Samsung's W2018 flip phone has a camera with an adjustable aperture

Flip phones are still quite popular in certain parts of the world, and in China, Samsung recently announced its new W2018 for the country. The phone will be an exclusive to China Telecom and likely sell for more than $1,500 USD, and although it'll never make its way to the United States or other parts of the world, there's something quite interesting going on with its rear camera.

The W2018 comes equipped with a 12MP sensor and an incredibly low f/1.5 aperture, and while that's impressive enough on its own, the kicker here is that the aperture can actually change to f/2.4.

We haven't seen this tech on a phone since 2009 with the Nokia N86 MP, and it means that you've got flexibility for capturing the best image possible whether you're in an area with low or ample lighting. The W2018 can only switch back and forth between f/1.5 and f/2.4 with no option to go to aperture ratings in between, but even with that being the case, this is still exciting. We've yet to see how this system actually performs in regards to image quality, and while we aren't certain if the Galaxy S9 will ship with a similar setup in 2018, we'd expect this to make its way to other Samsung handsets at some point down the road.

The W2018's adjustable aperture in action.

The W2018's adjustable aperture in action.

As for other specifications on the W2018, there are two 4.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED displays, 5MP front-facing camera, Snapdragon 835, 6GB of RAM, USB-C, NFC, and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor.

The variable aperture with the W2018's rear camera is easily the most exciting part of the phone, so be sure to let us know in the comments whether or not this is a feature you'd like to see in future Samsung devices.

Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.