back to article Samsung to launch a Snapdragon 808-based clamshell smartphone

We don’t get clamshell smartphones in the West, but China's love of keypads means that Samsung sells them over there - and the first Sammy to use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor is just such a phone. Samsung_SM_G9198_clamshell The Samsung SM-G9198 The SM-G9198 has just got approval from China’s telecoms regulator, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nokia Communicator

    *sigh*

    It may be my age but I miss that sort of thing.

    1. Aremmes

      Re: Nokia Communicator

      If they put the hinge on the long side (the only thing I wished the Nokia N900 had) and give it a QWERTY keypad, I'm sold.

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: Nokia Communicator

        Ugh. I remember a couple friends tried for over a year to get a Nokia Communicator on this side of the pond. No joy.

        1. Wolfclaw
          Happy

          Re: Nokia Communicator

          I still have a fully functioning boxed Communicator 9110, with spare battery and in excellent condition, that I occasionally bring out for a bit of fun with its old DOS.

      2. PNGuinn
        Happy

        Re: Long hinge...

        GIMME!

      3. Chris Evans

        Re: Nokia Communicator

        Hopefully some enterprising company will produce one.

        For some reason the phone market is even worse than others and doesn't seem interested in offering what customers actually want. They tell us what we should have.

  2. Irongut

    I've always preferred clamshell phones to candy bar, as a form factor it makes much more sense; no danger of pocket dialing, close the phone to end a call, protects the (inner) screen, etc. If someone came out with the smartphone equivalent of my old Razr I would buy it immediately.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Thumb Up

      Same here

      Clamshell and physical keyboards are good. I would buy this. Then again, I might be impaired; my impairement being a profound dislike of:

      -clumsy touch keyboards

      -screens that suddently lose half the display size to a clumsy touch keyboard

      -smudge all over the display from the use of the aforementionned.

      And then there's pocket dialling.

  3. Jon Massey
    Facepalm

    What a time to live in

    When 4.6" is consider a "relatively small" phone screen size...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What a time to live in

      Agree, 4.6" is iPhone 6 size I think. So with the keyboard part as well it would be like two iPhone 6 handsets hinged together!

  4. Tony W

    Is it only me

    who would like someone to explain why the Chinese like keypads when they don't use an alphabet?

    1. PleebSmash

      Re: Is it only me

      Even worse, it doesn't have QWERTY.

      I guess the predictive software makes up for it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is it only me

      Have you thought about how the Chinese manage to use touchscreen keypads anyway? They don't have thousands of little icons on the screen like a Chinese typewriter.

      1. Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip

        Re: Is it only me

        Typically words are input phonetically using the pinyin alphabet, predictive text then suggest the Chinese characters.

  5. PleebSmash
    Pint

    a six-core flip phone

    What a world!

  6. Your alien overlord - fear me

    How much bloatware can you fit in a screen that small? <insert ironic icon here>

  7. BobRocket

    The FlipPhone

    Got a Razr on my desk in front of me, god knows how old it is (someone gave it to me ages ago), it still works fine, holds charge, makes calls. What else do you want from a phone ?

    1. Sykobee

      Re: The FlipPhone

      I think the problem these days is calling smartphones phones.

      Phoning is just a single, often secondary, feature on these devices.

      1. DWRandolph

        Re: The FlipPhone - talk to someone?

        Oh yeah,that is right, it can make phone calls! Maybe once a month.

        My NoteII is note book, historical activity logs, documentation, password vault, email, calendar, books, imdb, map, wiki, even the odd card game. even sms messages happen more often than a telephone.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: The FlipPhone

      What else do you want from a phone ?

      A physical QWERTY keyboard, because most of the people I communicate with over the damned thing (mainly my wife and daughter) insist on texting.

      To be honest, I also use it as an SSH terminal once in a while, or read a book on it while I'm waiting in the doctor's office.

      1. moylan
        Alien

        Re: The FlipPhone

        i use a nokia asha 302. a nokia feature phone with qwerty keyboard. runs java apps so albite for ereader and midpssh for ssh, jmirc for irc. opera mini handles web, rss and email for me. it has wifi so saves a bit on data when around the house. tough as a brick and fantastic battery life. even found a java app for google maps but it doesn't have a gps but gives access to maps.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder...

    If there'll be peeps flogging these on that tat bazaar... and if they have the requisite radio gear for operating correctly in blighted?

  9. crayon

    "Is it only me who would like someone to explain why the Chinese like keypads when they don't use an alphabet?"

    I can't explain why the Chinese like keypads. However I can point out that it is a NUMBER keypad - geared for dialling phone numbers not for typing in letters of the alphabet (although you could do that as well if you had to). Also there are a myriad of different methods to input Chinese characters, one of them, the "Stroke" method only requires 5 keys - each representing one of the different strokes that makes up a character - which fits on a number keypad with plenty to spare.

  10. Alan Edwards

    It's a 4.6" screen, so the top half is roughly the size of my Z1 Compact, then you have the keyboard half too. And people say the iPhone 6 Plus is too big...

    OK it folds up, but each half must be about as thick as the Z1.

    I'd still buy one though, if it came here. I must dig my V3x out of the storage box, I miss having a keypad that doesn't take 3 stabs to hit the button you want.

  11. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

    Possible replacement for an aging Q10

    If their next phone is android not BB10 this probably would be something I would want instead.

  12. old man

    I to would prefer the clamshell to protect keyboard as much as screen my problem is pocket answering Eriksson used to do clamshell like phone's t28 or something which was slimmer than most modern smart phones with a very thin flip battery life was measured in days with excellent call quality as I remember it only had a 2 line display but not a problem as sms was yet to be invented

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