Samsung brings back clamshell phones with added Android Samsung is reportedly bringing back the flip phone, adding Android and a pair of 3.7-inch touch screens to a form factor popular in the first GSM phones of the mid-1990s. Japanese blog Ringer's Blue Men spotted a manual (PDF) for the new handset. Dated July 2013 and labelled version 1.0, the manual leaves no doubt it's an …
Given that the big problem with phones is the two constraints of "want more screen" and "fit in pocket", I've wondered why we don't see more folding-types (although this particular model is only a small screen one). Why not have one side being a full touchscreen, and the other for physical controls (perhaps a full qwerty keyboard)? Or even a phone with touchscreens on both(similar to the DS, but ideally as seamless as possible, to give effectively a large single screen, in a still compact pocket-sized form)?
"I think Sharp has an Android flip phone out over there."
yep, this certainly resembles the Sharp 007SH, which was targeted at the japanese market.
but is this really a new phone? I realize there's a mention calling it the 'galaxy folder', but its specs (and design) look suspiciously similar to the SCH-W2013 (released late last year).
Clam shell phones were great, from the Motorola in the mid 90's onwards. I never understood why they completely disappeared. My wife had Sony Xperia mini about 3 years ago that she loved and since then has struggled with a full touch screen. There must be a large market of women who want to a phone they can dump in their handbags without worrying about the screen getting scratched by their car keys.
I certainly won't be one, T9 was fine unless you got one letter wrong, then you ended up with gibberish. At least with non T9 txts u cud use sht lik dis an still read it fne... just about. Honestly, give me a touchscreen qwerty keyboard every time (not one of those god awful BB ones that you need fingers of a 3 year old to use)
I'm not a fan of small keyboards in general, be they touchscreen or physical, but I've become quite fond of the swiping gestures from Swype, SlideIT, the Jellybean 4.2+ keyboard, etc. T9 was useful while I had a feature phone though, and I've seen some people who can type with it at what appeared to be 30 words per minute.
That said, T9 is a bit rubbish if you've ever had friends mess with the dictionary. For instance, I was sending a text message to a feminist friend of mine who has lupus and is a Lady Gaga fan, telling her that I learned that apparently Gaga's aunt had died of lupus. I didn't notice that A and C are both on 2 until after I'd already sent the message...
My fave phone so far as style was an LG flip phone, loved that little beast. If a galaxy flip phone were released over ehre at a decent price, I'd buy it.
Hell even if it isn't released over here, if I could buy one from korea, and then put English android software on there from Cyanogen mod or something I'd still buy it and just set it up myself.
My current phone has a touch screen and keyboard but it is about the slowest phone on the planet.
I really hate to write mails with a touch screen, I prefer the 9 keyboard without any prediction. The biggest problem is that android is not really suited for a keyboard. Websites and google maps act weird when I want to input things with the keyboard. I hope Samsung will market this in Japan as well as in Korea.
Touch screen is all well and good, but doing anything fiddly on them I just can't handle, I can’t see half the screen because my man sized fingers are in the way, or it just doesn’t work as well as a dedicated button, for instance scrolling, my phone has a music player lets you scroll artists a-z, fair enough, but say I want to get to M half the time you end up on say J, you go down a bit, and end up on O, so back up and I am at K etc., all because my fingers are not invisible nor pointy.
Clamshells are so much more convenient if you don't take to much care of your stuff.
My V3 used to be in my pocket all the time, and that included plenty of wandering round like a bum in different countries with it just shoved in shorts, admittedly the outside looked like it had been used for ballistic testing for small arms fire at the end with loads of nicks and dints, but I never had to care about it. The thing lasted being mistreated from being bought when it first came out at a stupid price, to last year.
I was a little upset when it died.
Now doing the same stuff I find myself always worrying about keys and coins in my pocket whenever I put my smart phone away.
I recently found my first smartphone in the back of a drawer. Built by Kyocera, Palm powered, and actually named the Smartphone - can't seem to find a model number on it now. Awesome for the time (circa 2001 - 2002 IIRC), with a little slot for the stylus and an extendable antenna (kinda wish current phones had that, given the spotty coverage in some areas around here). I was the envy of all my geek friends ^_^
Not exactly a clam-shell, but it has a little flip-down numeric keypad with the usual dedicated Palm buttons. When closed, a small (roughly 35mm x 45mm) portion of screen is exposed for displaying incoming call info; when open the screen is bout 45mm x 65mm, about the same as some of the earlier Android phones. The entire phone is roughly the same height and width as my EVO 4G LTE, but it's about 2.5 times as thick, and heavier. The flip-down keypad itself is only about 2mm thick, the rest of the bulk is mostly battery (I think I got most of a week out if it before needing to recharge). I'll have to make a serious effort to find the charger and see if it still fires up, for old times' sake.
I had a Panasonic flip phone that had two really nice little features missing from my current smartphone.
First was that the 'gesture' for answering a call or unlocking the phone was simply to press the spring loaded hinge release button. Phone flips open and ready to make/answer a call without even having to look at the phone. No pocket calls either.
The other was such an obvious feature I have no idea why it has gone from newer phones; a nicely integrated multi coloured LED on the outside of the phone, which indicated status such as message received, power low, charging etc. It meant that when the phone was sitting on my desk at work, or when waking up in the morning, I could spot a missed message or the phone needing to be charged with out having to pick it up and check it. I notice lots of people now compulsively check their iPhones or Android phones for messages as the can't tell when the screen is off.
My daughter inherited the old flip phone, so it was funny to pick it up recently; the screen seems tiny, and weird not to simply press the icon on the screen, but even with an old battery, it still ran for days without charging. Progress.
Physical keys to accept and reject calls, dial numbers, adjust the volume and take pictures, please. It's not that I don't like some of the clever software approaches (swiping contacts to call or speech recognition) it's just that more often than not I'm a just hairless ape with muscle memory. It's like remembering awesome keyboard shortcuts to your editor-of-choice.
Just been roadtesting my XCover 2 on the hottest days of the year: swiping the screen to answer a call whilst on your bike is not particularly practical.
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