Introduction
Hi, I’m Ivan, one of the editors and the person who takes the vast majority of phone pictures here at GSMArena.com. I’ve been around for a few years now, getting an extremely privileged vantage point for overseeing the world of smartphones. And, I’m noticing some fundamental changes to our smartphone lives. Smartphones have become more nuanced than ever before.
Most of my colleagues and I choose a flagship phone as our daily driver. That choice was down to the brand and its way of doing software. There was a time when we were evenly split between the current iPhone and the current Galaxy. Then came the Pixels, which had a bunch of fans for a while. Then came a sort of Samsung domination of our pockets. But that has mostly passed too (just look at last year’s top 5 phones lists).
Over the years, fewer of our editors and reviewers use an iPhone, fewer still use a Galaxy, as I observe a strong shift towards using (and loving) flagships from Chinese brands – Xiaomi, vivo, Honor, Oppo, and OnePlus. It started when these brands began pushing the camera hardware, first adding 1-inch sensors and more recently, revolutionizing zoom cameras. I remember when I tried the vivo X100 Ultra’s 85mm zoom camera for the first time – it blew me away. It made my Galaxy S24 Ultra look pedestrian by comparison, and I soon switched over to vivo’s flagship and haven’t looked back.
I’m by no means a pioneer here at GSMArena. A few of my colleagues have a similar story – one was a Galaxy Note, then Galaxy S, and sometimes an iPhone Pro or Pixel user that’s now ‘Team vivo’ as well. Another was a Galaxy user who took the OnePlus highway straight into Xiaomi Ultra worship. Another swore by the Galaxy Fold until he tried the Honor Magic series.
The motivation was different for each person – most of us chose our respective Ultra daily driver for its set of world-class cameras, but some of us chose a foldable specifically. And here’s where we come to the biggest difference between smartphone choices of years ago and what’s the norm today. Foldables are now as good as other flagship phones, making our choice tougher.
Recent flagship book-style folding phones like the OnePlus Open (and its counterpart, the Oppo Find N3), the vivo X Fold3 Pro, the Honor Magic V3, the Oppo Find N5, the Honor Magic V5, and even the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold7 are all excellent. Each is thin, closes flat, has some degree of water protection, and, in a somewhat revolutionary development, some even have dust protection now.
The final touch that made the foldable a viable choice for those of us who demand superlative camera performance is the fact that book-style foldables are now, finally, pretty damn good at taking photos and videos!
So naturally, I considered making the jump. I’ve lived with a foldable before – the Galaxy Z Fold4, but found its cameras lacking. I then used the Oppo Find N3 for a bit and loved it. It was (alongside the OnePlus Open) the first foldable to be actually good at photography. But it had a very limited Chinese ROM (no Google Pay, unlike the vivo), so I went reluctantly back to my Galaxy S23 Ultra.
I’m currently using the vivo X200 Ultra for a number of reasons, but the biggest is the amazing photographs it captures. However, I read a lot on my phone, and like everyone else, I also binge-watch videos and scroll through social media. Plus, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and a bigger screen feels better these days. All of this made me long for a tablet that can fold and fit in my pocket. So that was my dilemma – do I want a classic bar phone camera flagship, or a book-style foldable in my life? Do I prioritize the bigger screen or the better photos?
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7
To find out, I decided to try the Oppo Find N5 side-by-side with the vivo X200 Ultra for a few weeks to see which I prefer. And I’ve become even more conflicted, if that was even possible.
I focus on the vivo and the Oppo, but it’s just as easy to pose the same question to the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold7, or the Honor Magic8 Pro and the Magic V5.
The bar phone is still a solid choice
You can’t go wrong with a bar-style phone. It’s a very mature design – all those years of smartphone development led us to what we have now. These phones are now at a point where they can offer you over 6,000mAh battery with blazing charging speed, a 6.8-inch high-res OLED display with a high refresh rate, premium materials, and a superb in-hand feel. And all of that at around 220-230 grams.
But so can the best foldables these days. The Oppo Find N5 weighs the same 229 grams as my vivo X200 Ultra and is a very similar footprint (even a bit smaller) when folded – 160.9 x 74.4 x 8.9 mm compared to the X200 Ultra’s 163.1 x 76.8 x 8.7 mm. So does the X200 Ultra and other flagships like it do anything better than the Find N5 or Galaxy Z Fold7? Yes, a few things.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
For starters the lack of moving parts in the conventional smartphone means it’s better protected against water and especially dust. The latest bar phones pack an IP69 rating for high-pressure and high-temperature water jets. You could argue whether that added protection is worth it, but it’s there.
More importantly, they call them cameraphone flagships for a reason. The vivo X200 Ultra, Xiaomi 15 Ultra, Oppo Find X8 Ultra, and Huawei Pura 80 Ultra can all fit bigger camera modules. Their telephoto cameras, specifically, have sensors that are the size of the Galaxy Z Fold7’s or Honor Magic V5’s main cameras (or slightly bigger even), and require bigger glass elements on top. Those take up a lot of space that these obsessed-with-thinness folding flagships don’t have.
That’s the biggest strength of a conventional smartphone. So, how much of a difference is there between a vivo X200 Ultra and an Oppo Find N5? Short answer – a lot. Long answer – but you may not notice it.
We’re not getting too much into it; this isn’t a comparison review. If you compare the main cameras, you’ll get a similar on-screen quality from either phone. The vivo’s 35mm shooter is technically more impressive and will do better in any light, but looking at shots on-screen, you’ll be happy with either.
Wide-angle camera vivo X200 Ultra
Wide-angle camera Oppo Find N5
vivo’s ultrawide camera is a stunner due to what the company calls “main cam sensor.” Its images stand out against the Find N5’s even in the gallery grid. It’s no surprise – vivo went with a huge sensor and great optics, Oppo put a tiny sensor and a generic lens on top.
Ultrawide: vivo X200 Ultra • Oppo Find N5
It’s a similar story with the telephoto cameras. Oppo’s 50MP 1/2.75″ imager is good, and the 75mm f/2.7 lens is perfectly adequate, excellent for the segment even. But vivo’s 200MP 1/1.4″ sensor is much larger, and the 85mm f/2.3 lens is levels above. You can see the difference in rendition and texture; there’s deeper contrast in the vivo images, and the colors are much nicer.
Telephoto camera vivo X200 Ultra
Telephoto camera Oppo Find N5
Even the selfie camera of the vivo X200 Ultra trumps the Find N5’s shooter. A 50MP big-sensor camera vs an 8MP tiny sensor one.
Selfie: vivo X200 Ultra • Oppo Find N5
Yes, the camera flagship phone mops the floor with the book-style foldable. But most people aren’t obsessed with their smartphone cameras and will find Oppo’s imaging system to be more than good enough. Then many people find the sheer size of the X200 Ultra camera island unacceptable. That applies to the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the Oppo Find X8 Ultra, and the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra.
And for people like me, who demand the best cameras out of phones, it’s only a matter of time before foldables become good enough cameraphones so as not to matter at all.
Oppo Find N5
Finally, the biggest reason to go for a conventional flagship is the price. Conventional flagships have gotten more and more expensive, but they’re still much cheaper than a foldable. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is currently around €1,000 for the 12/512GB model. That’s still much cheaper than the €1,500 price of the Galaxy Z Fold7.
Foldables are the future of the flagship smartphone, no two ways about it
Book-style folding phones are only just becoming great. The Galaxy Z Fold started the entire segment, and it just became great again for the first time in a while in its seventh generation. Foldables are becoming thinner, better protected, and are starting to lose their weaknesses. They have big batteries. They have great cameras with respectable zooms. They’ll get even better next year, and even better after that. One could argue the bar phone has peaked already.
Will it be possible for a foldable to fit such an enormous camera module and still be usable in the hand? I think so. It’s just a matter of time.
A foldable has the benefit of feeling smaller than a typical flagship bar phone when folded and giving you a much larger display when needed.
The move down from the 6.8-inch X200 Ultra display to the 6.6-inch unit on the Find N5 isn’t drastic. But once you open the Find N5 (or Fold7, or Magic V5), you’re in a whole different league. The 8.12-inch almost-square inner display of the Find N5 is so good for browsing, reading, looking at photos, or even watching videos, that I never wanted to go back to my vivo.
Most of the arguments against folding phones are no longer relevant. Heck, the Find N5 even has very comparable battery life to the vivo X200 Ultra – nearly as good when unfolded and better when closed.
So in a year or two, foldables may start to push out classic bar-style phones at the top of the flagship ladder. Why wouldn’t you want to get a phone that’s around the same size folded, but that can offer a small tablet experience when unfolded? We spend most of our time looking at screens these days, might as well make them the best possible screens to have.
Will there ever be a foldable with an Ultra-matching camera system?
Foldables haven’t prioritized having the absolute best camera system on a phone for a few reasons. First, the market doesn’t demand it (yet). People who buy a book-style folding phone care more that it’s as thin and as light as their current phone. They are more than happy with the level of camera performance the current crop of folding phones has.
Crucially, it’s very hard to fit such a huge camera system into a folding phone without bringing it back to the thickness of the early generations. In fact, most people wouldn’t go for a vivo or Xiaomi Ultra as they find those overly big and unbalanced.
So no, don’t expect the Xiaomi 15 Ultra or vivo X200 Ultra camera island on a folding phone anytime soon.
But perhaps imaging technology will advance in the next few years to allow similar imaging capabilities in a smaller package, paving the way to a flagship camera system on a folding phone. Phones like the Magic V5 are close enough as we speak.
Honor Magic V5 • Oppo Find N5 • vivo X Fold5
So where does that leave me?
I tried the foldable life and found it nearly irresistible. Having that 8-inch canvas for a few weeks felt amazing. It elevated my experience of reading and watching photos and videos. But even past the obvious advantages of a foldable phone, I found that having a phone with a hinge was fun. Opening and closing this powerful little computer is addictive!
There’s also the subjective pleasure of using a smaller phone, which the Oppo Find N5 is, compared to the vivo X200 Ultra, when folded shut.
Ultimately, though, I sorted my priorities and went back to the vivo X200 Ultra. It’s the phone that takes the best photos and videos, to my eyes at least. But it’s not an easy decision, and I resorted to using an old Galaxy Z Fold4 as a binge device in the evenings.
I’m now convinced that my time with the classic bar-style phone is coming to an end. I’m in the market for that next-generation super foldable that takes another step forward with the cameras so they are close enough vivo X200 Ultra so as not to matter.