Clamshell phones are still alive and well in China
and TENAA revealed that Samsung is ready to release the next model - likely the
Samsung W2018, though known only by its SM-G9298 model number for now. Unless,
it happens to be the international version of the W2017 as the differences
between the two are fairly minimal.
The W2018 clamshell features two Super AMOLED
screens - 4.2” 1080p each. It’s an upgrade over the W2017 model, though not a
huge one as it has a Snapdragon 821AB chipset (up from S820), identical memory
(4GB of RAM, 64GB storage) and the OS goes unupdated - an old Android 6.0
Marshmallow.
The phone is fairly thick and heavy, 15.9 mm and 234g
(that's heavier than before, W2017 is 208g). Despite that bulk, you’re not getting
much battery, just 2,300 mAh (same as the before). Maybe there’s a reason
clamshells didn’t survive the transition to the smartphone era.
Anyway, that’s about all that TENAA revealed - that
and a 12MP main camera (1080p video) plus a 5MP selfie cam. We're willing to
bet that the camera actually records 4K 2160p video (the old model did).
