Ah… flip phones. These types of phones were very popular back in the day, more or less every cellphone manufacturer has offered flip phones as part of their device lineup, Samsung included. We don’t really see flip phone smartphones around, at least those of us who live outside of Asia. Interesting enough, flip phone smartphone are quite popular in Asia, and a number of OEMs actually manufacture such smartphones. LG and Samsung are quite probably the two companies which manufacture most such devices for the Asian smartphone market.
Speaking of flip phones, Samsung has just launched yet another such device, the Samsung G9198. This smartphone is a direct successor to the G9098 which was launched in China last year, and it brings a few improvements this time around. The Samsung G9198 features two 3.9-inch 720p (1280 x 720) Super AMOLED displays with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 on top of them. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 808 64-bit hexa-core SoC fuels this phone along with an Adreno 418 GPU for graphics. The G9198 will ship with 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 64GB), while Samsung didn’t reveal the amount of RAM that will be available here. The 16-megapixel camera (f/1.9 aperture) will be available on the back of this phone along with an LED flash, while you’ll be able to find a 5-megapixel snapper up front. The 2,020mAh battery is also a part of this package, and the device will offer 4G LTE connectivity as well. The Samsung G9198 is also a dual-SIM device, it measures 120.3 x 61.2 x 16.3mm, while it weighs 200 grams. This flip phone will be powered by Android, though Samsung didn’t list which iteration of Android just yet. If we had to guess, we’d say Lollipop 5.1, but it’s possible this thing will sport Lollipop 5.0 in the end, we’ll see.
As far as the design goes, well, the device looks quite nice. The 3.9-inch display isn’t exactly big, especially not by today’s standards, but considering this is a flip phone, that’s not that bad. You get three capacitive buttons (overview, home and back) below the display, and once you open the phone the fun begins. You get another 3.9-inch Super AMOLED display and a number of regular physical keys down below. This phone is expected to be available for purchase in China later this month, and is going to be available in Blue color options only it seems. The company still didn’t release any pricing info, but we’ll report back once the device becomes available, stay tuned.