We are all too familiar with the practice that before any product hits the final stage of design, there are tons of concepts thrown away that didn’t make the cut. Unapproved designs always end up in a bin never to be seen again by anyone, but Oppo wanted to see what people think of their early designs of the Find N3 Fold before it made it to the market.
Twitter/X post that had comments on this old design came straight from Oppo’s chief product officer “Pete Lau” saying that these designs were close to their product vision but didn’t end up in the market.
A solid coat of paint is all the Oppo new foldable phone has in a unicolor body of Gold or Black, but the design they worked on early had accents, like the side metal strip. There would’ve been three colors Black, green, and Blue, and the last one having a white metallic coat.
They might have shared these deleted designs now to prelude that the inspiration for their next foldable could come from these. And for those thinking about what’s next, Oppo might skip over N4, jump straight to Find N5 Fold, and maybe store a 6000mAh battery in it.
OnePlus Open 2 will end up being a rebranded Oppo Find N5 Fold and will see the same battery cap and they might each have Snapdragon 8 Gen 4s. We did see the same thing happen with the current OnePlus Open and Oppo Find N3, so the speculations don’t feel misplaced for the next-gen.