LG Branded Flip Phone with Android KitKat Revealed
When I see a flip phone, I become nostalgic. It reminds me of one of my first phones I had as I was a big fan of flip phones in the past. Well, times have changed and I moved on to more sophisticated Android featured smartphones in matter of specs, so I left behind the devices that actually made me become a phone passionate. And with the LG Ice Cream Smart coming out, I couldn’t feel kind of disappointed with the fact that it’s only aimed for the South Korean smartphone market.
Yes, LG has created again a flip smartphone that actually runs on Android KitKat and it will be possible in the future, to be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop. The Ice Cream Smart is for the younger generation of users and can be found in two pastel colors, mint and pink; unlike the LG Wine Smart that is going for older users and was released on September 26th of 2014.
In terms of specs, LG Ice Cream Smart comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chipset with 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB built-in memory that can be expanded since it has a micro SD card slot. The phone offers 4G/LTE connection, WIFI and Bluetooth 4.0; and is also equipped with a 3.50-inch HVGA (320×480 pixels) display, a 1.700-mAh battery, VGA front camera and an 8-megapixel-rear camera.
As for what truly makes this Android flip smartphone stand out from other flip handsets is that it features a KakaoTalk button, which quickly opens the KakaoTalk application. However, LG has stated that the button can be set to a different messaging application, so it’s not really necessary to use the KakaoTalk IM.
LG Ice Cream Smart also combines the touchscreen display with a numeric keypad. This means that the users will have to use T9 texting, the standard for the flip phones. The keypad also provides shortcut buttons for email and camera.
Unfortunately, as I said in the beginning, the LG Ice Cream Smart will only be for sale in South Korea, but the release date is yet unknown. Regarding the price, Ice Cream Smart will have a price tag of approximately 227 US dollars. LG hasn’t said anything about it being available overseas.
As for me, I admit I would only pay for the nostalgic feeling it gives, rather than pay for what this Android flip smartphone has to offer. In my humble opinion, I don’t see this flip smartphone, as a device I would use everyday and it wouldn’t be a successful release on the occidental smartphone market which is more inclined toward Android smartphones with touchscreen, like LG G3 or with QWERTY keyboard, such as the Blackberry. Probably that is why the Korean manufacturer LG only aimed for its homeland with this model and got out of the equation U.S.A and Europe.
Let us know what you think about this Android hybrid between a flip phone and a touchscreen and if you would feel nostalgic enough to use it everyday.
Source: androidauthority.com