OnePlus Open Review: This Folding Phone Puts All Others On Notice
OnePlus Open Audio Quality, Performance, And Battery Life
We used the Oneplus Open on T-Mobile and Telus’ sub-6GHz 5G and 4G LTE
networks in New York City, San Francisco, and Vancouver (Canada), and we
didn’t run into any issues with calls and data speeds. This dual-SIM phone
also works fine on AT&T and Verizon’s networks, but lacks mmWave 5G.
Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker, but it’s a little unfortunate
considering the Galaxy Z Fold5 and Pixel Fold support those bands.
OnePlus Open Bottom Edge
On the audio front, the Open features excellent quad speakers (with Dolby
Atmos) that sound surprisingly loud and clear. There’s no headphone jack
here, but this handset supports both analog and digital audio devices over
USB Type-C, so your wired listening experience is just a dongle away. And
if you prefer going wireless, there are aptX HD, LDAC, and LHDC codecs for
high quality audio over Bluetooth.
OnePlus Open Audio, Data, and Call Reception
OnePlus Open Performance
Under the hood, the OnePlus Open uses Qualcomm’s flagship 4nm
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, and delivers blazing performance to match. As
you’d expect, it juggled our standard assortment of productivity, social
media, entertainment, and gaming apps without skipping a beat. A single
configuration is available, with 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0
storage. There’s no microSD support.
Subjective performance is one thing, but as you can see in our benchmarks below, the Open holds its own, with test results generally matching other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-equipped handsets. What’s even more impressive is that we didn’t observe any significant thermal throttling during 3DMark’s Wild Life stress test. The Open achieved a stability score of 99.6% after twenty iterations of this benchmark.
Subjective performance is one thing, but as you can see in our benchmarks below, the Open holds its own, with test results generally matching other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-equipped handsets. What’s even more impressive is that we didn’t observe any significant thermal throttling during 3DMark’s Wild Life stress test. The Open achieved a stability score of 99.6% after twenty iterations of this benchmark.
OnePlus Open Geekbench Results
GeekBench is a purely synthetic benchmark and can be heavily targeted
for optimization. Regardless, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor delivers a
notable improvement in single and multi-threaded performance over previous
generation Snapdragon
8 Gen 1-equipped Android flagships.
Recently, Geekbench was upgraded to version 6, which includes new ways
of testing multicore configurations and uses higher-resolution assets.
Since this benchmark is brand new, we don't have as many data points, but
as you can see, the OnePlus Open performed quite well in this test.
OnePlus Open PCMark For Android Benchmarks
Futuremark's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests if you
want to benchmark a wide range of tasks on any handset -- things like
image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty, everyday workloads such
as email and web browsing. When you see the test running live, it's clear
the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make
use of the each mobile platform in a very controlled way...
Here the OnePlus Open shows similar performance to previous generation
models, slotting just above the OnePlus 11 5G.
OnePlus Open AnTuTu 8 Benchmark Results
AnTuTu’s latest benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with
somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete.
Here we're running AnTuTu 8 across multiple Android
devices. AnTuTu returns four top level performance results which are all
included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total
score...
According to AnTuTu, the OnePlus Open offers a slight increase in
performance vs. previous generation Android handsets, coming close to
matching the Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip5 in terms of its overall score.
However, in AITuTu, which is specifically an image recognition and classification benchmark for AI and machine learning workloads, we see a different picture. Here there are big gains for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powered devices like the OnePlus Open, putting it near the top, right alongside the Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold5.
However, in AITuTu, which is specifically an image recognition and classification benchmark for AI and machine learning workloads, we see a different picture. Here there are big gains for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powered devices like the OnePlus Open, putting it near the top, right alongside the Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold5.
3D Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks With The OnePlus Open
Next we're checking how the OnePlus Open compares in GFXBench, which
has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks
for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't
limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench
tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL
ES 2.0 and 3.0.
Now we're seeing the kind of performance improvement we expected from
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-equipped devices like the OnePlus Open. This phone
clearly beats Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-powered devices like the ROG
Phone 6 in these graphically rich benchmarks.
Futuremark's 3DMark Sling Shot is a newer benchmark module that's been added to the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback.
Futuremark's 3DMark Sling Shot is a newer benchmark module that's been added to the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback.
3DMark Sling Shot Extreme Benchmark
We're running this test in off-screen mode once again to remove
display resolution differences from the equation. This lets us compare
cross-platform results more reliably...
Here we only see a slight improvement to the overall score over
Snapdragon 8 Gen-1-equipped flagships. Still, the OnePlus Open performed
extremely well in this test, slotting between the Galaxy Z Flip5 and the OnePlus 11 5G.
OnePlus Open 3DMark Wild Life Benchmark Tests
3DMark Wild Life is the latest cross-platform test from UL. Its
primary purpose is to measure GPU performance across platforms, and two
distinct tests are available. The standard Wild Life test is designed to
give feedback on how a game performs over a short period of time. With
mobile games, people typically play in brief spurts when they find some
free time; be it on the bus, on the subway, or a quick battle royale
session over lunch break. The 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test, on the other
hand, shows how a device performs over a longer stretch of time, and
takes note of performance degradation that might crop up due to
increased heat levels and throttling.
3DMark Wild Life is a significantly more taxing graphics benchmark
that employs cutting-edge mobile game engine technologies to deliver
impressive visuals -- as you can see in the screen shot above.
Here the
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered OnePlus Open delivers a massive improvement
in performance versus the fastest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-equipped devices,
and comes out right on the heels of the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, a
gaming phone that's also powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
Fortunately, the OnePlus Open does not exhibit the kind of excessive
throttling we experienced with other folding phones in the
Wild Life Stress test, managing a stability score of 99.6%. That's simply outstanding.
OnePlus Open Other Features and Battery Life
The rest of the specs are quite familiar, and include sub-6GHz 5G (SA /
NSA), CAT 22 LTE, eSIM support, tri-band WiFi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.3
(LE), NFC, and dual-band A-GPS/ GLONASS / Galileo / BeiDou / QZSS
positioning. In addition, the Open comes with the usual array of sensors,
a quality linear vibration motor for superior haptics, and a side-mounted
capacitive fingerprint sensor that’s quick and reliable. So is face
unlock.
Despite using a pair of cells split between the two halves of the phone, the Open’s battery capacity is a respectable 4805mAh. In fact, that’s one of the largest batteries currently fitted to any folding phone. And while the Open’s battery life doesn’t match today’s best flagships, it lasted 13 hours and 21 minutes on the inner screen in our PCMark Work 3.0 battery test. That’s outstanding for a folding phone
Despite using a pair of cells split between the two halves of the phone, the Open’s battery capacity is a respectable 4805mAh. In fact, that’s one of the largest batteries currently fitted to any folding phone. And while the Open’s battery life doesn’t match today’s best flagships, it lasted 13 hours and 21 minutes on the inner screen in our PCMark Work 3.0 battery test. That’s outstanding for a folding phone
On the charging front, the Open supports 67W wired fast charging via
Oppo’s proprietary SuperVOOC tech, along with USB-PD. This makes it one
of the fastest charging folding phones available today. Better yet,
there’s a 67W SuperVOOC charger in the box. Sadly, the Open lacks
wireless charging, which is a major omission – especially for a
high-end folding handset that costs $1699.
Next up: the software, pricing, and the review verdict...
