Since January, they have been teasing and calling it as “Industry’s first”. Here it is. Sprint has unveiled the world’s first dual-touchscreen Android powered smartphone Kyocera Echo. It’s truly innovative.
The Echo is surprisingly running on the out-dated Android 2.2 Froyo, while all the other new launching phones are having Android 2.3 Gingerbread and the Echo is having 3.5 inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixels)touch-screen displays. According to the Kyocera, the smartphone’s patent-pending ‘pivot hinge’ lets the two displays will operate independently, combined or side-by-side to form a 4.7(800 x 960 pixels) inch integrated display. The device opens up to reveal another display, but the user can flip the top display up a little bit to sit on an angle, just like a Nintendo DS.
The handset has a “Tablet Mode”, which enables you to use one application go around across both screens and it will be working on the CDMA EV-DO network of Sprint but not a not a 4G WiMax smartphone. Sprint has confirmed that the Kyocera Echo will come with not only an additional battery but an external battery charger in the box for free.
Kyocera Echo is sporting a 5 Megapixels camera with 720p HD video recording capability, 512MB RAM, running on 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 8GB micro-SD card pre-installed, supports cards up to 32GB, Wi-Fi hotspot capability, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and it is weighing 193 grams.
Kyocera Echo is also having ‘Simul-task’ mode, which is nearly reported as the next level of multitasking, to allow you to work with two apps at the same time. For example, you can be browsing the web, while composing an email or watching a video at the same time.
Kyocera Echo is having the customized pre-loaded apps, specially developed for the dual-screen mode – VueQue to let the users watch a video in one display and the users can browse and buffer the additional videos in the another touch screen. The company will be releasing special APIs for developers, which will allow them to design apps for the Kyocera Echo’s unique dual-screen form-factor.
Price & Availability
Kyocera Echo will be available through Sprint’s networks at some time in this ‘spring’ and it will cost you a $199.99 on contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate and you can pre-register here at the Sprint’s website to get more up-to-date info.
[Source: Sprint Press Release]
My opinion is this: Most people are going to use the secondary display as a keyboard only. The secondary display will be useless in most scenarios. This is a waste, because a physical keyboard would have been sufficient and it wouldn’t take an expensive toll on battery life and overall design size, width, and weight.