Oppo’s first foldable smartphone, the Oppo Find N, was released last year in the Chinese market after years of development. It debuted at a price of 7,699 yuan (around Kshs 135,000), which made it considerably cheaper than the Galaxy Fold 3 which has the same form factor.
In a move that will mirror Samsung, serial leaker Digital Chat Station on his Weibo page has revealed that the Chinese company is now working on their next foldable device, which will have a clamshell form factor (flip phone design) similar to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 3.
According to Digital Chat Station, the foldable will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ chip and will retail at around CNY 5,000 (around Kshs 87,000). This price point, should it be true, will be extremely competitive against other foldables with the clamshell form factor.
The Huawei P50 Pocket, for example, retails at $1360 (around Kshs 158,000) in China while the Galaxy Z Flip 3 starts at $1,119 (around Kshs 130,000) in the same country.
The leaker fails to provide more information about the rumoured foldable, therefore things like the storage, camera set up and dimensions are still up in the air unless Oppo decides to release them when we get closer to the release.
Taking a look at the Oppo Find N, which the new foldable is bound to heavily borrow from, the Find N has a 5.49-inch full HD display with an 18:9 aspect ratio when folded. When you unfold it, you get a 7.1-inch OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 1000 nits peak brightness, and an 8.4:9 aspect ratio.
The Find N runs on the last gen’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset with a RAM configuration that tops out at 12 GB and internal storage maxing out at 512 GB.
As is normally the case in foldable smartphones, the battery is comparatively small at only 4500 mAh and has 33W fast charging.
The clamshell form factor of the unannounced foldable guarantees the screen sizes will be different from the ones in the Oppo Find N, but I expect the rest of the specs to be more or less the same.
We will update you the moment Digital Chat Station shows up with more information, or Oppo decides to reveal their new clamshell foldable to the world.
