The age of clamshell phones is decidedly behind Western mobile consumers, but some folks in Asia must still favor this old-fashioned form factor over modern all-touch handhelds, given Samsung and LG continue to dish out flip Android hybrids.
The worldwide king of smartphone shipments recently launched the mid-range Galaxy Folder in Korea with a 3.8-inch touchscreen, physical keyboard, quad-core processor, 1.5GB RAM, and Lollipop software, and up next, it’s time the regional Galaxy Golden family was revamped again.
If you don’t remember the first-gen 2013 Golden, or its 2014 sequel, let us quickly refresh your memory by listing the latter’s key specs: 3.9-inch HD display, Snapdragon 801 SoC, 2GB RAM, 16MP rear camera. Sounds like a waste of high-end resources on a primitive-looking product, you say?
Wait until you hear what the Samsung Galaxy Golden 3, aka SM-W2016, is expected to bring to the table, according to a pre-release benchmarking visit. In a nutshell, GFX Bench suggests we’re dealing with a Galaxy S6 clone here, save for the screen, which is smaller and lower-res for obvious reasons, at 4.6 inches and 1,280 x 768 pixels.
Seeing as how the Golden 2 already measured a whopping 153.5mm in height, the significantly larger panel may make the threequel almost impossible to handle for anyone that’s not the Hulk, in combination with a non-slide-out keyboard.
Let’s not even start worrying about how much the Golden 3 might cost in China or Korea, what with an octa-core Exynos 7420 CPU under the hood, 3GB memory, 64GB (!!!) internal storage, 16 and 5MP cams, and Android 5.1 pre-loaded.