A phone maker can rarely repeatedly surprise you, but Oppo and OnePlus have done that with their folding phones. The OnePlus Open — OnePlus’s first foldable and based on the Oppo Find N3 — has been widely regarded as the best folding phone since its launch in October 2013.

The successor was meant to be the Oppo Find N5. I’ve spent the past month using Oppo’s latest folding phone, and it’s my favorite folding phone right now. It offers a significantly improved experience over the OnePlus Open, but there’s one problem: you can’t buy it.

Just days before the Find N5 launch, Oneplus announced that it wouldn’t launch a folding phone in the US this year, essentially also handing the US market to Samsung and Google. I’ve used the Find N5 for the past month, and it stands out in many ways, just like the original OnePlus Open did. Here’s why it would be the perfect OnePlus Open 2.

Why the Oppo Find N5 is my favorite foldable

Oppo has perfected the hardware design of the Oppo Find N5. At 4.21 mm thick when unfolded, it’s the world’s thinnest folding phone, yet it has the fastest charging, the biggest battery, and the smallest crease on the main display of any folding phone.

The triple-camera setup has two flagship-quality main and telephoto sensors and an ultrawide that leaves something to be desired. The 50MP main sensor is comparable to the Oppo Find X8 Pro, as is the 50MP telephoto, which offers 3x optical zoom and can take excellent photos even at 30x zoom. The 8MP Ultrawide is technically a downgrade from the OnePlus Open, but it is one of only a few downsides to a compelling product.

The 8.12-inch main display is the largest of any folding phone and larger than the 8-inch display found on the iPad Mini. Like the OnePlus Open, the Find N5 is equipped with Open Canvas, a virtualized multitasking feature that expands your screen to run multiple large app windows side-by-side. Both displays also support stylus use, a feat unique to the Find N5 compared to the competition.

The Oppo Find N5 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor — albeit the 7-core version — and has 16GB of RAM with 256GB or 512GB of storage. The 5,600 mAh battery is the largest of any book-style folding phone, with 80W wired and 50W wireless charging.

The Oppo Find N5 is one of the most feature-rich phones I’ve ever used, so I believe it was a mistake not to launch it in more markets. There’s just one fairly large problem to overcome.

How the Find N5 compares to the competition

The appeal of the Find N5 is how much further it pushes folding phones from the key competition. It sets new expectations for thickness, battery life,  and charging, bringing folding phone cameras closer to the non-folding competition.

At 4.21mm thick when unfolded and 8.78mm when folded, it’s thinner than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Samsung’s latest foldable measures 5.6mm thick when unfolded and over 3mm thicker than the Oppo Find N5 when folded. Meanwhile, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold measures 5.1mm thick when unfolded and 10.5mm when folded, making it thinner than Samsung’s folding phone but considerably thicker than the Oppo Find N5.

Until the Find N5, it was widely accepted that folding phones would be thicker, but the Find N5 is the least compromised and has changed my expectations for future folding phones. It’s just 0.6mm thicker than the iPhone 16 Pro, and I’ve often mistaken the two in my pockets.

The camera won’t beat the best phone cameras but is comparable to other book-style folding phones. Here’s how the camera stacks up to the chief competition:

The main camera across all devices is fairly standard, and all offer 3x or 5x optical zoom through a telephoto or periscope telephoto lens. All three companies have opted to use similar camera sensors on the ultrawide, which are all less capable than the 50MP sensors used by their non-folding cousins.

The biggest issue with the Oppo Find N5

My Oppo Find N5 review featured a few negatives, such as the ultrawide camera and the need for a proprietary charger to achieve the fastest charging speeds. Yet, the biggest issues are the lack of availability and the price. Simply put, it’s expensive.

Outside of China, the Find N5 is currently only available in Singapore and costs SG$2,499, which equates to $1,870 US dollars. However, a higher bill-of-materials cost — the raw cost of the components — plus the local cost around marketing, logistics, and supply chain, as well as local taxes, fees, and tariffs, means it would likely be more expensive in the US.

OnePlus, in particular, is known for offering more value for money in its devices. These devices are usually the same price with better features or provide the same feature set at a better price for consumers.

The higher cost of the materials in the Oppo Find N5 means it would have to launch at a higher price than the competition, which goes against the characteristics that make OnePlus successful. Ultimately, I suspect this was a key reason the Find N5 is not launching in more markets.

Price is the final frontier still to cross

The Oppo Find N5 has the ideal form factor for a folding phone and ticks the boxes for the perfect folding phone in terms of design, battery life, and productivity. Unfortunately, it suffers from the same problem as the competition: the best folding phones can cost twice the price of a non-folding phone.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold starts at $1,799, while the Galaxy Z Fold 6 starts at $1,899 in the US. While both companies offer considerable trade-in deals and promotions through carrier partners, these are still too expensive for most people.

These will ultimately be niche products until folding phone technology is available at a lower price. This ultimately disappoints consumers because it means that the competition doesn’t have to innovate as much, and we’re no closer to the best folding phones becoming accessible to more people.