OnePlus Open review: thin and light for a foldable and good multitasking support, but no water resistance or wireless charging, and very costly at $1,700
The OnePlus Open finds a happy medium between the Pixel Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 5 size-wise, but it's too close in price to the incumbent foldables.
Context & Ripple Effects
Samsung’s Fold line had already made multitasking a core expectation: the Galaxy Z Fold 5’s flat-folding hinge and multitasking strengths arrived shortly before this review. OnePlus enters that comparison with a more portability-focused design rather than a wholly new use case.
The trade-off is especially visible against Samsung’s earlier addition of water resistance to the Fold3. The Open must justify flagship pricing while omitting a protection feature that had become part of the category’s established benchmark.
First-order effects
- The OnePlus Open gives buyers a lighter, thinner large-screen foldable with strong multitasking, positioning it between the Pixel Fold and Galaxy Z Fold 5 in form factor.
- At $1,700, its lack of water resistance and wireless charging narrows its appeal for buyers who treat those features as baseline flagship conveniences.
Second-order effects
- Samsung and Google face a more credible challenge on folded-phone ergonomics, while OnePlus must compete against incumbents whose feature sets already include more mature protection or charging options.
- The near-parity price means purchase decisions shift from price to trade-offs among weight, screen format, multitasking, durability protections, and charging features rather than simply brand loyalty.
Third-order effects
- If thinner designs continue to reach flagship prices, foldables will be judged less as novel hardware and more against the full convenience baseline of conventional premium phones.
- The category’s competitive frontier is likely to move toward combining portability with durability and charging features; designs that improve one dimension by dropping another may remain difficult to differentiate.
The trend: Foldable-phone competition is shifting from hinge and screen novelty toward balancing tablet-like multitasking with the everyday convenience and durability expected of premium smartphones.