There was a time when flip phones were in huge demand, for a while the Motorola Razr V3 was the absolute must-have mobile phone. Times have changed of course and few non-touchscreen phones get a look in these days outside the low-end of the market. Leaked details and pictures suggest that Samsung could be about to bring back flip phones although it’s not yet clear if they’ll be on their way to the UK yet.
Modern phones are fantastic in so many ways, but every now and then we look back and remember a time when phones still had physical buttons. It may just be me, but I don’t think I’ll ever be as quick at typing using a touchscreen as I was on a real keypad, even with better on-screen keyboard solutions such as Swype. The Samsung Galaxy Folder gives you the best of both worlds, fold it up and you’ve got yourself a touchscreen phone just like we’ve become so familiar with but open it up and you’ll find a second screen and an actual physical keypad.
Leaked specs suggest the Galaxy Folder will have a dual-core Snapdragon processor, 2GB of RAM, and 4G support. Both displays are believed to be 800x480px which is a bit low-resolution by modern standards but it looks as though the screens will be quite small so resolution is less of an issue. Details of a second Samsung flip phone has been leaked, codenamed the Hennessey, it is rumoured to have 320x480px screens, a quad-core processor, and a 5-megapixel camera. Both devices run the Android operating system.
It seems likely these handsets are aimed more at emerging markets but there may well be a demand for these handsets in the UK. So far the rumoured details are far from confirmed and it’s entirely possible than even if released here there will be no interest at all in a modern flip phone but it’s always interesting to see mobile manufacturers coming up with some new ideas.