New OnePlus Open Takes the Next Step With a Bright, Light, High-Powered Foldable

The OnePlus Open is a fantastic first folding phone from OnePlus, the folks that consistently make very good phones for less than their competitors.

The Open, however, isn't a budget phone. Rather, this is a full-on folding phone in the vein of Samsung's Z Fold5. The Open goes from a sleek single screen to a mini tablet with ease, giving you an amazing inner screen to surf the web, play games, or watch movies in all their Dolby Vision glory.

The phone is sleek and light, a little smaller than my iPhone 15 Pro Max when folded, but super thin and rigid when open. It feels solid in the hand in both configurations, and while it's a tiny bit thicker than the iPhone when folded, it fits nicely in my front pocket. The extra ounce of weight is also negligible.

Ultimately, the OnePlus Open is a phone I loved using for the weeks I carried it around. The fancy specs and engineering built into the device are impressive, sure, but what makes this a recommend from me is how it all just, well, works.

Camera Magic

The company continues its partnership with Hasselblad, providing a stunningly large camera on the back of the device. It's simply gorgeous if you like big camera bumps, and the pictures it takes are really good, too. It's got a 48MP main camera with Sony's "Dual-Layer Transistor Pixel" technology, which helps it perform better in low light at a smaller size than a traditional sensor.

There's also a 64MP telephoto camera with 3X Optical and a 6X in-sensor zoom that performs admirably in daylight but can be a little rough around the edges in the dark. That said, the 6X zoom is a handy little preset to use when you want to get closer to your subject without, well, walking closer to them.

The back camera array also includes a 48MP "ultra-wide" lens that lets you zoom out and capture a lot more of the scene than typical of the main camera. Selfie lovers get a 20MP camera in tablet mode and a 32MP lens while in normal closed mode. Compare that to the iPhone 15 Pro Max's 12MP camera.

One of the coolest little camera features, though, is how you can unfold the Open and place your selfie preview on the outer screen. In other words, you can use the fancy cameras on the back of the device and see yourself on the main phone screen, now to the right of the camera in open mode. Selfies with the better camera never looked so good.

Screens Bright, Battery Strong

Let's be honest, the screens on this device are simply stunning. Both the outer and the inner screens can hit a brightness of 2800 nits, which is even better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max's 2504 nits. That gives you a bright screen in the sunlight, whether you're using the Open in open or closed single screen mode.

Viewing Netflix in Dolby Vision side by side with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, the Open feels a little brighter and more contrast-y, for lack of a better term. It might not be as warm as a display, but the Open screens are fantastic for pretty much anything I threw at them in any lighting conditions.

The battery is pretty fantastic, as well, at 4,805mAh (my iPhone has 4,422mAh), which translates into a phone that lasts me pretty much all day with standard use. The best part, though, is the fast charging, which happens when you use the included 67W charging block. I could consistently charge to 100 percent in less than an hour, which changes the game for charging. I never worried about getting too low since I could just top off the battery in mere minutes. It's great technology in service of how we actually use our phones.

The one omission here, though, is wireless charging, which is a bummer but not the end of the world (the OnePlus 11 is similarly bereft). If you require wireless charging, though, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Software Is the Key

Now, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm an iOS guy, through and through. I've considered switching to Android here and there when I get to try out various devices for my job, but I always feel a sense of relief when I go back to my iPhones. iOS, to me, is just more elegant, more user-friendly, and more comprehensible to the average person than Android is.

That said, a folding device has a couple of hurdles to overcome in terms of usability. It has to be a version of Android that feels usable, and it has to translate to the larger screen without any jankiness. The OnePlus Open sports the company's OxygenOS 13.2 and what it calls Open Canvas, a system (created in collaboration with Google) that works to avoid Android's traditional difficulties with larger tablet screens.

The results are simply fantastic. There's a lot of joy in using the Open like a standard non-folding phone, then flipping open to the tablet view and just continuing what you were doing, only on a bigger canvas. The reverse might even be cooler—simply fold your mini-tablet in half and use it one-handed like a regular phone.

There's a multitasking system built in, too, which makes the tablet mode even more attractive. You can put up to three apps at once on your screen, just moving them around at will. There's even a little dock-like taskbar that appears when in tablet mode, too, which makes finding your apps much easier.

One Plus claims that 95 percent of mainstream apps work with the new tablet mode, and I never found anything that didn't. I was able to use every app I played with in tablet mode and in split view, whether I had two or three apps open at once. It's a very nice system and, again, just works.

You Get What You Pay For

Getting this kind of quality in a folding phone doesn't come cheap, of course.

The base price of the OnePlus Open is a staggering $1699.99 USD ($2299.99 CAD), which makes sense for the first entry from a company focused on making the best quality folding phone possible. Heck, the latest Samsung Z Fold 5 starts at $1799, too.

OnePlus does want to help out, though, and it's offering up to $1000 off with certain trade-ins. It's even willing to just pull $200 off the top for any phone you want to send in, regardless of condition, a deal that the company promises to honor throughout the lifespan of the Open.

If you pre-order on OnePlus.com today through October 25, you can also get a free pair of limited edition white Buds Pro 2 along with three months of YouTube Premium and six months of Google One 100GB membership.

The OnePlus Open goes on sale for everyone on October 26, with the $200 trade-in offer, and up to $1000 off with "eligible trade-in" as well. You can also get the free Buds Pro 2 in white until they're gone (the company only made 5,000 of them).

All that aside, if you want a premium folding phone experience with amazing tech that just plain works, you'll want to check out the OnePlus Open right away.