It’s been almost a year since OPPO announced the Find N5. Technically, it was made official at a launch event in Singapore on February 20, 2025, so we’re a little over 11 months since it was released. And as we start seeing rumors about the Find N6 – which is expected to launch in Q1 of 2026 – I thought it was a good idea to pick up the Find N5 again.
And after a few days using it again, I came back to the same conclusion I did from my review last February – it’s the best foldable on the market. In fact, in my OPPO Find N5 review, I said that OPPO “fixed everything wrong with foldables,” and I stand by that.
OPPO made the Find N5 impossibly thin while still sporting a top-tier chipset in the Snapdragon 8 Elite. It also has one of the best camera setups on a foldable, and we can’t forget about the massive 5,600mAh capacity battery.
So, how does the OPPO Find N5 stack up a year later to other foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold? Let’s talk about it.
The most comfortable foldable to use
When I first got the Find N5 last year, I had a hard time using it without a case. Because it is so thin. Keep in mind that it is about 4.2mm thick when unfolded and 8.9mm when folded. This was really the first foldable that was truly that thin. Sure, the HONOR Magic V3 had come out beforehand, but it was not 4.2mm; it was actually about 4.4mm and rounded. Which makes a huge difference compared to the Find N5’s flat sides.
Even after I got used to it, I still often used it with a case. Specifically, the MagSafe case that OPPO provided to those of us who attended the launch event in Singapore. It’s a better case than what comes in the box and much more grippy. But lately, I’ve been using it more and more without the case on board. And it honestly feels really good in the hand.
I don’t want a super thin foldable, for when it’s unfolded, it’s actually more useful when it’s folded. You see, at 8.9mm folded, it is about the same thickness as my iPhone 17 Pro Max, which is my main device. And that makes a difference. Just going back a couple of years, the Find N2 was a massive 7.4mm unfolded and 14.6mm when folded. Which is incredibly thick by 2026’s standards. So it shows that OPPO (and the rest of the industry) has come a long way.
One of the major turnoffs for me with foldables was the thickness and the weight. The thickness has been addressed, and the weight a little bit. Comparing the Find N2 to the Find N5, there’s only a 4g weight-loss here. Which isn’t a lot. But we are seeing much larger batteries here. And thanks to silicon-carbon for making that possible.
Now, let’s talk about how the hardware has held up. My Find N5 has a ton of scratches. A big reason for this is that I was wearing a smart ring on my index finger when I first started using the Find N5. Which scratched the screen when I was using the device open, and also scratched some of the camera lens. It’s unfortunate, but something I’ve noticed with a lot of OPPO, OnePlus, and realme devices. The glass seems to be a lot softer than other devices. My Galaxy Z Fold 7, for instance, has zero scratches. But it also hasn’t been used anywhere near as much.
In fact, my OPPO Find X9 Pro got its screen scratched by touching the OnePlus 15 for about 5 seconds. It’s definitely a different type of glass than what most OEMs use here in the US.
For this reason, I’ve stopped wearing smart rings. Other than that, the hardware has held up really well. Even the display. That main folding display still looks amazing, and the crease looks just as minimal as it did the day I took it out of the box.
Color OS 16 brought some unwanted changes
In late 2025, OPPO pushed out the Color OS 16 update (based on Android 16). This did bring over a few changes that many of us were not fond of. The biggest one is the home screen. You can only have four icons across now, when you could have five before Color OS 16. There are also a few other annoyances, but I still think this is the best foldable software available.
OPPO’s Boundless View (or Open Canvas if you’re a OnePlus user) is superb. It’s so good in fact, that Google basically copied it and put it into Android 16. So now all foldables can use this type of multi-windowing.
But where OPPO’s software really stands out for me is with O+ Connect. Originally, this was for macOS only, but it has since opened up for Windows. Essentially, it brings all of your favorite Apple ecosystem features to your OPPO Find N5. Like Airdrop, you can easily move files from your Find N5 to an iPhone or a Mac, also control your Mac from your Find N5, and much more. It’s really useful, and somehow, Apple hasn’t patched this or blocked it yet.
While Samsung’s One UI feels more mature on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Color OS 16 just has more of the features I want on the OPPO Find N5 and other OPPO devices.
The camera is still superb
When I was sitting in the pre-briefing for the Find N5 last year, I was sad to learn that they had really nerfed the camera setup from the Find N3/OnePlus Open. OPPO went with smaller cameras to make the phone as thin as possible. But the primary sensor and telephoto were still quite good on paper. With a 50-megapixel primary sensor that’s 1/1.56″ and a 3x telephoto that’s also 50-megapixels. Though the Ultrawide did suffer here, dropping down to an 8-megapixel sensor. But this was the first phone that launched telemacro, so that ultrawide was almost omitted for me. I’ve probably used it three times over the past year.
OPPO has sent out numerous updates over the past year, too many to really count, and the camera is still superb. I’ve used this as a camera at many events, including MWC in Barcelona, IFA in Berlin, and even at Unpacked last year when Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Fold 7. And it hasn’t let me down. In fact, I even used it at the Find N5 event last year, talk about meta.
No, it’s not the best camera in the world, that belongs to the vivo X300 Pro, OPPO Find X9 Pro, or Huawei Pura 80 Ultra for now. But as far as foldables go, it’s definitely one of the best – vivo’s X Fold 5 might be better, but I never got to test it out.
Here are some recent camera samples from the OPPO Find N5:
Battery life is still jaw-dropping good
While I probably used the OPPO Find N5 more than any other Android phone this year, it was still not my daily driver. Because of iMessage and some Mac-specific features, my main SIM stays in my iPhone. But the Find N5 did get used more than virtually any other phone I’ve had over the past year, and my battery health is still at 100%. Unfortunately, Color OS does not show you how many charge cycles you have, like Google does on the Pixel or the iPhone in iOS.
But as far as I can tell, the battery life hasn’t dropped that much. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 on the other hand, has. I was using that recently, during CES, and found that the battery life has dropped quite considerably, and it’s only been about six months since launch. So this is good news for the OPPO Find N5.
When it first launched last year, I was getting nearly 10 hours of on-screen time on a single charge with no issue. Of course, if you use the outer screen more than the folding display, that helps with battery life, and there’s no real way to see how much of each screen you used. But my usage is generally about 60-40, 60% cover display and 40% main display.
Below, you’ll find a screenshot from last February of my battery life. Which was a little over 9 hours of screen on time with about 5% left. Next to a screenshot of my battery life from this past week.
It’s pretty similar. Of course, there is some battery degradation, but it’s still way better battery life than the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Of course, it also has bigger batteries than both. And when you do need to recharge, it does still have 80W charging.
Revisiting the OPPO Find N5 has made me more excited for the upcoming Find N6. Honestly, going into last year, the Find N5 was really the only phone I was truly excited for. Being in this industry for this long, it’s hard to get excited about new phones, especially when they get so few changes year-over-year now. But OPPO has been putting out banger after banger after banger on all of its smartphone lineups. From the Reno series to the Find X and the Find N.
The OPPO Find N6 has already hit certification bodies in a few countries, so we know that the launch is very soon. We are just hoping that OPPO doesn’t limit it to a handful of countries. The Find N5 only made it (officially) to about 5 countries. Officially, it launched in Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Mexico. Which is a sort of weird set of countries, and you’ll notice, nothing about Europe. Hoping that it is different this year, especially now that OPPO is no longer banned from selling in Germany.
We should be getting our hands on a unit of the Find N6 soon, around its launch, so you’ll want to stay tuned for the latest.
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