Unless you've been living under a rock,
it's pretty clear the flip phone has been
replaced by large slabs of touchscreen
glass.
But LG isn't willing to let go just yet. The
company announced the Gentle, a flip
phone that runs the latest Android 5.1
Lollipop, on Monday.
Smartphones have largely replaced flip phones because they are better computing devices with big touchscreens that are easier to use, have better cameras, connect to the full Internet and feature lots of apps.
But smartphones have become so large
that they don't fit in your pocket
anymore, and are thus difficult to use
with one hand.
The Gentle is a compromise of sorts, and
isn't a terrible idea. It has the pocketable
size of a traditional flip phone and the
necessities only a smartphone OS can
provide. It sounds like a useful device for
kids and seniors, who both need the tactility of physical keypads and durability of a clamshell design that protects the screen.
The 4G LTE-equipped phone has a 3.2-
inch (480 x 320 resolution) display,
1.1GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of
RAM, 3-megapixel camera and 4GB of
internal storage (expandable via microSD
card). By today's standards, the tech specs are terribly outdated.
The silver lining: The Gentle runs Android
apps, in whatever limited capacity, and its
1,700 milliamp-hour (mAh) battery will
likely last for days since the phone doesn't guzzle power from tons of pixels and 3D games.
The Gentle will be available in Korea for
20 million won (about $171). Unless it
sales numbers are off the charts, there's
almost no chance it will make it to territories outside of Asia (flip phone
sales actually increased in places like Japan for the first time in seven years).
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