Skip to main content

Verizon is selling its first LTE-only phone — and it's a flip phone

lg exalt lte news 2
Image used with permission by copyright holder
The humble flip phone is largely considered to be dead, but that is not stopping mobile manufacturers from catering to those who prefer the older form-factor. For example, Samsung recently launched the SM-W2017 flip phone. Now, LG is here with a competitor — the LG Exalt LTE.

The device is a little slimmer and more old-school than Samsung’s offering. It comes with a 3-inch LCD display with a resolution of 240 x 400, along with 8GB of storage, which is expandable by up to 32GB through a microSD card slot. The camera on the phone sits in at 5MP and the 1,470mAh battery life is rated from up to six hours of talk time.

Now, there is no fooling anyone here — this is not a top-of-the-line device, but it does serve to bring in a little nostalgia with its number pad and textured design. It is available through Verizon and does not support Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) but it does come at a relatively inexpensive $168 and you can pay it off over 24 months for $7 per month.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the fact that this appears to be Verizon’s first LTE-only phone. Verizon is working to shut down its CDMA networks because it plans on using that network for LTE rather than for voice calls — so ironically enough, it seems like this flip phone is in a way heralding the future of cellular connectivity in the U.S. It does make sense — in order to fully shut down its CDMA network, Verizon needs to move customers off of it. That means it needs to get old flip phone owners to adopt new phones, which is where the LG device steps in.

Is the flip phone making a comeback? No, absolutely not — but just like some people still prefer real keyboards like the ones on a BlackBerry, some people also prefer the flip form-factor, so it makes sense that manufacturers continue to offer one or two flip models.

Editors' Recommendations

Christian de Looper
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
A Barbie phone really is coming this summer, but it’s not what you expect
A promotional image for the Barbie x HMD Global phone.

A most unexpected brand partnership has given us a surprising phone to get excited about at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024. HMD Global, the company that makes phones under the Nokia name, has partnered with toymaker Mattel on the Barbie Flip Phone. Yes, that Barbie. But don't worry that this is going to be little more than a pink version of an old Nokia phone.

“Let me put it like this,” Adam Ferguson, HMD Global’s head of product marketing, said with a smile as I chatted to him over Zoom during the show. “Mattel, and Barbie in particular, is not the kind of brand you offer something off the shelf to.”

Read more
This company just announced lots of new Android phones, and they look great
Renders of the ZTE Nubia Music.

ZTE has unveiled a bunch of new Nubia smartphones at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain. These devices are intended to be distributed in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Each smartphone is designed to cater to a different type of consumer, including ZTE's first flip smartphone.

Although we may not see these devices in the U.S. any time soon, it is an interesting look at what other companies across the water are doing in the Android landscape — and potentially a sign of what other manufacturers may be up to in the future. Let's dig in.
Nubia Focus 5G Pro and Nubia 5G Series

Read more
The top 7 bestselling phones of 2023 were all … you guessed it
Close-up view of titanium frame on iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Seven of the top 10 bestselling handsets in 2023 were iPhones, according to data from research firm Counterpoint.

This marks the first time in Counterpoint’s tracking of such data that Apple’s handset has dominated the chart to this extent.

Read more