In the tech world, the old adage ‘what’s old is new again’ is often apt. Everything always seems to come back into style, as we witnessed with Urban Outfitters flogging refurbished iPod classic models recently.
This time it’s Samsung turning back the clock with the Galaxy Z Flip 5 Retro edition, which pays homage to one of the classic flip phones of the first wave – the 2003 feature phone, the SGH-E700. Interestingly, it was Samsung’s first phone with an internalised antenna too!
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20-years on, and with some slightly more advanced technology involved, the Flip 5 Retro replicates the silver and blue colour scheme. There’s also screen theme that rebirths the pixel graphics of yesteryear for the date and time on the cover screen..
Samsung also promises a “Flex Windows-only animation that expresses the city with a retro sensibility.” Whatever that means. The box has some cool nerdy stuff for collectors, which you can see below.
The phone goes on sale on November 1 in South Korea for 1,599,400 won, but will also be available in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Australia in limited qualities, Samsung says. We haven’t seen the selling arrangements in the UK yet and the Flip 5 Retro is yet to appear on Samsung’s UK website.
Samsung’s gives a lot of credit to the SGH-E700 for kickstarting its mobile phone business and says the product sold 10 million units. Back in those days it felt like Nokia and Motorola had a stranglehold on the UK market with Sony Ericsson making some inroads too.
Samsung would eventually parlay the SGH-E700’s success and name recognition into the touchscreen realm later that decade, until it would eventually launch the first Galaxy phone in 2009. The rest, as they say, is history.
