The Sprint Echo is turning a lot of heads since its launch yesterday. The device features not one, but two 3.5-inch 480 x 800 displays which unfold into a single 4.7-inch 960 x 800 surface. The device, manufactured by Kyocera, has a patented “liquid-metal” hinge which provides multiple configurations for the device. You can close it up and use it like a single-screen phone, open it up like a mini-surface, or prop it up like a baby laptop.
Kyocera has customized seven core apps to take advantage of the dual screens, including the browser, email, and messaging. There is also a dual-screen app launcher which is accessed by tapping both screens simultaneously. Unfortunately, all other apps will just take up the whole screen as they don’t support the dual-screen hardware, but Kyocera and Sprint say an SDK is coming.
Many love this device at first sight, but many think it will fail. Some have even compared it to the Microsoft Kin. Coming from Sprint, you’d expect the Echo to be 4G-capable, but it’s not. It also only has one camera, a rear-facing 5 megapixel camera with 720p video capture.
While the dual-screens seem like a killer feature, the fact that developers will need to re-write their applications to support it is less than optimal. It also opens the door for more fragmentation. We will have to see how the Echo does once it’s launched later this year.
via engadget