OnePlus Open: Dethroning Samsung foldables?

Brands like Google Pixel, Microsoft, Huawei, Royole, and Xiaomi have all tried their luck with foldable phones. But not all of them received the warm welcome or saw the sales boom they had hoped to see in this untapped market.

Some lost their grip on the foldable space with their very first device, whereas others barely made enough sales to keep the folding line-up alive.

In this experimental market, only one company has reigned supreme. With five generations to take feedback and improve, Samsung foldables are not only the most popular in the market right now, but also the most commercially successful ones.

Every generation of Samsung's foldables have been the standard against which all folding phones were measured, and their latest Galaxy Z Fold5 and Galaxy Z Flip5 were crowned the best foldable phones by critics, power users and masses alike.

However, OnePlus's first-ever folding phone is here to shift the power dynamic in the space. In an attempt to get back their 'Flagship Killer' persona, OnePlus built a folding phone that not only undercuts Samsung's flagship foldables in price, but also knocks them out in form, functionality, and performance.

OnePlus Open, the first gen foldable from the enthusiast brand, has the best functional design of any folding phone out there. It is slimmer than most folding phones and surprisingly lightweight, thanks to the titanium alloy and carbon fibre build. In fact, the OnePlus Open weighs almost the same as the new iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Considering the chassis houses a big 4805 mAh battery, five cameras, and three times the screen of an iPhone 15 Pro Max, this feat is no less than a shockwave across the foldable space.

Besides the lightweight design, its snappy hinge also adds to the functionality of this dual-screened phone. This hinge is built with fewer moving components than the Samsung counterparts while offering a more satisfying snap close-open. It also has better multi-angle stability in semi-folded positions. But the most significant improvement came in the folding screen itself.

Despite incremental improvement across five generations of folding phones, the crease in the middle is still very noticeable in Samsung Fold and Flip phones. However, on the OnePlus Open, the traces of crease in the middle can almost go unnoticed, making it a true tablet-like experience.

In a classic Apple move, OnePlus decided to bring back the classic alert slider. Although slightly oddly placed on the upper quarter, it is still one of the enthusiasts-favourite features of OnePlus phones that had been prematurely removed.

Apart from the alert slider, a few other design decisions from OnePlus make it an even better folding phone experience compared to Pixel Fold, Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 or Galaxy Z Fold devices. For better thermal performance, there is a super-conductive graphene sheet inside that dilutes the heat across a bigger surface. This allows for quicker and more efficient heat dissipation, a much-needed improvement for folding devices where the display demands more power to illuminate the bigger screen, which, in turn, heats the phone.

Design-wise, the OnePlus Open is a foldable phone done right. Spec-wise, it has all the high-end components to give Samsung and Pixel foldables a run for their money.  Open has a top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM with RAM-Vita, and a faster UFS 4.0 512 GB storage.

They knocked it out of the park with their cameras as well. While most foldable compromise with the camera to accommodate the additional parts for the folding hinge and dual screen, the OnePlus Open perfectly demonstrates how a folding phone can have two screens, a hinge, a big battery and still have room for good camera sensors.

On the rear, it has a primary 48 MP camera with Pixel Stacking technology, a 48 MP ultra-wide camera, and a 64 MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom and 120x Ultra-res zoom.

Photos taken from these Hasselblad-optimised cameras have better dynamic range and noise reduction than most other folding phone cameras. And since the phone has a cover screen, the rear cameras can be used as front-facing selfie cameras, making OnePlus Open a great phone for self-portraits and selfies or occasional videos.

The phone does have dedicated front-facing cameras for video calls as well. But the 20 MP front camera on the inside screen and 32 MP on the cover screen do not compare well with the rear setup. Even though it might not be the best camera setup in a smartphone, as they claim it to be, it is definitely the best camera setup in any folding phone out there.

OnePlus Open phone also shines in the display category. It has a giant 7.82-inch Flexi-fluid AMOLED LPTO 3.0 folding display as the main screen inside with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 240 Hz touch sample rate. The AMOLED display can go up to 2800 nits, making it one of the brightest screens ever on a phone.

When the phone is snap-closed, it has a 6.31-inch 2K resolution Super Fluid AMOLED LTPO 3.0 display as the cover display. When folded, the OnePlus Open can be used like any other regular flagship smartphone with its 20:9 ratio screen, identical to a regular-sized phone.

But the OnePlus Open is definitely built to be used unfolded. The software optimisation is specifically done to make the best use of the real estate on the inside screen, making it a true multitasking device.

At a time, the inside screen can have three apps opened simultaneously on its square display while dozens sit in the background. OnePlus is calling this feature of having multiple apps on the screen Open Canvas.

Open Canvas is aided by a Windows or MacOS-like dock on the bottom. This dock houses the most used apps, pinned apps and recent files, ensuring a smooth workflow across different apps and screens. The continuity between the inside and cover screen also makes it readily usable in any state, folded or unfolded.

However, since it is a first-generation device and Open Canvas is a relatively new software feature that works like an open-source canvas for the apps to occupy space in, there are still a lot of unaccounted scenarios where the optimization can go wrong, especially in the semi-folded state. In partial folds, the optimisation on Open Canvas is not as good as Samsung's Flex mode.

Photo: Collected

Another place that OnePlus Open lacks compared to the Samsung foldables is wireless charging. Despite being comparatively priced to other foldables, it does not have wireless charging. However, OnePlus Open more than makes up for it with the super-fast wired charging. The all-day 4805 mAh battery can be charged up to 40% in just 10 minutes with the included 67W adapter. Besides, the battery optimisation is so good that users would hardly miss the convenience of wireless charging.

The phone also excels in the audio department. It has multi-spatial speakers, so even if one of the three speaker units is blocked by the user's hand or a case, it will not distort the audio quality. These Reality speakers, as dubbed by OnePlus, are the finest in the foldable segment, making OnePlus Open the best-sounding folding phone in the market. These speakers, accompanied by its solid microphone, make Open a good device for calls, meetings, and media consumption.

Although the phone is not rated for full immersion like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 or Google Pixel Fold, it does have an IPX4 rating to survive occasional water splashes.

Its slimmer form factor and the gapless design also prevent bigger dust particles from creeping inside the fold.

Overall, the OnePlus Open has a better folding design, less noticeable crease, snappier hinge, top-end specs, excellent cameras, and a slimmer and lighter form factor compared to Samsung foldables, all the while undercutting both Samsung and Google Pixel foldables in price. When folded, the phone with its cover screen is a solid flagship experience and unfolded, the OnePlus Open might just be the best foldable smartphone on the planet.