With most phones following the smartphone design, coming in the form of a brick, there seems to be little to no space left for devices that follow the clamshell design. However, LG appears to think otherwise as they just recently released the LG Wine.

This device is designed to help users get the benefits of a smartphone while having the flip functionality. The phone is due to be released worldwide.

Describing the phone in its press release, LG noted that it combines the familiar look of a clamshell phone, which was all the rage before smartphones started to dominate the market. Along with this design, the device has the ability to function as a smartphone as it comes with a touchscreen which is housed in the top section of the phone. The bottom half of the device has a physical keypad.

So while the design will be very familiar to users, the touchscreen will allow them to navigate in the same way they do when using a smartphone from Samsung or Apple. However, when it comes to hardware, the LG Wine lags behind most smartphones as it only has a merger quad core CPU which is clocked at 1.1 GHz.

As for onboard storage and RAM, it only has 4 GB and 1 GB, respectively. One of the most important features of this device is that it comes with a microSD slot, allowing for the expansion of storage.

The LG Wine comes preloaded with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. However, users are bound to face difficulties when using the on screen icons to access apps as they only have a 3.2 inch screen to work with. Aside from that, everything including icons and texts are much smaller when compared to a normal-sized smartphone.

While LG has yet to explain why they are investing their time and resources in producing such a device, the LG Wine, which was released as the LG Gentle in Korea, has already turned out to be pretty popular, prompting the manufacturer to roll it out globally.

No pricing has been announced for the LG Wine yet, but it is expected to be pretty cheap compared to other devices.