Sprint and Kyocera has announced the world’s first dual-touchscreen Android-powered smartphone, the Kyocera Echo. It will be available exclusively from Sprint this spring for $199.99 on contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate.
Kyocera Echo has two 3.5-inch WVGA (800×480) touchscreen displays connected by a patent-pending “pivot hinge” that enables the two displays to operate independently, side-by-side or combined to form an oversized 4.7-inch (diagonally) integrated display. This design also allows you to do two things at the same time, like sending an email on one screen while surfing the web on the other, watch a video on one screen while texting on the other, and much more. The Echo is powered by 1GHz Snapdragon processor and runs Android 2.2 and includes customized apps optimized for the dual-screen mode.
The Echo measures 115.0 x 56.5 x 17.2mm, weighs 193 grams and under the hood the phone is equipped with 512MB RAM,1GB of onboard memory, digital compass, an accelerometer, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 (+ EDR), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, has Wi-Fi hotspot capability supporting wireless connections for up to five devices, 3.5 mm stereo headset jack and has 5-megapixel autofocus camera with flash and 720p HD capabilities. It comes packaged with a spare battery (1370 mAh), 8GB microSD card and a low-profile charging cradle which also can be used as an external power supply.
The smartphone can operate in four diffferent modes:
- Single-Screen Mode with all the functionality of a single-display, touch-screen smartphone.
- Simul-Task Mode with two of the phone’s seven core apps (messaging, e-mail, Web browsing, phone, gallery, contacts and VueQue) running concurrently but independently on the dual displays – e.g., reading e-mail on one screen and opening a text message on the other; checking Facebook via the browser on one screen while looking through a photo gallery on the other; or even searching the Web on one screen and checking email on the other.
- Optimized Mode with both displays supporting a single, optimized app with complementary functionality and enhanced usability – e.g., composing e-mail on one screen with a touchscreen keyboard on the other; watching a YouTube video on one display while browsing and queuing additional YouTube videos on the other (with a preloaded Kyocera app called VueQue); or viewing gallery images on one display while browsing image thumbnails on the other.
- Tablet Mode with one application spread across both displays for a full 4.7-inch viewing area. Tablet Mode is ideal for viewing maps, videos, websites, detailed documents, and long lists on-the-go.
Additional features include corporate (Exchange ActiveSync) and personal (POP & IMAP) e-mail, IM (Google Talk), text messaging, Full HTML Web browser, Google Maps, Google Talk, Gmail, synchronization with Google Calendar, plus TeleNav GPS Navigator, Sprint TV and Movies and more.