Heavy oil reserves exist in Canada, Venezuela, China and other parts of the world, whose reserves is equivalent or even higher than the existing reserves. Cold heavy oil production with sand is an effective technique, which can produces more oil than conventional solution gas drive reservoir by formulating foamy oil flow. So, enhancing the research of foamy oil is essential for developing such reservoir. This paper studied the research status and the recent development of foamy oil in cold heavy oil production with sand. Beginning with the analysis of foamy oil reservoir’s unconventional characteristics, definitions and properties of foamy oil are introduced systematically. The methods and research content of unconventional PVT and depletion experiments are presented here. The detailed overview about the research on the pore network modeling and reservoir simulation are summarized. Finally, the focus of future work and research direction are proposed, which may be of referential meaning in the further research on foamy oil.