Why Japan Said Goodbye To Traditional Flip Phones

Flip phones endured in Japan longer than the US, but the trend is shifting.

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Chances are you haven't seen a flip phone in the wild for years. The days of the old Motorola RAZR and similar clamshells are long gone. But in Japan, its esoteric tech ecosystem kept them in circulation for decades.

The gara-kei, short for Galapagos keitai, are Japan's curious feature phones with physical keyboards that refused to die in an era of big-screened smartphones. "Galapagos"…