Most of us know Samsung usually makes two big flagship smartphone launches every year. But, if you’re someone who follows this company closely, you’ll know that there is a third Android flagship and it comes in a very unconventional form-factor. Unconventional in the modern smartphone era, at least.
It’s a flip phone and this year it’s called the W2018. Usually, these flip phones basically condense the high-end specs of their Galaxy flagships into this smaller flip-phone form-factor. This time though, things are a little different because the W2018 has something no other Galaxy smartphone has.
Although the 12-megapixel Dual Pixel 1.4-micron primary camera sounds familiar, Samsung’s brand new W2018 also has a jaw-dropping f/1.5 aperture lens with optical image stabilisation in front of it — a world’s first for smartphone cameras. The previous kings of wide apertures were the LG V30 and Huawei Mate 10 with their f/1.6 aperture lenses.
But they’re not done yet because the W2018’s camera also has what looks like a physical variable aperture. If the smartphone detects that there’s too much light, it can then automatically switch to a smaller f/2.4 aperture.
In front, the W2018 sports a 5MP f/1.9 aperture front camera for selfies.
Inside, the W2018 is packed to the brim with flagship specs. it’s got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor mated to 6GB of RAM. There are two storage variants: Extreme Edition features 64GB of internal storage while the Collector Edition bumps things up to 256GB. Keeping the lights on is a 2,300 mAh battery and of course there’s Bixby complete with a dedicated button too.
On the display front, you get two 4.2-inch Super AMOLED touch displays (one inside, one outside) pushing a resolution of Full HD and is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5. Since it’s a flip phone, you can also navigate the handset with the D-Pad and full keypad.
While most of the juicy specs that have been borrowed from the Galaxy flagship smartphones are good, the W2018 unfortunately also features the same rear-mounted fingerprint scanner that’s right next to the camera lens. If you don’t like that, Engadget reports that there is an Iris Scanner too, but you’ll have to flip open the phone to use it.
The W2018 will come in two colours — gold and platinum — and is yet again primarily used to raise funds for charity. Prices have not been announced yet but the word on the street is that these will be very very expensive devices. Oh, they probably won’t make it out of China either, but hey at least the clamshell phone hasn’t died yet, right?
Would you buy one if you could? Let me know in the comments below.
