It’s been well over a year since we first got our hands on the OnePlus Open, and now it seems rumors of a successor are heating up. Parent company Oppo seems to have confirmed a February launch window for its next foldable, the Find N5, with a teaser on Weibo. This launch window will likely only apply to China, but we expect this new phone will launch worldwide later on as the OnePlus Open 2.
I’m a noted fan of the original OnePlus Open, which proved to me that foldables were more than just their touted potential. And after two happy months with the OnePlus Open as my daily driver I understood its spot on our list of the best foldable phones.
That said, there’s a few reasons why I’m writing about the Open in the past tense – the phone has a few rough edges that eventually led to me switching back to slab phones. My curiosity for the folding form factor hasn’t wavered, though, and I recently found myself booting up the Open, wondering if I could make the switch back.
Word of a new revision on the horizon makes this question burn even brighter. As our OnePlus 13 review and OnePlus 13R review find, OnePlus is smashing it out of the park in the standard phone world at the moment. So I’m hopeful the company can continue that run with its folding devices: here are 5 things I want to see from the OnePlus Open 2.
A bigger, better battery
One of the most noticeable trade-offs to using a folding phone is a diminished battery life as compared to a similarly-specced slab phone, and the OnePlus Open is no different.
Though the Open can get you through a day of use, you’ll certainly end up watching your battery percentage more than you would using a comparatively priced slab phone.
Part of this is down to the physical constraints of a device that’s split in two by a hinge. The mechanics take up valuable internal space, and two cells are rarely as efficient as a single unified battery.
However, we’re at something of a turning point when it comes to battery tech. Phone makers are beginning to phase out lithium-ion based batteries in favor of silicon-carbon battery designs, which have a much greater energy density and therefore can hold more charge in the same amount of space. I’ve been lucky to try out this new tech for myself via the Oppo Find X8 Pro, which has such great battery life that it’s fundamentally changed the way I think about charging my phone (albeit with a 25% larger cell than the OnePlus Open).
As a subsidiary of Oppo, it tracks that OnePlus could benefit from the Find series’ battery boosts, and a high starting price will hopefully give the company the necessary resource headroom to fit the phone with a silicon carbon battery. Modern flagship phones have to be all-day devices, and it’d do the Open well to be able to truly keep up.
A lighter build
Use the OnePlus Open one-handed for long enough, and you’ll have a few thoughts: “Wow, this screen is massive”, “I wonder how they made it?”, and, eventually, “damn, this thing is kind of heavy”.
Even as TechRadar’s resident phones and tablets writer, I wouldn’t recommend using your phone for extremely long periods of time without a break, but with that said the 239g OnePlus Open is noticeably weighty during anything more than a quick scroll.
For comparison, the iPhone 16 Pro Max weighs in at 227g, while the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra weighs in at 232g. Both phones have a larger display (6.9-inch and 6.8-inch respectively) than the 6.31-inch external display on the OnePlus Open, which speaks to the latter’s sheer density.
Additionally, the whole folding thing essentially prohibits the Open from offering decent one-handed ergonomics, as it’s got a lot more depth and bulk than a typical flagship. Again, that’s part of the trade-off of using a folding phone, and ideally the large inner screen gets most of a user’s attention, but it’d still be nice to have an easier time using the phone when folded.
Thankfully, the latest rumors are hopeful. We previously reported that the OnePlus Open 2 could be the world’s new thinnest folding phone at launch, besting the 4.35mm unfolded thickness of the Honor Magic V3, while GSMArena a reports that the frame of the Open 2 could make use of titanium, which is substantially lighter than the stainless steel u for the current-gen Open.
Even better cameras
This one might be pushing it – at launch, the OnePlus Open bucked the trend of folding phone cameras by offering users a genuinely up-to-date flagship camera system, at a time where people and critics alike were feeling slightly underwhelmed by the nerfed triple-camera setup found on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, and now the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
For reference, the OnePlus Open sports a 48MP main camera, 48MP ultrawide camera, and 64MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom – from experience, I can tell you that’s up there with the best phone cameras I’ve ever used – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.
Times have changed in the year or so since, though, and the competition is starting to get, well, competitive. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold comes equipped with a 5x telephoto camera, and the aforementioned Honor Magic V3 comes with a suite of fantastically useful cameras.
More than that, the rest of the industry is moving forwards at an absolutely pace when it comes to photography – just look at the incredible picture samples found in our Xiaomi 14 Ultra review, Oppo Find X8 Pro review, or Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review. The fewer compromises a folding phone presents to a user, the better, and I’d like to see the OnePlus Open 2 make the most of its headstart on photography.
A software safety net
The 7.82-inch inner display found on the OnePlus Open is its defining and best feature, but it brings a unique challenge when it comes to optimization. Not every app you’ll find on the Google Play Store is optimized for foldable devices, especially older apps and games, which means apps can become hard to use or even crash entirely when switching from the outer display to the inner panel.
It’d be ridiculous to ask every developer to prepare their apps for the ultimately niche folding phone sector, but perhaps OnePlus could take up some of the slack by implementing a software safety net of sorts with the OnePlus Open 2, that allows the inner or outer display to continue running unoptimized apps in their original aspect ratio when the user switches to either display.
I’m not a developer by any means, so forgive me if this is outright impossible – but if this kind of display awareness is doable, it would be encouraging to those concerned about running their favorite apps on a folding phone while taking advantage of the flexibility of the platform.
A higher IP rating
Folding phones like the OnePlus Open are mechanically far more complex than a traditional phone, and have multiple moving parts that require a decent amount of space to operate. Unfortunately, this means there’s little chance of a folding phone ever having an IP68 rating – at least not with current technology.
The OnePlus Open has an IP rating of IPX4, which translates to resistance to splashes of water but no protection from solid particles whatsoever – beachgoers beware.
This is one of the few categories where the OnePlus Open is properly lagging behind. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 manages an IP48 rating – submersible with resistance to 1mm-wide particles, while the Pixel 9 Pro Fold can handle a dip but can’t deal with dust.
This is another one of those issues where you can’t ask for the world, but Samsung has proved that better durability is possible. Most flagship phone users haven’t really thought about durability for years now – other than the occasional drop on the sidewalk – so getting closer to the industry standard IP68 certification would be a welcome upgrade for the OnePlus Open 2.
OnePlus has yet to reveal any official information about the rumored OnePlus Open sequel, other than a February launch window – we’ll be eagerly reporting on the latest updates via our dedicated OnePlus phones coverage.
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jamie.richards@futurenet.com (Jamie Richards)
