Oppo plans to announce a foldable phone early next year

Yet another foldable phone is on the way, and this time it's set to come from Chinese manufacturer Oppo.

The company confirmed the device in an interview with Dutch website Tweakers and said that we'll hear all about it early next year.

Chuck Wang, product manager at Oppo, specifically said the device would be unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2019. That's set to take place from February 25-28.

Many manufacturers announce devices in the couple of days leading up to the event, so it may be just before the actual MWC show that we hear from Oppo on its first foldable device.

Early next year

The interview didn't unveil any specifics about the device, and Wang didn't confirm when Oppo plans to put the phone on sale to the public. Oppo may follow a similar schedule to Samsung's foldable phone, where it announced the device on stage but it won't be available to the public for some time.

Huawei and LG have also both suggested foldable phones are in the pipeline, but it's good to get a hard and fast date of when Oppo will reveal its experiments with foldable phones.

The interview also revealed the company wants a 5G Oppo phone released in Europe in the first half of 2019. That suggests the foldable phone won't be 5G compatible.

If that wasn't enough, Wang also confirmed the company is planning to release a device that places a camera behind the screen. It's likely a pinhole cutout in the display will be how the company achieves this, but we apparently won't hear any more about that until 2020 at the earliest.

The fact the company is coming to Barcelona, Spain to announce a foldable phone suggests that Oppo will be bringing that device to market outside of China. That said, we won't know anything for sure until MWC early next year.

• Our review of the Oppo Find X

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