Three out of four companies in the BBK Electronics group have, will have, or will soon have a foldable smartphone in range. Oppo is the only one to have it already, that Find N made official at the end of last year whose marketing is still limited to the home market, the Chinese one, but which we have already had the opportunity to try in preview. Vivo will soon have it: the X Fold launch event will be on April 11th.
Realme and OnePlus are missing. First, everything is silent, and it is also understandable in light of the positioning on the market. The company has made its way with products with a great value for money, while the folding, despite its popularity has grown over time, remains a niche object, with still high production costs. Realme’s public would hardly welcome a € 1,000 product well, so the company will have to wait for them to become cheaper to produce and it will likely take several months, if not years.
OnePlus, on the other hand, was born with the same strategy as Realme but over the years it has taken on the characteristics of a different company. It already has very expensive products in the range such as the OnePlus 10 Pro (and expects 10 Ultra ) and a fairly heterogeneous fan base. This is why it is not difficult to believe in Yogesh Brar’s indiscretion, according to which the company is working on a folding smartphone that should be quite similar, if not identical, to Oppo Find N. The confidence of the informant, however, it concludes here.
No further information, no hypotheses on how long we will have to wait before it materializes. But if it were to actually be a “copy”, to quote Brar, of Find N it could arrive soon, and would therefore be an Oppo Find N, with a different package and name, destined for international markets, where the Oppo leaflet never arrives.
The move would not surprise too much in light of the deep synergies between OnePlus and Oppo, but frankly, it seems unlikely that Oppo, which since its debut in the West has positioned itself as a company attentive to innovation, after having also tried Find N to the international press wants to sell his jewel to another company, even if part of the same family.
Time will give us answers. After all, if OnePlus is really working on a similar project, we are sure that we will be back to talk about it soon.