Samsung has unveiled a brand new clamshell smartphone, and many are pointing out how the company probably took their cues from the music video for Adele’s ‘Hello’ in which the singer alarmingly makes a call on a retro flip phone rather than an iPhone 6s, as you’d imagine a mega-rich and mega-famous international superstar would. However, it’s not actually that surprising that the company have made the announcement that they’re developing a new clamshell model, considering that it’s still considered a very viable design in Asia.
Photos of the SM-W2016 were leaked by Sammobile, showcasing a design ethos similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy S6 due to the clamshell’s combination of glass and metal. According to the site, it boasts two 3.9-inch Super AMOLED displays with a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels, an 8-megapixel, 1080p primary camera, a 5-megapixel secondary camera and a numeric keypad. Internally, the SM-W2016 reportedly features 3GB RAM, a 64-bit octa-core Exynos 7420 processor and 64GB internal storage (there’s no word on whether there will be a 32GB option). It’ll run on Android 5.1 Lollipop, as Samsung has still yet to make the jump to Marshmallow.
However, the smartphone is unlikely to reach a Western market, with it instead presumably looking at a Korean launch. This is hardly an anomaly, given that the Asian market has seen the release of a wide variety of clamshell models, including the Galaxy Folder which released as recently as July 2015.
The Samsung Galaxy Folder, which released in Korea in July 2015.
Taking this into account, it’s therefore highly unlikely that Samsung’s design choices were swayed by an Adele song, with it being more likely that they were motivated by the fact that Asia still buys clamshell smartphones. It’s a reasonable business choice, then, and not an oddball move looking to capitalize on a few fleeting seconds of a music video in which a flip phone was featured.
With that being said, if clamshell phones were to make an inexplicable comeback in US in 2015, the SM-W2016 would be a good starting point. With it boasting power rivaling that of the Galaxy S6, it will be considered one of the more high-end flip phones on the market at launch, and if it released on these shores it might even find an audience among those pining for a true spiritual successor to the Motorola Razr V3.
Ah, those were the days…
