Gionee launches W909 flip phone with dual 720p displays and 4GB RAM

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Gionee has unveiled two new handsets this week – the Gionee W909 flip phone and a super mid-tier S8. While flip phones might not be so popular in Western countries any more, there’s still demand for these handsets in China, India, and other Asian markets.

Leakers and benchmarkers have been prognosticating the W909’s specs for a while now and it turns out that there’s some pretty reasonable hardware packed into this clamshell. It might just give the Samsung SM-W2016 a run for its money. The Gionee W909 features two 4.2-inch 720p LCD displays and is powered by a mid-tier octa-core MediaTek Helio P10 SoC, which features eight of the ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores and a Mali-T860 MP2 GPU. Gionee has paired this up with 4GB of RAM and a generous 64GB of internal storage, complete with a microSD slot should you need it.

The W909 also boasts a 16 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front facing camera. There’s a USB Type-C port on the bottom, a fingerprint reader on the back, and a reasonable 2,530mAh battery. Unfortunately the phone only runs Android 5.1 Lollipop and not Marshmallow, with the company’s custom Amigo UI on top.

While not quite a top-tier device in every department, especially when we compare it to mainstream flagship phones, there’s some notable hardware here. The W909 has also opted for a faux leather back and some reasonably slim bezels to try and win consumers over on its looks.

The Gionee S8 is built around the same core processor and memory specifications as the W909. Where the two differ is that the S8 is certainly not a flip phone. Instead it comes with a single 5.5-inch 1080p AMOLED display that also supports ‘Force Touch’ controls. The phone is also powered by a larger 3,000mAh battery, features an 8 megapixel selfie camera in partnership with the 16MP rear camera, and comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow installed out of the box.

The two smartphones will initially launch in China and may head out to a number of other nearby countries in the future. The Gionee W909 will be priced at 3,999 Yuan ($616), while the S8 will arrive with a 2,599 Yuan ($400) price tag.