It could be argued that flip phones went out of style around the time the first iPhone came out, but they never really left. For the last few years, Samsung has been trying to make the flip phone sexy again – in China, at least – and the newest model, the W2019, packs in some pretty high-end specs, along with an equally-high price tag.
With an aggressively angular shape and chunky bezels, the W2019 is a unusual beast for the year in its name. Measuring 137.9 x 63.4 mm, it's a bit smaller than most modern-day phones, but substantially thicker at 17.3 mm when closed. A 4.2-in, Full HD screen adorns the front, which is also dwarfed by that of most other current phones. But the W2019 makes up for that with a second screen of the same size, tucked away inside the clamshell form factor. Underneath that is a physical number pad, in another callback to the phones of old.
One of the main new additions over the W2018 is a second camera on the back. The W2019 sports dual 12-megapixel cameras with a wide aperture of f/1.5, along with an 8-MP selfie cam. These can shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second, and are also capable of Samsung's Super slo-mo mode, which slows time right down to 960 fps.
On the inside, the W2019 is powered by a Snapdragon 845 processor, 6 GB of RAM, a 3,070 mAh battery and has the option of 128 GB or 256 GB of storage space. It charges through a USB-C port but is lacking a headphone jack, so you'll need to switch to Bluetooth headphones or earbuds if you haven't already. There's no face unlock system but the phone can apparently scan a user's irises, and the tried-and-true fingerprint reader is still intact.
Samsung has yet to release any of the W series outside of China and South Korea, so we're not sure the W2019 will be the one to finally escape those confines. If it does though, expect to pay a premium – the phone is available now in China for the princely sum of CNY18,999, which currently converts to roughly US$2,730.
Source: Samsung China