Samsung’s upcoming flip phone SM-W2018 leaked yet again, having appeared in a set of real-life photographs and a hands-on video that emerged online earlier this week. The smartphone shown in the images has a gold finish, with this particular color presumably being one of its official variants that the South Korean tech giant will start offering early next month.
No new details have been revealed by the leaked renders, with the smartphone being shown as having a display panel on both sides of its top, as well as a conventional keypad on the bottom. According to recent reports, Samsung equipped the SM-W2018 with the Qualcomm-made Snapdragon 835 SoC and 6GB of RAM, as well as 64GB of internal flash memory and a microSD card slot which supports up to 256GB of additional storage. Both screens are said to be 4.2-inch affairs with an FHD resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, with the phone’s main camera supposedly being of the 12-megapixel variety. A 5-megapixel selfie camera will sit inside the SM-W2018 and the device will run Android 7.1.1 Nougat-based Samsung Experience out of the box, according to a number of rumors that emerged in previous months.
The Chinese branch of Samsung already confirmed that the SM-W2018 will be officially announced in the Far Eastern country on Friday, December 1st, which is also when the company is expected to share more details about its commercial availability. A mid-December release presently seems likely and would be in line with Samsung’s previous product launch practices pertaining to its flip phone lineup. For much the same reasons, most industry watchers don’t believe the SM-W2018 will ever make its way outside of China in an official capacity, albeit the device may be picked up by some international resellers located in the country. Samsung’s Android-powered flip phones have always been offered as highly niche devices that still have a significant following in China and given the tech giant’s recent commercial troubles in the country, it appears that Samsung is keen on retaining a tight grasp on the premium flip phone market, especially as its performance in the conventional handset segment in China keeps declining.
