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Art et designTranscription
00:00All right, we got to talk about these folding phones for a minute because it's changed a lot since the last time we did.
00:05So the first ever folding phone from OnePlus came out this week. It's called the OnePlus Open.
00:11Not a very good name, but a very, very, very good first gen foldable.
00:16I've been using it for about three weeks now.
00:18I've got lots of good things to say about it, but it's actually...
00:20I feel like it's so good that it's actually resurfaced the old question in my head from a couple of years ago,
00:25which is what's it going to take for regular people to actually start buying folding phones?
00:30Because, yeah, I like this phone and I'm going to go ahead and guess that some other reviewers will like this phone too.
00:36And some enthusiasts will like this phone.
00:38And this video may even get a lot of views, but none of that necessarily translates into regular people just like strolling into a store or going online and choosing to buy one of these.
00:50So first things first, the details of this phone.
00:52So this is a super high-end phone in every way.
00:55And the design is particularly well considered.
00:58You can see it's basically the same size as a normal phone on the outside.
01:02This is a 6.3 inch 20 by 9 cover display, just over 1080p.
01:07It's LTPO down to 10 hertz.
01:09And it's an absurdly bright 2800 nits max brightness between these pretty thin bezels.
01:16So this actually does take the crown now for the brightest display I have ever seen in a smartphone.
01:21Now I'm going to go ahead and give it the co-crown for best foldable to use while closed alongside the Pixel Fold.
01:29So I still think the Pixel Fold has, it's more reachable, it has better button placement since it's a bit shorter.
01:34But there's no question this feels like a flagship phone on the outside, even if you never even open the thing.
01:40There's also a bunch of design touches I really like.
01:42The flat sides all the way around, super clean.
01:45The alert slider is also back.
01:47So it's way up there at the top of the phone, which is kind of tough to reach.
01:50But I love that it works exactly as you'd expect.
01:53Same as previous OnePlus phones that had it.
01:56And the power button also doubles as a fingerprint reader, which we've seen with lots of these folds as well.
02:00It's awesome.
02:01And then around the back, mixed bag, I would say.
02:04I'm not the biggest fake leather on the back of a phone person.
02:07It gives me like Samsung 2016 vibes.
02:10But at least it does hide fingerprints.
02:12This is the other color now.
02:13It's a green.
02:14It looks a little bit cleaner.
02:15But really the feature is the gigantic camera bump.
02:18And yeah, it's pretty crazy looking.
02:20But it also happens to be exactly where my index finger rests on the back of the phone.
02:25So it's like a nice little shelf that feels really natural when using the phone while closed.
02:30So I kind of really like it for that.
02:32Also the LED flash, I guess it couldn't fit.
02:35So they shoved it up in the corner for some reason.
02:37But then you open this thing up and it just becomes so obvious why they waited so long to do their first foldable.
02:43It looks nothing like some of the other first gen folding screens from years ago.
02:48It's got this huge 7.8 inch corner to corner LTPO 3.0 display.
02:53That again goes up to 2800 nits and down to 1 hertz.
02:58Even bezels all the way around.
03:00Got the hole punch in the top corner.
03:01And honestly one of the least visible creases you will see in a folding phone in 2023.
03:06Now I think it's actually debatable if we can technically call this their first foldable phone.
03:11Because while OnePlus hasn't made a foldable yet, their sister company Oppo clearly has.
03:16So I wouldn't be surprised if this took a lot of tech from them.
03:19Actually, there is another just released Oppo phone called the Oppo Find M3.
03:24And it's the same as this.
03:25But the point still stands.
03:27With this screen on, you literally don't see the crease at all.
03:30And screen off, you still kind of have to look for it.
03:33And then yeah, you hit the angle where the light reflects off of the middle of the phone and then you can see it.
03:37But this is one of those phones that looks really good from almost every angle you would actually use it.
03:42And then it also has one of those hinges that stays at whatever angle that you hold it at.
03:46So if you want sort of a 90 degree angle or a little bit more open or closed, you can do that.
03:51And then it has a nice satisfying spring loaded clap shut.
03:54It's also impressively thin.
03:56It's not the thinnest one I've ever seen but pretty good.
03:59It's lighter than you would expect.
04:00It's actually, if you put it on a scale, it's basically the exact same weight as an iPhone 14 Pro when they were doing stainless steel.
04:06So just a regular phone weight.
04:08So it's an impressive piece of hardware.
04:09But then the software for this one is OnePlus.
04:12So it's OxygenOS 13.2 and it's got all kinds of little tweaks and little features that power users are going to love.
04:19Because let's face it, this is a phone for power users.
04:23People who are going to love the continuity features between the open screen and the closed screen.
04:27So once you're done using a big app, you just close it like this and then swipe up to pick up where you left off on the outside screen if you want to.
04:34Just like the pixel fold, it's going to mirror your home screen setup automatically between the cover screen and the inside screen.
04:41So if you change something like move a folder or a widget or an app on one and then switch to the other, it will have also moved from there too.
04:49It keeps them a little bit more organized.
04:51I kind of wish I had the option to change that since this is Android and I am a power user.
04:55But nevertheless, that's the way it is.
04:57But then there's also a ton of multitasking features on the inside screen for having multiple apps open at once.
05:03So you can have obviously one app open full screen.
05:07And that looks good for a surprising number of apps.
05:09It will stretch them if they're not natively built for this.
05:11But then you can have two apps side by side.
05:14And then you can pick a third app to get in the mix.
05:17Then they're all just sort of next to each other in this triple panel view.
05:21And you can move things between them really quickly.
05:23Or if you pinch out with four fingers, you can see all of the apps at once.
05:28So between that and the dock with all of your apps and recent files, it's just a very well-considered hub for sitting down and just getting stuff done.
05:36I feel like when I sit down and open this phone, I'm about to be really productive and get a lot done.
05:41This phone, the OnePlus Open, honestly, as a phone, it nails all five of my pillars of a great smartphone.
05:47Great screen, great battery, great build, great performance, great camera.
05:51And I'm not being generous with that stuff.
05:53It actually nails all of that stuff.
05:55You already heard about the great screen and the fact that they match each other so well inside and outside is already pretty great.
06:01There's also great performance, super high-end specs.
06:04Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, 16GB of fast RAM, 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage.
06:11I mean the pair of 120Hz LTPO displays have a 240Hz touch sample rate.
06:16It's super responsive and, I mean, the whole thing feels very future-proof.
06:20And then you also heard about the build quality, which I'll revisit that in a second.
06:23But then battery life has also been excellent with this 4800mAh battery and 67W fast charging,
06:31although it just skips wireless charging for some reason, which is like the most OnePlus thing ever.
06:37I think it adds like no cost and no weight and no thickness, but yet they leave it out when all the other competitors have it anyway.
06:44All right, fine.
06:45But then this huge camera module on the back kind of implies high-end cameras,
06:49but you can never really be sure until you test them.
06:51And sure enough, this Hasselblad camera setup is pretty decent.
06:56It's got this new stack sensor for the primary sensor, a 3x telephoto and an ultra-wide.
07:01I found it's pretty good most of the time, although it's not very good at freezing motion,
07:06which is fine if you take photos of still subjects, but the second it's people or animals and those things start to move,
07:13then it can be kind of hard getting a shutter speed fast enough to freeze that stuff.
07:17You basically have to switch to action mode, which there's a button for,
07:20and that works by cranking the shutter speed way up as expected,
07:23but then ISO starts to get a little high, high enough that photos are now a little noisier, a little worse looking.
07:28So it's just, that's unfortunate.
07:30And by the way, this isn't one of the five pillars,
07:32but I also found that the microphone on this phone is actually quite good.
07:38They're usually not this good.
07:39I was pleasantly surprised, but it all comes together in a really nice phone
07:43that I think a lot of people, including myself, are going to really like using.
07:46So the question is, why do I think people aren't buying folding phones that much if they're this good?
07:53It turns out a phone can hit all five pillars of a great smartphone and not be a great buy for everyone necessarily.
08:00And so it really comes down to three things, I think.
08:02Number one is still price.
08:04Number two is the durability question.
08:07And then number three is just the power user problem.
08:10So on price, this phone is $1,700 US.
08:15That is a lot of money to spend on a phone,
08:17no matter how you chop it up into monthly segments or staggered payments.
08:20It's just a lot, right?
08:21It's literally twice as much as an iPhone 15.
08:23But guess what?
08:24That's literally right in line with its folding competitors.
08:27Like the other two folding phones available in the US,
08:29Pixel Fold, $1,800.
08:31Samsung Z Fold 5, $1,800.
08:34So this one's actually kind of a bargain.
08:36That's the most obvious thing, holding these back,
08:38because they're still so expensive.
08:40But then number two, durability is also questionable at best.
08:44Now, of course, they do all the testing that they can.
08:47And guess what?
08:48They've got IPX4 water resistance, which is nice.
08:51And they have a durability rating for a million folds of the hinge.
08:55And that's great.
08:56But then what about these dead pixels
08:58that have started appearing at the bottom middle of my screen,
09:01right around the hinge?
09:02I had this one for three weeks and babied it.
09:05And this is already starting to show up on mine.
09:07It doesn't mean it's going to be bad for everyone,
09:09but that's not great.
09:11And I suspect it's not going to happen on non-folding phones.
09:14But the third and final reason folding phones,
09:17as great as they've been getting,
09:19aren't necessarily translating to mainstream success,
09:22is that they're power user phones.
09:25Folding and unfolding is a power user feature.
09:28And power user features, as much as we love them,
09:32don't sell a ton of phones.
09:33We figured this out many times when LG spent years and years
09:37making some of the most manually adjustable cameras
09:39in the smartphone world.
09:40And now they don't make smartphones anymore.
09:42And we still have Sony,
09:43who can't stop making professional cameras
09:45in a smartphone body,
09:46but their sales are putting them in danger of the same thing.
09:50And Asus Zenfones are absolutely incredible right now
09:54for enthusiasts like myself,
09:55but they've already thrown a head fake.
09:57Clearly they're not doing super well either.
10:00I'd honestly be willing to bet,
10:01without even being able to look into anyone's books,
10:03that the folding phones are not at the top of sales
10:08in any of the lineups of any of the companies
10:10who are making these things.
10:11Probably the most compelling folding phone hardware
10:14I've seen yet is this Honor phone.
10:16This thing's called the Honor Magic V2.
10:20Bro, look at this thing.
10:21This, it's super thin.
10:23It has all the right things in all the right places.
10:25It's got a 3D printed titanium hinge cover,
10:28barely showing any crease when it's open.
10:31Thin bezels, nice screens all the way around.
10:34Somehow it has a 5,000 milliamp hour battery inside
10:37and high-end specs.
10:38Playing with this phone over almost anything else,
10:42over even Samsung's,
10:43has helped me appreciate what folding phone hardware
10:47can actually be.
10:48But despite all that awesomeness,
10:49it still has those kind of obvious downsides
10:52for a regular person
10:53to probably not pick it over a regular phone.
10:56The price, it's like 1,400 bucks.
10:58The durability, potentially compromised, we don't know.
11:02And then even though it is thin and awesome,
11:04it's still just like the power user thing
11:07of wanting to carry a slightly thicker phone around
11:09and have that extra ability
11:10is not something everyone sees as obvious
11:13and something they actually want.
11:15We are starting to finally see
11:16some of those flipping phones
11:17come at least closer to the mainstream
11:20because they are lower in price.
11:22The Z Flip 5 is down to 1,000 bucks from Samsung.
11:25And Motorola just launched their most affordable flip yet.
11:28The Razr 40, I think, is launching soon at 600 bucks.
11:32So that seems to be getting closer,
11:34but it's just we need a lot more of that stuff.
11:37So folding phones are simultaneously very evolved
11:42from their beginnings just a few years ago
11:45and yet still have a long way to go.
11:48So I guess until we get there,
11:51it's more fun for us nerds.
11:53Thanks for watching.
11:54Catch you in the next one.
11:55Peace.