A true replacement for single-display flagship phablets, the “Never Settle” OnePlus Open combines light, compact-slim design with revolutionary imaging to deliver the best foldable experience
Hello everyone,
This week, we finally unveil the OnePlus Open in Kenya — the first folding OnePlus flagship smartphone — in all its glory. In true Never Settle fashion, we set ourselves to get it right with the first attempt. The OnePlus Open is set to disrupt the foldable market in Kenya and globally with its uncompromising specifications, bringing together OnePlus’ signature Fast & Smooth user experience, a Hasselblad Camera for Fold, and immersive spatial entertainment, all in an ultra-portable, modern, elegant foldable design.
Here’s how
The word ‘Open’ not only represents a new folding form factor but also our openness to explore new possibilities allowed by bleeding-edge tech-solutions on the market. OnePlus Open provides unparalleled hardware, innovative software features and services built around the new form factor, continuing to live up to OnePlus’ Never Settle belief.
With the launch of OnePlus Open, we are thrilled to be bringing an uncompromising flagship foldable experience to Kenya. The OnePlus Open will be a true flagship that is set to revolutionize the foldable market locally and across the globe.
Extraordinary Portability Makes Incredible Durability
As our first folding flagship, the OnePlus Open perfectly inherits the brand’s iconic design philosophy — industrial minimalism combined with elegant sophistication — in two colorways. Emerald Dusk is an iconic green colorway reserved exclusively for OnePlus flagship series. It features a matte-frosted glass rear that shimmers in adequate lighting. Micro-beads on the textured surface allow for an elegant gradient of light and shadows when viewed from different angles. Meanwhile, Voyager Black features a more understated rear cover in vegan leather that oozes class.
OnePlus’s iconic alert slider is being introduced to phablet-foldables for the first time. This slider on the OnePlus Open has been redesigned from ground up so as to fit the phone’s 5.8mm compact folding body. While size of the slider has been increased, its position on the device mid-frame has been adjusted, making things more convenient for one-handed operation.
The OnePlus Open is made extremely light and compact where users will barely notice a difference in their pockets, especially when put against single-display phablets. Weighing in at just 239g, and measuring at 5.8mm when unfolded, the Open combines the handy experience of a single display smartphone and a Pro tablet without the additional bulk.
Durability, in this case, has not been compromised. Thanks to clever material-component choices and a high-efficient, well-optimized mechanical design, the Open remains incredibly robust despite its ultra-compact form factor. Just 69 parts in comparison to the industry average of more than a hundred, the patented Flexion Hinge allows more space on the interior for high-performance hardware.
OnePlus Open has also been certified for reliable folding by international certification institute in TÜV Rheinland where it was put through extreme environmental tests and 1,000,000 test-folds that amounts to way more than 100 folds per day, lasting for over 10 years. All while the Flexion “water-drop”-shaped pressure-relieving hinge keeps the crease to a minimum, even after extensive use.
Hasselblad Camera for Imaging beyond Pros
There’s no way around it. OnePlus Open features a revolutionary set of triple main camera setup.
At the heart of this is a 48MP SONY LYTIA-T808 “Pixel Stacked” primary camera with OIS, complemented by a 64MP periscope telephoto with 6x in-sensor lossless zoom and OIS, and a 48MP ultra-wide angle camera with AutoFocus. Rear cameras aside, the Open also comes with two selfie cameras – a 20MP sensor on the main display and a 32MP camera on cover screen.
OnePlus Open is not only the first foldable smartphone in Kenya but in the world to debut Sony’s new line of revolutionary image sensor in LYT-T808. The 1/1.43-inch large sensor boast a 1.12μm pixel size. Also known as “Dual-Layer Transistor Pixel”, the “Pixel Stacked” technology features a redesigned pixel architecture that boost light in-take and storage within a smaller physical footprint. This architecture separates and stacks two layers of pixel transistors below the photodiodes, allowing for major expansion of light capacity, doubling the maximum light intake and storage (Full Well Capacity). Practically speaking, this allows for brighter, clearer images with significantly less over-exposure very much on par with that of the IMX989, the most advanced Sony IMX 1-inch sensor that still retains a conventional pixel-structure today.
The OnePlus Open is configured to allow the best possible imaging on focal lengths most commonly used by consumers, from 0.6X to 10X. Main camera aside, the Open brings a customed 64MP telephoto periscope camera with OIS that will not only allow for 3X optical and 6X lossless in-sensor zoom, but up to 120X Ultra Res Zoom. Most importantly, this is the largest telephoto sensor ever utilized on a foldable at 1/2-inch and this ensures quality telephoto imaging even in low light.
While the best main and telephoto camera on any fold ensures the quality of portrait images, OnePlus leverages the Hasselblad partnership to bring an improved Hasselblad Portrait Mode. It works particularly well in low light, revolutionary cameras onboard the OnePlus Open work in tandem to deliver DSLR-level depth-tracking, bokeh and flare effects captured by Hasselblad cameras fitted with XCD 3,5/30, 2,8/65 and 2,5/90V lenses.
Last but not least, you’ll notice a depth vacuum separating camera sensors and the exterior glass dome, much like the sophistication you’ll find on luxury watches. This is accompanied by a light-reflective CD pattern crafted on the dial, facilitating light-play, all designed to stand out.
Dual-hero Displays, Epic Entertainment Experience
Equipped with dual 2K 120Hz fluid AMOLED ProXDR displays, the OnePlus Open shall allow for not only a great flagship-level cover screen but a main display that opens up to a Pro tablet.
The cover screen sizes in at 6.31″, with an aspect ratio of 20:9. With a peak brightness of 2800nits, the 120Hz cover screen also boasts a high brightness mode (HBM) of up to 1400nits for ultra-bright, smooth, and responsive visuals during any time of the day. Far as protection goes, the cover screen is shielded by Ceramic Guard – purified ceramic crystals undergone the ion exchange process – that’s up 20% more impact resistant than Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.
To elevate content immersion, open up the device to the large 7.82” main display that boasts an 89.6% screen-to-body ratio. This outstanding main display is fortified by 3 layers of protection – Ultra-Thin Glass that sits above the flexi OLED, a layer TPU for shielding against physical impact, and an anti-reflection screen protector to reduce everyday wear and tear.
On compatibility, the Open supports Dolby Vision® video playback for more ultra-immersive modern entertainment. And to match stunning visuals with impressive audio, the OnePlus Open is equipped with a triple spatial speaker set-up. These speakers work in tandem with a proprietary spatial audio algorithm to take Dolby Atmos® content to the next level.
Hassle-free Efficiency, Real-time Interaction in OxygenOS 13.2
In the all-new OxygenOS 13.2, Open Canvas was built from ground up with a singular mission of amping up everyday productivity – multi-window efficiency on a large display. In fact, around 95% of mainstream apps are compatible with the extended screen real estate without forcing weird visual adjustments or resizing.
With Open Canvas, multi-window operations or “split screen” are no longer restricted to physical size of the display. Active windows can be stretched and resized as desired, with secondary windows sliding in and out of the physical display on demand (rests on virtual screen real estate), allowing users to hop between or focus in on a particular app when the user wants. Up to four app-windows can be displayed on the screen at the same time. In addition, up to nine multi-app presets can be saved for instant access.
Open Canvas will also introduce a desktop-like taskbar near the bottom of the expanded main display, allowing easy access to recent and preset applications. A never-seen-before “Recent” folder has created on OnePlus Open’s taskbar allowing for almost instantaneous access to recent photos, saved images, edited documents and more. Here, one can even MOVE them around freely via simple drag and drop, directly into any compatible applications, such as Gmail, apps among the Microsoft 365 suite like OneNote, or even messaging apps for example Google Message, Microsoft Teams and even WhatsApp for instant-sharing.
All-round Flagship Configuration, Fast & Smooth Experiences
To turbocharge this second-to-none experience from top to bottom, the OnePlus Open comes equipped with top-tier power specifications that powered the OnePlus 11.
At the heart of this all is the Snapdragon® 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform, over-the-top 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM accelerated by our proprietary RAM-Vita software, and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. This is accompanied by a large 4,805mAh battery and 67W SUPERVOOC charging that charge up the battery on the OnePlus Open (from 1-100%) in approximately 42 minutes.
The Open also supports Wi-Fi 7 out of the box and “Dual 5G, dual SIM” connectivity for fast and seamless connection whenever, wherever. All of these shall ensure an uncompromised fast and smooth foldable experience for years to come.
For more information about the OnePlus Open, including pricing and availability, please visit
If you’re in Greater East Africa, you can be one of the firsts to experience the OnePlus Open, in one of 4 cities across the region. To learn more click here. In Kenya you can expect pop-up events in Nairobi and Mombasa, later in December. More information will be made available on our blog here.
• Alonz
