Smartphone technology advances at a rapid pace, at least when it comes to Android. Folding smartphones have been on the market for several years, but SAMSUNG It has been the face of India, although brands like Motorola, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are also experimenting with the category. It’s only in the last two years that we’ve started to see some Chinese clamshell foldables launching in India. The main reason for this is that Samsung is the only smartphone brand that brings every single foldable model announced globally to India.
Another smartphone brand that has been moving into the premium segment for quite some time now oneplus, The Chinese smartphone maker has time and again proven that it can offer immense value with its products, but it has always stayed away from the ultra-premium (above Rs 80,000) smartphone segment. So, what happens when a competing brand like OnePlus comes out with a foldable? I am using oneplus open For over a week and this is why I think it is a solid rival to Samsung in this segment in India.
OnePlus Open is quite thin and light
The OnePlus Open certainly looks the part and makes a solid impression at first when you hold it. I got the Voyager Black edition with a faux-leather textured back and slate-gray matte finish frame, which immediately reminded me of retro-looking, premium compact cameras. The large, cookie-shaped camera bulge on the back (which is almost as thick as the phone when unfolded) is a fair indicator that OnePlus is serious about this foldable camera. And if that’s not enough, there’s a Hasselblad ‘H’ logo branded on the raised camera module to reiterate its seriousness.
The overall design is quite modern and minimalistic, even though this version (with the leather back) gives off a bit of a retro feel. The bezels around the external display are quite thin and the same can be said about the internal folding display. Both displays have embedded hole-punch selfie cameras that are visible and not hidden from view Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5,
The raised camera bump adds a few millimeters to the back panel
It is also quite thin and light. When folded, the OnePlus Open is 11.9mm thick (except the camera bump) and when opened, it’s significantly thinner at just 5.9mm. Both of these measurements are downright impressive for a full-sized foldable. It is also quite light as the Voyager Black Edition weighs just 239 grams. of apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, which is quite light this year and is quite simple in terms of engineering, its weight is 221 grams. In the foldable space, Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy Z Fold 5 weighs in at over a quarter kilo (253 grams) and it felt far heavier and thicker when I looked at it. use this, Indeed, it looks like OnePlus is setting some new standards and raising the bar when it comes to foldable smartphone design.
The third speaker is basically the receiver speaker located on the left half of the foldable
The phone has three speakers, which seems like a strange choice, but OnePlus claims it offers better sound with them. The fingerprint reader sits inside the power button, and there’s also the iconic alert slider switch, which is available on OnePlus’ premium smartphones. It looks like it’s lowered the rating of this foldable to IPX4, but it’s not really a ‘OnePlus smartphone’ if it doesn’t have an alert slider.
OnePlus seems to have put in a lot of effort to match both its displays in terms of colors and capabilities, so that users have a similar experience when using both. It features a 6.31-inch 2K, 20:9 aspect ratio external display with a 120Hz refresh rate. This results in a main folding 2K display with an almost 1:1 aspect ratio, measuring 7.82-inches and also offering a 120Hz refresh rate. Both AMOLED displays pack in OnePlus’ ProXDR technology with LTPO 3.0 and offer a 240Hz touch sampling rate.
The external display feels wide enough for comfortable regular use
The phone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, which is also available on Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 (Review), However, it has a massive 16GB LPDDR5X RAM (with RAM expansion up to 12GB) and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. While this is all to be expected from a top-end premium foldable, you have to remember that we’re just days away from Announcement The next generation of this SoC, which should be Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and will also have a different architecture and better efficiency. Regardless, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is no slouch as we’ve seen oneplus 11 5g In our Review,
As the design of this foldable might suggest, it’s focused on the camera experience, which is unlike any other globally announced foldable we’ve seen in the past. The primary camera is an interesting Sony LYT-T808 sensor that has 48-megapixel resolution (with OIS) and promises to bring in more light given its new technology. The dual-layer transistor pixel technology (or pixel stacked) sensor allows it to be compact enough to fit into a slim body, but OnePlus also claims it offers equally impressive performance, which I’ll be reading for a full review. I will test.
OnePlus Open is well equipped in the camera department
The second camera is equally impressive on paper with the OmniVision IV64B with 3X optical zoom range, OnePlus claims 6X lossless zoom and a maximum range of up to 120X. Like the primary camera, it also packs OIS. Finally, there is an ultra-wide camera with a Sony IMX581 sensor with 48-megapixel resolution and 114-degree field of view. Since it has autofocus, you also have a solid macro capability, which is larger than its normal resolution. It has two selfie cameras, both of which are of the fixed-focus variety, and offer 20-megapixel and 32-megapixel resolutions.
The device is powered by a 4,805mAh dual-cell battery that can be charged at 67W. Charging is wired only. And the omission of wireless charging probably resulted in such a slim design. As far as software is concerned, it has OxygenOS 13.2, which is a bit strange as I expected it to run Android 14 out of the box.
The aspect ratio of the main folding display is approximately 1:1 squarish
The Android 14-based software will reportedly be made available at a later date. OnePlus has a few tricks up its sleeve with OxygenOS as well, including a cool Recents folder in the taskbar that lets you copy and paste things in and around apps like the desktop. There’s also a feature called Open Canvas that lets you run multiple apps at the same time, but more on that in the review.
OnePlus is new to the foldable space, even though this product has been brought with the help of Oppo. This helps OnePlus get the right start when competing with brands like Samsung in a very niche but fast-growing market segment. So far, everything certainly looks impressive. OnePlus has managed to make its foldable thin and light, and it also packs an impressive set of cameras on paper, but it has cut some corners to get there. There’s no wireless charging (for a premium smartphone), no stylus support and it’s powered by the latest processors in just a few months.
OnePlus has ensured that its foldable is clearly a OnePlus device, but will these missing features impact its performance and make it rank lower than the current competition? There is also brand positioning to take into account. OnePlus has never sold an ultra-premium device till now, both in India and the global market. Learn about all this and more in our detailed review coming soon.