I'm super pumped about this upcoming 2025 phone, and you should be too
This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
Foldable phones have been around for half a decade now. Not as prototypes, but as commercially available devices up for grabs on the market.
Once an intriguing rarity, these are now common and growing in market adoption, with some projections putting foldable phones at nearly 5% market penetration by 2028. A breakdown shows that Samsung is the undisputed leader with more than 50% of said market, closely followed by Huawei with 30% and Motorola behind with 8%.
Yet, as a phone reviewer who's handled a lot of foldable phones over those five odd years, I've only been impressed by a single one––the OnePlus Open.
Although it was the first OnePlus foldable phone, it seemed to do everything just right: it had a superb design with a thin and lightweight body, a dependable hinge, and no display crease. It also had a rather versatile camera system, excellent performance, superfast wired charging, and beautiful internal and external displays.
There was lots to love and little to dislike, and it was spades better than anything out there on the foldable market. Heck, even foldables released in 2024 can't really hold a candle to the OnePlus Open, which broke cover in October 2023. Yes, in my humble opinion, neither the Galaxy Z Fold 6, nor the Pixel 9 Pro Fold can truly hold a candle to the OnePlus Open.
Well, the problems for Samsung and Google won't stop here because the OnePlus Open 2 is coming.
OnePlus Open 2 is just around the corner, and I'm super excited about it
The sequel to what's arguably one of the finest foldable phones released so far is coming in early 2025. It will feature an exciting set of upgrades that will surely make it another success story.
Catwalk star
First and foremost, OnePlus will not change the winning team or move away from the general formula that the first OnePlus Open employed. The OnePlus Open 2 will inherit the same style but feature a thinner body.
According to some rumors, it might be around 9mm thin when folded, which is exceptional. As a point of reference, that's already comparable to standard flagship phones, like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is 8.6mm thin, or the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which is 8.25mm thin. I believe this would be the main selling point of OnePlus' next foldable, one that no other foldable available in the US will be able to match.
Great displays with no crease
Aside from that, some rumors call slightly larger screens on the OnePlus Open 2. We are likely talking about a slight increase, possibly below half an inch on both the external and internal screens. While the original OnePlus Open didn't feel like it needed larger displays (it had a 6.3-inch outer and an 8-inch inner screen), we can't say no to a potential upgrade in display size. If anything, it will make the phone a more appealing offering than its rivals.
What I'm most excited about, however, is the possibility of no crease on the inside screen. That sounds like a low bar for entry. Still, even the current generation of foldables available in the US, like the Z Fold 6 and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, suffer from the unsightly display canyon that ruins the inner screen for me. The first OnePlus Open was perfect in this case, and it's almost certain that the second-gen OnePlus Open 2 will carry on the crease-less legacy.
Power overwhelming
On the performance front, the upcoming foldable is also walking the path of success. It will most certainly feature Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which happens to be the first 3nm chipset available for Android devices.
This will put it ahead in terms of efficiency and overall performance against the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Tensor G4 chipsets, respectively.
OnePlus flagships have consistently delivered excellent performance. In my personal experience with those, I've never felt wanted for more. That's in part due to the OnePlus always employing top-end Qualcomm chips on its flagships, but also due to the super lightweight interface. Indeed, it's true the first OnePlus Open was slightly behind, but that's due to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on board, which is now two generations older.
This makes me think that the OnePlus Open 2 will become the yardstick against which all upcoming foldables will be measured.
Camera upgrades
Now, foldables don't get the best cameras, and that's pretty normal. The reason for that is the constrained space inside, which doesn't allow manufacturers to put the very best hardware they have on hand, and that's fine by me. After all, still photography and video recording aren't why people are buying foldables–it's the form factor that's more exciting. Manufacturers know that, so a slightly less impressive camera system is usually employed.
That said, rumors are that OnePlus could employ triple 50MP cameras at the rear. The new camera setup will most certainly improve on the 48MP wide, 48MP ultrawide, and 64MP 3X telephoto cameras found on the OnePlus Open; otherwise OnePlus wouldn't bother changing things up, would it?
The rumor mill says OnePlus intended a quad-camera setup (with a longer periscope camera), but it was too thick for the thin OnePlus Open 2 body.
I was pretty satisfied with the OnePlus Open's Hasselblad-tuned camera. Sure, it wasn't the best one around, but it was rather versatile, treating us to a wide zoom range, great image quality, and numerous neat features to play with. What more could one possibly want?
If the OnePlus Open 2 is just like that but better, it would be a win-win scenario even if we remain with three cameras at the rear.
Conclusion
Overall, the OnePlus Open 2 is shaping up to be a superb foldable phone, and I'm super-excited about it. It's one of the devices that are poised to make 2025 all that more exciting for me, and it's the one foldable that I'm impatient to hold in my hands.
Of course, all of this will pan out provided the OnePlus Open 2 is priced correctly; if that happens to be the case, this phone could establish itself as the new champ on the foldable market.
The excellent hardware, lightweight software, and superb design could make it a force to be reckoned with and a serious rival that Samsung and Google will likely have to contend with.
Moreover, with its next foldable, OnePlus could also prove that the first OnePlus Open was not a fluke but a foldable phone crafted with surgical precision to address the glaring issues with all previous foldables.
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