’s the point of such an expensive phone that does this, and the Find N5 facilitates all that. I’m ready to embrace bigger, thinner folding devices.

One of the best foldable experiences

Let’s talk about what you do get with the Oppo Find N5, especially if, for some reason, you are so enamored with this overseas release that you try to import it for yourself. For one, this is one of the thinnest folding devices you can hold today. The Find N5 is 4.2mm thin when splayed open, compared to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s 5.1mm, which boasts one of the thinnest designs in the foldable space in the U.S.

Wireless charging remains intact, thanks partly to Oppo’s proprietary charging infrastructure, which facilitates up to 80W SuperVooc tethered and 50W wireless charging, but only with the brand’s cables. The battery is ample enough, at least for what Oppo has going on here. It’s a 5,600 mAh battery, a little bigger than you’d find in Google and Samsung’s foldables. It’s way bigger than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6, which has a 4,400 mAh battery. I haven’t run the full battery test, but battery life has been promising anecdotally. That’s with the Find N5 connected to a mobile network and getting all my notifications from the newspaper and chat apps I have installed, plus the OnePlus Watch 3 syncing my workouts. (For what it’s worth, I’ve been running the Find N5 with a SIM connected to the Mint network, and it’s been fine.)

Everything else about the Find N5 is a standard smartphone affair, down to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. You can buy the Find N5 with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage space, but it starts with an ample 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM. The Find N5 has cute little quirks, like a mute switch on one side of the device and a fingerprint scanner embedded into the power button. Again, this seems to be a common trope of usage among folding smartphones. Samsung does this already, and there are rumors that Apple will do the same with its folding smartphone.

The Find N5’s 8.1-inch inside screen is where it’s at. I used it to read books and magazines on Libby, coordinate with my hobby friends on Discord, and scan through only the headlines I can handle in my two newspaper apps. Another night, I just propped it up halfway on my belly and watched episodes of The Anna Nicole Show on YouTube—thankfully, the YouTube app knows how to work with a screen folded in half.

It’s the widescreen that’s working for me. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 is good if you’re trying to use a more phone-like foldable. Oppo’s position seems to be that, if you’re going to wield one of these, you know what you’re in for, so why not make it nice, big, and tablet-like? As much as I loved having a 7-inch Android tablet like the Nexus 7 back in the day, the larger screen size of the Find N5 is why I prefer it over other folding devices. It just feels like I can get more done.

Wait, why are you telling me about this phone?

The Oppo Find N5 isn’t readily available in the U.S., which might make you wonder why we’re bothering to cover it. Well, because Oppo is the parent company of OnePlus, a brand that does sell in the U.S., and one which, as I’ve mentioned, often carries the traits of the Oppo devices that have been successful overseas. So far, the Find N5 is getting many glowing reviews, mainly for its slim, lightweight(ish) design and large screens.

The Oppo Find N5 isn’t just interesting because it’s a thin-ass phone, though that’s the driving force behind why you’d bother importing this thing in the first place. It also shows us what manufacturers think is an “essential” feature for its users. You can’t have a thin device without a few caveats.

For instance, the camera on the Find N5 is middling. On paper, it seems promising enough with dual 50-MP camera sensors, one for primary shooting, a secondary one for telephoto capabilities, and a third 8-MP camera sensor for ultra-wide shooting. However, that primary camera often prefers to over-brighten images, unless you tap in and ask it to focus on a specific point. Like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6, it’s limited to a 3x optical zoom.

Regarding software updates, Oppo won’t support this phone as long as Samsung and Google plan to do so on their respective folding devices. Samsung and Google have committed to seven years of software updates and security patches. Oppo and OnePlus remain committed to the four-year timeline.

The Find N5 also isn’t what I’d call durable. The case the manufacturer sent over with our review unit doesn’t even cover the front part of it. It pops onto the back, and there’s enough case to cover the hinge. The entire cover screen remains exposed. At the very least, the Find N5 is water resistant, even if it is not built for the tough outside world. Oppo achieved an IPX6, IPX8, and IPX9 rating. The Find N5 can withstand varying water conditions, including rain submersion and high-pressure water jets. It’s about the same on Google and Samsung’s devices.

The speakers are also limited for a smartphone that costs this much, especially compared to the bass-forward sound I’d get from an iPhone 16, for instance—even the iPhone 16e has some powerful woofers in its little phone body.

You can’t buy this phone (if you’re in the U.S.)

The war for the thinnest folding smartphone remains ongoing, even as most manufacturers seem to be at a standstill, figuring out how to cram artificial intelligence into already withering phone bodies. It’s good news for those of us who are gadget freaks obsessed with the future being available now. The Find N5 is a comfortable foldable. The hinges are sturdy enough that the Find N5 can prop itself up on its own. If you haven’t already caught on to the great news of folding smartphones, the Oppo Find N5 will hopefully give you some faith. I like this phone as a dedicated reading device, and it has all the same software tricks as Samsung’s One UI on its foldables, so it was no problem transitioning over.

Sorry for the tease, however, as those of us in the U.S. can’t buy this phone outright. I hope this means some good news on the horizon for both OnePlus fans and those looking for a third offering beyond Google and Samsung.