South Korea’s No. 2 technology giant, LG Electronics Inc., has rolled out a budget flip-style smartphone. The new product comes with a classical look but with the latest features.
Dubbed the LG Gentle, the new flip phone has already hit shelves in South Korea on Wednesday, July 29, and marks the third flip-style smartphone made by LG, along with the Wine and Ice Cream lineup released earlier. The price tag on the device is only around $170.88.
Flip phones made waves in the 1990s – dominating as the ultimate fashion accessory, with the likes of Alicia Silverstone sporting one in Clueless.
If the LG Gentle is anything to go by then the world could soon be returning to an old gadget design and millions could soon be answering a call with the flick of the wrist again.
The LG Gentle has a 3.2-inch colour touch screen and runs Android Lollipop 5.1, as well as enabling 4G calls; it however does have a more old fashioned camera.
Yet, the 3.2-inch screen – which is small compared to today’s 5.5-inch phablet screens – is a touchscreen and the central Q button displays a user’s most frequently used apps when pressed.
The flip phone is powered by a modern, powerful 1.1GHz quad-core Snapdragon 2010 processor and has 1GB of RAM.
Handset has a 90s design, chunky physical buttons and 3MP camera
Modern features include a fast processor, touch screen and Android 5.1
There’s no news yet when the flip phone could be available outside South Korea to markets like Europe, United States or other parts of the world including Africa and the Middle East.
There is 4GB of internal storage and this can be upgraded with a microSD slot.
It has a 1700mAh battery and supports 4G LTE, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS, meaning the budget handset can perform many more tricks than flip phones from the 90s.
The Gentle has a soft leather case, which comes in three colours, covering the chunky buttons inside. But it’s not only the design that’s nostalgic.
The handset has a three megapixel camera and 0.3 megapixel camera on the front for decidedly blurry selfies.
By comparison, the best cameras packed into new flagship devices are around 21 megapixels.
Flip phones remain popular in Asia and this one is LG’s third.
The company says clamshell designs are a hit with people who like instant messaging apps and with elderly users, because they can be gripped easily and have large physical keypads so it’s easy to type messages.
So, although there’s nothing totally revolutionary about the handset, the LG Gentle has a form factor that may cause consumers to take it less seriously. Despite that the new LG Gentle is actually more than what anyone would initially think.
And LG said the latest release comes as the demand for flip-style smartphones has been strong in the Asian market, including South Korea. The company had also released previous flip-style smartphones in other Asian countries, including Taiwan.