HMD is dragging the classic flip phone into the modern age with the $79.99 2720 V Flip, a KaiOS-powered flip phone launching with Verizon on May 20.
The 2720 V Flip aims to bridge the gap between voice-only phones and smartphones, offering WhatsApp, Facebook, and Google speech-to-text in a form factor that looks straight out of 2006.
About 12% of Americans still have simple phones, and we reviewed a quintet of voice phones last week. The 2720 V Flip looks to have similar capabilities to the Nokia 6300 4G, which we quite liked, but in a flip form factor, which Americans tend to prefer. (Americans like flip phones; Europeans like bar phones. The reasons seem to go back to Nokia’s dominance in Europe and Motorola’s dominance in the US in the 1990s-2000s.)
HMD didn’t send us a spec sheet for the 2720 V Flip, but it’s probably similar to the international model. That one has a 2-megapixel camera, a 1,500mAh battery and runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 205 chipset. The international model has dual SIMs, but Verizon’s spec book requires a single-SIM device.
I’m a little concerned about how UI performance will be on that Snapdragon 205—I’d have preferred to see a Snapdragon 215 like in the new Kyocera DuraXE Epic for AT&T or a MediaTek 6739 like in the Sunbeam F1, but both of those phones hover around the $200 mark.
KaiOS, in part derived from the old Firefox OS, has a limited app store with popular social networking, but not popular US media apps. The biggest advantages over traditional feature phones are probably the built-in Google Maps, WhatsApp, and speech-to-text, which makes texting a lot easier. I’m also intrigued by HMD promising some accessibility features here, specifically increased alert volume and text size. The biggest pitfall on KaiOS devices, so far, is performance; it’s a little heavy for the extremely low-powered processors it’s run on.
Verizon has a bit of a rogues’ gallery of low-cost flip phones on its website. Most of them get poor user reviews. We prefer more costly models, like the $195 Sunbeam F1 and the $240 Kyocera DuraXV Extreme, but we also know those aren’t for everyone. If the 2720 V Flip can offer smooth UI performance, it could really set itself apart.
We’ll review the Nokia 2720 V Flip when we can get one.
