While old-school flip phones used to rule the roost in the early part of this millennium, the popularity of the modern touchscreen smartphone has all but killed them off over the past decade. However, the two leading South Korean consumer electronics behemoths – Samsung and LG – have both continued to launch the odd clamshell handset every now and then. Apparently, the retro-chic appeal of such devices can still entice enough buyers to at least create a commercially viable niche, even though these things are unlikely to go mainstream again anytime soon. Samsung is counting on that retro-chic vibe as it introduces a new Android-based flip-phone in China called the Galaxy Folder 2 (SM-G1600).
The device had been leaked often and as it turns out, most of the rumors held up. The phone features a 3.8-inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels (WVGA). The device is powered by an unspecified quad-core chip clocked at 1.4 GHz, and comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The handset also comes with a microSD card slot that should help users expand the storage capacity of the smartphone. There’s an 8-megapixel primary camera with 1080p video recording, while the secondary shooter comes with a 5-megapixel sensor. Both cameras have f/1.9 apertures and the phone has dual-SIM functionality.
Coming to the connectivity features, the phone supports LTE (with VoLTE), Wi-Fi b/g/n (2.4GHz), GPS (with A-GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou), Bluetooth 4.2 and has a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data syncing. The Galaxy Folder 2 carries a 1,950 mAh battery and sensors include an accelerometer, a hall sensor and a proximity sensor. On the software side of things, the device runs Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) out of the box and in all likelihood, with Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz UI laid on top. Samsung is yet to divulge details about the phone’s pricing and availability, and neither is there any info about whether the company wants to eventually launch this phone in markets outside China. While its previous clamshell phones have mostly been restricted to local markets, it would be interesting to see if Samsung does actually consider taking this one global.
