After making its debut in South Korea last month, LG’s new Android flip phone is packing its bags and traveling to some other countries.
The LG Wine Smart is the international version of the LG Gentle for the Korean market. The Wine Smart will be released later this month in countries like France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Kazakhstan, and Japan. There’s no word on a US release, but I probably wouldn’t hold my breath for one.
In terms of specs, the LG Wine Smart is exactly like the LG Gentle. That means that it’s got a 3.2-inch 480x320 display, 3-megapixel rear and VGA front cameras, 4GB of storage, a microSD slot, 1GB of RAM, a 1.1GHz quad-core processor, and LTE connectivity. The Wine Smart also comes with a removable 1700Ah battery and Android 5.1.1.
LG has made some special additions to the Wine Smart to make it easier to use for “a generation of users who are more accustomed to the feel of flip.” Those include a large physical keypad, dedicated buttons for things like messaging and the camera, large on-screen icons, and a Safety Care feature that can automatically send an alert with location info to specific emergency contacts.
We see a couple of Android flip phones pop up every now and then, and they always bring a jolt of nostalgia and a breathe of fresh air, giving us a break from the onslaught of black slab smartphones. Unfortunately, we never see any of them in the US, likely because the device makers don’t think they’ll sell well enough to justify bringing them over and getting them onto a carrier. At least the Wine Smart is venturing outside of South Korea, though!