Samsung returns to the 1980s with flip-phone – but running Android

In a blast from the past, BGR reports that Samsung is launching a brand new flip-phone next month – combining the traditional keypad of a feature phone with Android Jelly Bean – to be named the Galaxy Folder.

The flip-phone form factor was created by Motorola with the Star-TAC back in 1989. Hard to believe now, but then it was seen as a futuristic design, emulating the Star Trek communicator.

While things have moved on a touch since then, there are still people – mostly in the older age-range – who prefer the familiarity and certainty of physical buttons but aren’t comfortable with the fiddliness of small QWERTY keyboards. Samsung’s hybrid phone strikes us as a smart move: modernising the featurephone concept while likely also acting as a gateway device to a full-on smartphone.

Rumored specs are an 800×480 display and Snapdragon S4 processor. It’s not known whether Samsung will make the Folder available in the USA or Europe, but featurephones do have a following even in developed markets.