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Amazing foldable OnePlus Open finally yanked me off my iPhone, and I love it

By Rad Slavov

Published: Jul 02, 2024, 10:10 AM

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Editorials OnePlus

This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

Amazing foldable OnePlus Open finally yanked me off my iPhone, and I love it

A long-time iPhone user NOT looking to experiment with an Android foldable

I've been a happy iPhone user for many years now, due to my appreciation for the highly polished and seamless user experience that the iPhone offers. The iPhone 13 Pro that I last used was not the newest model, but that didn’t stop it from being fast, capable, and sophisticated – everything you could want in a smartphone.

As you can imagine, I was also relatively deep in the Apple ecosystem, making it somewhat hard to switch to Android phones - things like transferring of photo libraries, apps and other data are always a chore to sort out, usually to the point of dissuading potential deserters from changing camps.

But recently, I decided to give the OnePlus Open a try. My experience with foldables so far had been minimal, primarily due to concerns about their fragility. However, the OnePlus Open gave off the impression of a way more perfected and well-rounded device than, say, the first couple generations of Galaxy Fold. So I cautiously decided to give it a chance.

Falling in love with the OnePlus Open – irresistible!

Ain't she a beauty! Peter is fine too... | Image credit – PhoneArena

My initial skepticism about foldable phones slowly started to fade away as I got to spend a couple days with the OnePlus Open. After failing to integrate a tablet into my daily workflow — I wanted a device more capable than a phone but less cumbersome than a laptop — the advanced foldable form-factor of the OnePlus Open fit the job perfectly.

Here was a product that could go in my pocket, yet expand into a significantly larger and more capable canvas in the form of the large internal screen.

The true power of the foldable is in enhancing your everyday experience

Typing on the OnePlus Open is a joy – you get both a large keyboard and a good view of your text | Image credit – PhoneArena

The OnePlus Open's foldable experience is nothing short of a game-changer. Everyday tasks such as reading and editing documents, viewing photos and videos, reading books, gaming, and managing my schedule became more convenient and efficient. On a foldable phone, you can do everything you would on a normal phone, but with enhanced convenience, speed, and versatility. If there’s such a thing as a “pro phone”, this has to be it.

A foldable makes you feel like the true pro user you are

Gaming on the OnePlus Open's humongous 7.8-inch main screen is on a whole other level | Image credit – PhoneArena

The OnePlus Open is full of extraordinary multitasking capabilities, especially for someone coming from an iPhone. OnePlus has not only adopted Android's standard features for foldables but also enhanced them with Open Canvas. This feature allows multiple big-screen apps to be open and easy to switch between.

Add floating app windows on top of that and you can imagine what crazy things you can do with this phone. Some foldable features I benefit daily from, such as the faster typing speeds on the bigger keyboard, or the bigger screen for gaming, or juggling items on my calendar. Others, like advanced multitasking, I'm yet to adopt more fully - but the sheer fact that these features are there feels good.

The big trade-off: bulk versus capability

OnePlus 12 vs Open – the foldable has a considerably thicker profile | Image credit – PhoneArena

Of course, the iPhone 13 Pro that I used before I moved to the OnePlus Open is a way thinner and lighter device. All foldables are rather bulky, especially if you put a case on them, which you probably should.

However, I think that it's always a matter of what you gain versus what you lose that determines if you’ll be happy with a deal, a transaction, or a product.

In the case of a modern foldable phone like the OnePlus Open, I can tolerate a much bigger, thicker and heavier phone, because I gain a lot in terms of capabilities and power. To me, it's a fair deal. If you have no need for a phone with an even larger screen so you can do more on it, or are instead looking for a digital detox – switching to a foldable won't be a good deal to you, as you won't benefit much from the increased capabilities the massive internal screen affords.

Switching between iOS and Android is no longer the hell it used to be

Many people asked me how the transition from iOS to Android went, and surprisingly, it was remarkably smooth. I was already in a favorable position since my contacts and calendar were synced with my Google account. Then I took a good look at the apps I use and figured out that most are entirely cross-platform, and those that I was paying for were subscriptions that I paid for directly to the service, like Audible, or Notion, or YouTube Premium, so they'd be easy to set up on Android, without losing anything.

Sure, there were a couple of apps I had to re-buy on Android to keep having them, but those instances were very few and didn’t really hurt my wallet.

Usually, the biggest problem when switching platforms is getting all your photos and videos from one platform's cloud service to the other platform's service. In my case: from iCloud Photos to Google Photos. It turned out that Apple has developed a website where you can request a complete transfer of your library to the other company's cloud service, which was extremely convenient and unexpected. On the other hand, Google has its Takeout portal, where you can easily export all info in your Google account, including your photo and video library, so you can then easily upload it to iCloud Photos, if you wish to.

iCloud Photos to Google Photos (left) | Google Takeout export (right)

I’d speculate that either regulators made the two companies create these solutions, or they were created as a preventive measure against possible future trouble with regulators. Whatever the case, in a day or two, my entire library of photo and video content magically popped into my Google Photos account, right on the OnePlus Open. How awesome is that? I only had to ensure I'd purchased enough cloud storage with Google, so all the content could be copied there.

The OnePlus Open and the future of foldable phones

Ultimately, it took an extremely decked out, powerful foldable phone like the OnePlus Open to finally yank me off my iPhone, and while the OnePlus experience certainly isn't flawless, the Open's many strengths definitely outweigh the few negatives I've encountered.

Sure, my wife keeps making fun of me because of the extreme care with which I tend to handle my beloved foldable, but hey - now more than ever, I'm convinced that with a little more work, foldables will steadily conquer the high-end phone market over the following years. Manufacturers like OnePlus/Oppo, Samsung, Honor and others just have to keep working on making them more reliable and, most importantly, more accessible.

As foldable technology continues to evolve, I believe Apple will also enter the market with a foldable iPhone. We are entering the stage where foldable tech is becoming seriously good, and the OnePlus Open is clear evidence of that. The journey from a long-time iPhone user to embracing the OnePlus Open has been rather eye-opening, ultimately convincing me that the future of foldables is very, very bright.

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Rad Slavov is the Editor-in-Chief at PhoneArena. He joined the media in 2008, right on the cusp of the modern smartphone revolution. Through time and perseverance, he amassed a great deal of knowledge and industry know-how, allowing him to guide and organize the company's growing line-up of talented content creators and ever-expanding content portfolio.