Chinese electronics company Hisense is getting ready to launch a new smartphone with two screens: a full color display on the front and a black and white E Ink screen on the back.
There aren’t many details about the upcoming smartphone, which should be formally announced next week. But the company has posted an image showing both sides of the device to social networking site Weibo.
This wouldn’t exactly be the first device of its type. Yota Devices has released a few color + E Ink phones over the past few years, and in 2016 Hisense launched its own version called the Hisense A2. In fact, you can still pick one up for about $230 if you don’t mind the dated specs.
More recently the company launched the Hisense A6, a phone with a 6 inch screen color screen on the front, a 5.6 inch E Ink screen on the back, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. It’s up for pre-order in China from JD.com for ¥ 3999 (about $580).
The new phone looks a lot like the Hisense A6 on the back. The camera and screen layout seem to be nearly identical.
But the front of the new phone features a notch in the top of the display, which either gives you more screen space or less, depending on how you think about notches.
There’s no word on whether the new phone will feature any other changes. But it’s interesting to see that dual screen phones continue to be a thing… at least in China.
ugh the first company that makes a 5-6in e-ink tablet for under $150 will get my money..Why is it so difficult for some company to just release an e-ink only phone?
There are a number of companies that make 6″ eink tablets. See Onyx, Inkbook, Boyue and probably a few others. Seaching ‘eink android’ on ebay or amazon will turn up a few. Onyx actually did make an eink only phone, but that was years ago. Interest was low.
The cheapest tab I’ve seen is the 70 or 80$ inkbook classic. The onyx c67ml runs about 130. Some of them get pretty interesting as they get more expensive. The onyx boox max 2 at 7 or 800$ can also be an hdmi monitor. Sounds pricey, but dasungs are far more expensive.
The Light Phone uses an e-ink display but is reassuringly expensive.