Bigme launches HiBreak Plus smartphone with E Ink color display

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The Bigme Hibreak Plus is an Android phone with a 6.13 inch display, a 4500 mAh battery, and budget specs including 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and an unspecified octa-core processor.

What sets it apart from most smartphones is that this model has an E Ink Kaleido 3 color display for a paper-like viewing experience, long battery life, and outdoor visibility. Available for order now for $249 (marked down from $299), the phone is expected to ship April 20.

The HiBreak Plus is the latest in a line of E Ink phones from Bigme, a company that also makes eReaders and E Ink tablets. And without a complete spec sheet, it's difficult to say how it compares with the older Bigme Hibreak and Hibreak Pro.

But from the details the company has shared, it looks like this might basically be a cheaper HiBreak Pro with half as much memory and storage, but equipped with a color screen. It has the same screen size and physical design as that hone, which was released i n 2024. But the HiBreak Pro has a black and white screen, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage.

The new model has a Kaleido 3 color display that combines an E Ink greyscale display with a color filter layer, allowing you to view up to 4096 colors at 150 pixels per inch or greyscale content at up 300 ppi.

The phone also has a frontlight with support for 36 levels of brightness, support for a high screen refresh rate t hat lets you view content at up to 52 frames per second (although most visuals will look better at lower refresh rates).

In my experience, devices with Kaleido 3 displays are a bit of a mixed bag. Colors look duller than they would on an LCD or OLED screen, color content tends to look a little pixelated, and remnants of previous images stick around for a while if you enable higher screen refresh rates, making the whole thing look kind of messy when used for video, games, or scrolling through websites or periodicals.

But if you're looking for a phone that you can also use as an eReader, that display should be easy on the eyes, since it doesn't shine light toward you and instead relies on ambient light (or the included frontlight, which shines light from the side of the screen onto the display to make it easier to view in dim or dark environments). And in some ways, the lousy experience with high-motion graphics is a feature rather than a bug – it could be a good reason to use your phone less.

Bigme says the HiBreak Plus ships with an Android 14-based operating system with support for the Google Play Store.

Other features include dual SIM support for 4G LTE networks, GPS support, a fingerprint sensor integrated with the power button, and an optional accessory pack that in cludes a case and capacitive stylus.

via NotebookCheck