Bigme HiBreak Dual smartphone with E Ink & LCD screens coming soon

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The Bigme HiBreak Dual is an Android smartphone with two screens: one is a paper-like E Ink screen and the other is a full-screen display. But while I initially thought that meant the phone would have two full-sized displays, it turns out I was wrong.

It turns out that the new phone has a full-sized E Ink display on one side… and a small circular LCD display on the other. Why? Good question. But even if you don’t care about the second screen, the HiBreak Dual is Bigme’s most feature-packed smartphone to date. It’s set to launch soon with Super Early Bird prices starting at $359.

That’s the price for an entry-level model with a black and white E Ink display, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. But there are also several upgrade options.

The highest-price version of the phone will cost $479 for Super Early Bird customers and comes with an E Ink Kaleido 3 color display, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, and a case and stylus.

Retail prices are expected to be higher, ranging from $519 to $689.

Two things stand out there – if you ignore the small color screen on the back, this phone looks nearly identical to the Bigme HiBreak Plus that launched earlier this year. But the new Dual model is Bigme’s first phone to be available in a 12GB + 256GB configuration. And it’s the first with optional support for a pressure-sensitive digital pen for taking handwritten notes or drawing on the screen.

Like the HiBreak Plus, the new HiBreak Dual has a 6.13 inch, 824 x 1648 pixel E Ink display with 300 pixels per inch for greyscale content or 150 ppi if you opt for the color version, which supports up to 4096 colors. Both versions of the display have a front light with support for 36 levels of brightness adjustment.

Both phones are powered by MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processors, and both feature 4500 mAh batteries with support for 18W charging, dual SIM support for 5G NR cellular networks, GPS, NFC, Wifi, and Bluetooth, and an IR feature that lets you use the phone as a remote control. There’s also a fingerprint sensor, and a 20MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera.

Bigme says the size is even the same, at 80.9 x 159.8 x 8.9mm, which probably doesn’t include the circular bump for the rear display on the new model. Bigme says it’s a 1.85 inch circular display with a 360 x 360 pixel LCD display.

What can you use that screen for? It can display notifications for incoming messages and phone calls. You can use it to control music playback in apps like Spotify. And you can use it as a viewfinder for snapping selfies with the rear camera.

Bigme’s promotional video for the phone also shows that you can use the tiny screen to interact with social media apps… if you don’t mind black bars on the sides of a vertical window in this already-small screen, and a weird “AI pet” feature that… apparently lets you snap a photo of your actual pet, add animation effects, and then chat with pet. You know, if that’s something you want to do.

The phone ships with Android 14 and includes support for the Google Play Store.

via @BigmeEInkTablet