OPPO Find N3 Flip Manila + Shenzhen Dim and Night Shots - Simply stunning!

Even if it is an expensive one, flipping foldable smartphones in the past often had several limitations, especially in the camera department.

Find N3 Flip in the dark?

OPPO Find N3 Flip, an excellent low-light shooter?

Since manufacturers try to make the devices thinner when folded, the imaging sensors they use are usually weaker than their regular non-foldable flagship smartphones. As a result, some don't have that "flagship-level" photography performance, especially in challenging conditions like low light.

Chinese mobile giant OPPO aims to change that narrative.

To make it happen, they partnered with the legendary Swedish camera maker Hasselblad. They challenged their engineers to fit pretty strong camera sensors with proper color tuning on its new Find N3 Flip.

Find N3 Flip in the dark

In particular, the handset is packed with a large 50MP f/1.8 Sony IMX890 primary shooter with OIS and AF, 48MP f/2.2 Sony IMX581 114-degree ultra-wide with 4cm macro + 32MP f/2.0 Sony IMX709 2x telephoto + LED flash.

On paper, this is a pretty strong camera configuration justifying its PHP 64,990 price tag.

To check how good its cameras are, we tried shooting in more challenging lighting conditions like dim restaurant lighting and night shots from Manila, Philippines to Shenzhen, China.

Have a look.

OPPO Find N3 Flip Manila + Shenzhen Dim and Night Shots

Close-up 2x indoor dim 1

Close-up 2x indoor dim 2 

In usual restaurant lighting, the OPPO Find N3 Flip showed its flagship-level shooting performance. The shots I took at 2x zoom showed incredible details, great depth, and near-life-like colors. Even the microdetails like the texture of the food in the images above are still visible resulting in delicious-looking snaps.

Indoor dim selfie

While it has a pretty capable 32MP f/2.4 Sony IMX709 RGBW, one of the advantages of the OPPO Find N3 Flip is you can use its triple Hasselblad cameras to take high-quality selfies.

Low-light Portrait selfie

You can also use this mode to take advantage of the more advanced Portrait mode of its back cameras for selfies. As you can see, it has a realistic-looking bokeh effect with near-perfect edge detection.

BGC night shot 1

BGC night shot 2

BGC night shot 3

BGC night shot 4

At BGC, we really enjoyed using the device on cityscapes and the sceneries around. Similar to the other images we took, it was able to take shots with crisp details, great highlights, and a nice overall dynamic range.

AND look at how it handled the highlights. The lights were not overexposed and the colors were close to accurate-looking. Generally, the noise is minimal.

Another thing that I like here is you don't need to activate the Night mode each time you need to take a low-light shot. Its AI will automatically detect the scene and will use the Night mode when needed.

In photo: Gian of Gadget Pilipinas and Jam of JamOnline

In Shenzhen China, I used the OPPO Find N3 Flip as my main camera for media coverage and for travel photos.

In these shots, the handset showed why it is probably the best flip phone when it comes to taking Portrait shots in the dark. One of my Portrait low light shots was taken while my friend Jam was walking.

This shows that the device has fast autofocus and shooting speed even for moving subjects in the dark. Normally, camera phones tend to take images slower in the dark as they need a slower shutter to allow more light to reach the sensor. If the subject is moving, it can result in a blurry image. But as you can see, that is not with this particular Find N3 Flip shot.

Ultra-wide, 1x

2x, 5x

Likely due to its Hasselblad collaboration that specializes in improving OPPO's color science when taking photos and videos, the Find N3 Flip was able to take consistent-looking images in different focal points despite having 3 different sensors. AND yes, even the 5x digital zoom shot is still crisp with minimal noise.

1x, 2x

For the last photo, I just want to flex how great its cameras look even for 2x zoom shots. Just take a look at how vibrant the colors are and how crisp and nice it looks overall.

Quick thoughts

I'll keep it simple. I really enjoyed using the Find N3 Flip as an all-around photography phone. 

From experience, this is the best camera phone for photography among all the flip phones I've tried yet. Except for super zooming, this can compete with a lot of high-end camera phones today even in challenging conditions and low-light scenarios.

Basically, if you are looking for a flip phone with pretty capable shooting performance, the Find N3 Flip could be the right phone for the job.

What do you guys think?