OnePlus has a long track record of taking aim at the giants of the phone industry and winning. And from my week with the OnePlus Open, it’s done it again.
The gimmick here is that it’s a fully functioning flagship-level phone that then opens up to reveal a massive 7.8-inch tablet on the inside.
It’s a rival to Google and Samsung’s Fold devices (the convention in the mobile world is that devices which open vertically are ‘flip’ phones, while those that open sideways are ‘folding’).
Crucially, it’s cheaper than either (although anything folding still comes at a premium as the tech’s relatively new, and this retails for $1,699).
This is the first gizmo where it truly feels like a ‘proper’ phone when it’s folded up, and it also just feels and looks fancier than its rivals.
The phone unfolds to a 7.8-inch screen (Picture Rob Waugh)
Is the Open the best folding phone out there? (Picture Rob Waugh)
Few things can match folding phones in 2023 for ‘wow’ factor. Genuinely, opening one of these makes you feel like a time-traveler who has gone to the future.
Expect funny looks as people try and work out what on earth you are playing with.
My son’s reaction was simply: ‘Woah,’ followed predictably by, ‘Can I get one?’
The industrial design is gorgeous, with a glass dome over the massive Hasselblad camera array, and it unfolds to just 5.8mm thick.
The cover screen is genuinely good enough that you do not miss having a big, flagship device.
It’s marginally bigger than the Pixel Fold’s cover screen, at 6.3 inches (and a smooth 120Hz), and I found myself not opening it automatically every time I wanted to use it.
It weighs just 245g – but feels absolutely enormous when unfolded, with a crisp, colorful 7.8-inch screen with 89% screen-to-body ratio.
It definitely makes a splash (Picture: Rob Waugh)
The industrial design is absolutely gorgeous (Picture OnePlus)
It’s a delight to use, thanks to OnePlus’s simple OxygenOS, which has been tweaked to stay simple in both phone and tablet mode, and a state-of-the-art Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor.
It seems odd to obsess over a hinge, but hinges are a big deal in the world of folding and flipping devices, and the one here allows the Open to fold completely flat, which instantly makes it feel sturdier, higher quality and more pocketable.
OnePlus tapped into the expertise of parent company Oppo – which makes the excellent Find handsets, currently unavailable in the U.S. – to create the flat-folding Flexion hinge.
Unfolding one of these makes you feel like a time-traveler who has gone to the future
It’s sturdy, too: the hinge is certified for 1,000,000 folds and unfolds, which OnePlus smugly informed me translates to opening it more than 100 times a day for ten years.
The hinge also relieves pressure on the screen, to avoid the trademark crinkles which have plagued previous generations of folding devices, alongside micro-openings woven onto the carbon fiber display support structure.
Right, that’s enough about the hinge.
The Hsselblad camera doesn’t just look gorgeous, it’s also armed with a new, hi-tech ‘pixel-stacked’ Sony sensor, with three sensors (48 megapixel primary, 48 megapixel telephoto and 64 megapixel ultra-wide).
Pictures are bright and clear courtesy of the new sensor (which uses a fancy layering system to cram in more light sensors into the phone’s slim body), although it lacks some of the AI pizzazz of the Pixel Fold.
There’s plenty of neat tricks to play with here, though, with a bunch of fancy Hasselblad Portrait Mode extras which simulate the bokeh and flare effects captured by real DSLR cameras.
The hinge means that the phone folds completely flat (Picture Rob Waugh)
The industrial design is absolutely gorgeous (Picture OnePlus)
There’s some business-focused extras, like the ability to have windows ‘going off the side’ of the screen (something you can usually only do on a PC).
A PC-style taskbar at the bottom also makes it significantly easier to find apps: you’re not going to swap a laptop for this, but it’s perfectly good for work on the go.
The one thing I’d worry about – enough to prevent me buying, possibly – is dropping it.
OnePlus has protected it with Ceramic Guard, using high-tech purified ceramic crystals, which it promises is 20% more resistant than the top-end Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.
But I have to say, I’d still worry. Obviously I didn’t hurl my review unit at a brick wall, but I’d be worried that it’d sustain a fatal injury if it fell on concrete.
The first thing I generally do with a new phone is order a case: here, you have to be able to unfold it, so the gadget basically HAS to ‘go naked’.
The simple solution is, of course, to opt for insurance, and there’s no denying that this is a lovely device which will genuinely turn heads, and which could help to put folding phones on the map.
