The first thing most people seem to do when they try out a foldable phone I’m reviewing is look for the crease in the screen. In the case of Oppo’s Find N6, it might take them a while.
Oppo claims that the Find N6, launching in full next week on March 17th, has the world’s first “zero-feel crease” foldable display. Let’s get one thing out of the way early: “zero” is pushing it.
You can feel the crease on this phone, but only barely, and only when you’re really thinking about it. You can see it too, but only in the right light, at the right angle, and you sort of have to squint a little to spot it. This is the least obtrusive crease I’ve found on any foldable yet, so subtle that I really struggle to imagine how it could bother anyone.
The main way Oppo has achieved the subtler crease is actually pretty cool: 3D liquid printing. The company says that the crease results primarily from height variations on the surface of the hinge underneath, and so it solved the problem by trying to remove those variations. The hinge is scanned by a laser to detect the points where the surface is uneven, then a photosensitive polymer is printed to fill those spaces, and hardened with a blast of UV light. Oppo says it repeats that process more than 20 times, resulting in average surface variations of just 0.05mm — thinner than a human hair.
Oppo also claims the Find N6’s crease should stay hard to spot throughout the phone’s life, rather than worsening over time. To that end, it’s using a slightly thicker type of foldable glass, which is more resistant to deformation and recovers its shape better too. That’s obviously hard for me to assess after a few days with the phone — though the company showed me a phone it claimed had been folded 200,000 times, and its crease felt no different than my review unit’s fresh out of the box.
With the phone’s full launch not for another week, Oppo is keeping quiet about most of the Find N6’s other specs. The company has only confirmed that it’ll have at least one 200-megapixel camera; stylus support; and IP56, IP58, and IP59 ratings for dust and water protection — meaning it falls short of the Honor Magic V6’s IP69 rating and the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s IP68. It’s thin too, about the same size as last year’s slim Find N5 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Oh, and it’ll come in the silvery color of my review unit, plus an inevitable iPhone-ish orange.
We’ll find out more details on March 17th, when the company claims the Find N6 will get a “global” launch — though since last year’s Find N5 only launched in China and a select few Asian markets, there’s no guarantee just how global the launch will really be.
Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge
