Samsung W2018 clamshell phone goes official with F/1.5 camera lens

Samsung has launched the W2018 in China, a clamshell flagship Android smartphone featuring the world’s first smartphone camera with an f1.5 aperture.
 
The flip phone features a physical numeric keypad and a 4.2-inch FHD OLED display. There is also a secondary 4.2-inch FHD OLED display outside the shell of the device. Made from metal, the W2018 features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chipset, 6GB RAM, 64GB of storage and a USB-C port. A 256GB variant of the device also showed up in TENAA but Samsung did not unveil it during its launch event. Like other flagship phones launched by Samsung recently, the W2018 also features Bixby with a dedicated physical button to quickly open it as well.
 
The phone features a 12MP primary sensor with a f/1.5 aperture and 1.4um pixels. The wider aperture will allow the W2018’s camera sensor to take in more light which should help in low-light scenarios. Samsung is also using some software trickery to be able to control the aperture so that the aperture can be changed from f/1.5 to f/2.4. There is also a 5MP selfie shooter at the front of the device.
 
The W2018 runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat with Samsung Experience 8.1 on top of it. The handset will get the Oreo update next year.
 
The clamshell form factor of the device means its on the heavier side and weighs in at 247gms. Samsung is launching the W2018 in China for now and considering that clamshell phones are a passé now, the handset is unlikely to make its way to other parts of the world. There was no word on the pricing of the W2018 but if rumors are anything to go by, the handset could cost as much as $2,000.

---