Ah yes, the flip phone. What was once the coolest thing to have in your pocket has become a relic of the late nineties and early naughties on how not to design a phone. We guess the iPhone and influxes of large displays with touchscreen magic killed the allure of the flip phone. My first cell phone was a Motorola V66 flip phone, and it was glorious. Now though, there’s no real call for a flip phone in the age of the 5-inch plus display, except if you’re Samsung, and you’re selling devices in China it would seem.
The Korean giant first brought the flip phone back out of the shadows towards the end of last year with the Galaxy Golden, a flip phone that featured a Snapdragon 400 and dual Super AMOLED displays. It wasn’t an impressive device, aside from the interesting form factor. It must have been at least a decent performer for Samsung however, as they’re getting ready to launch yet another flip phone in the region. A device with the model number of SM-G9098 has been spotted in the TENAA database with some interesting specs. Like a 2.3 Ghz quad-core CPU, which sounds very much like a Snapdragon 800 and a dual 3.67-inch displays. The TENAA database doesn’t tell us much, other than a few key specs, like Android 4.3, and GSM and TD-SCDMA support. It also has dual-SIM support, but with only one supporting 3G fully, and the images not-so-subtlety hint that this might be headed to China Mobile.
It’s an interesting form factor and one that could prove popular among younger users, as well as first-time smartphone buyers. However, we really can’t see a 16mm thick device catching on these days, which is a shame as something like this would definitely offer more of a choice for consumers. With no word on a release date just yet in China, we have doubts this will ever make its way West. The question is though, would it sell over here in the West?
