Today Meets Yesteryear As LG Unwraps ‘Gentle’ Android 5.1 Flip-Phone

It might be hard for many of us to believe, but some people out there still love using flip-phones. I am not sure if it's an issue of function, or simply nostalgia, but it appears there's still an ample enough market for flip-phones that LG has decided to release one using the latest and greatest version of Android, 5.1 Lollipop.

As far as flip-phones go, I think this latest one, called Gentle, hits all the right marks. It looks good (and would have been amazing ten-years-ago), and it has nice bubbly buttons for the sake of good feedback. Of course, one thing to set this phone apart from phones of yesteryear is the fact that the screen can be touched, and as with most Android devices, it can be heavily customized.

For those who don't want to use touch, they don't have to: there's a standard rocker control that will enable navigation. There are also special buttons located up top for Back / Task Switcher / Home.

Because a flip-phone really can't be considered a "power-user" tool, Gentle's specs reflect that. It has a 1.1GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of storage (some of which would be hogged by the OS), a 3.2-inch 480x320 screen, and a 3 megapixel camera. It is an LTE device, though, so download / upload speeds should be quite good, and for the sake of additional storage, a microSD slot is also provided.

While a flip-phone could be considered a "budget" phone, Gentle is priced at closer to mainstream phones on these shores. 200,000 Won amounts to ~$171 USD, but I guess if you really want a flip-phone, this does look to be a great option.