Flip phones are getting a huge cover screen upgrade – and I tried it out

There's something really exciting about the best folding phones on the planet. To me they're like the future of this market's technology – and I've been fortunate enough to play with the latest flip phone to bring a huge upgrade (literally) to the cover screen.

The picture before your eyes is of my Oppo Find N2 Flip, which I've been tinkering with for a few days (having finished my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review), and as you can see pretty clearly the front screen is massive. 

That's Oppo's big sell in the Find N2 Flip: the cover screen measures 3.26-inches on the diagonal. Now, I know what you're thinking, it doesn't sound especially large in context to a full smartphone screen, but the Find N2 Flip has you covered there too, with its 6.8-inch panel revealed by unfolding the device. 

Besides, the surrounding market is nowhere near this kind of scale just yet. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hosts a 1.9-inch cover screen, while the pricier Motorola Razr (2022) is in-between, with its 2.7-inch front panel. The Oppo, therefore, is simply showing off. 

That's not the only thing that makes the Oppo unique though. The company's ColorOS software, which sits over Google's Android 13 operating system, has some baked-in goodies such as 'virtual pets', which have really grabbed my attention. 

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'What the heck is a virtual pet?,' you'll no doubt be wondering. As you can see from my gallery of goodies above, the Find N2 Flip lets you choose between a cat, dog, bird, hamster or rabbit that is hosted on the cover screen. Tap to interact, causing cute little animations. It's no Tamagotchi, though, this is ultimately just an animated wallpaper. But it's kinda adorable.

Oppo differs from its competition elsewhere too, as the first brand I've seen to introduce MediaTek's Dimensity 9000+ processor. And while that doesn't bring with it a 320-megapixel camera (that chipset is capable of processing such high volumes of pixels), it's still a super-powerful contender to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 platform. Oppo has instead opted for 50-megapixel main and 8MP wide in terms of cameras.

I think Oppo has the makings here of a device that can really challenge the market. Not just on account of its quirky and fun features, but the size of that cover screen and, somewhat unexpectedly, on asking price too. Priced from £849, the Find N2 Flip is actually cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 was at launch. Talk about putting a cat among the pigeons (or should that be rabbit among the hamsters?)...