Sprint betrothed us an “attention first” during its eventuality currently, and it certainly delivered: check out the Kyocera Echo, the first dual-screen Android phone. That’s right, dual-screen — that’s two 3.5-inch 480 x 800 displays which can be unfolded as well as used as the single 4.7-inch 960 x 800 surface. The screens have been connected by a slick sliding liquid-metal hinge which Kyocera’s filed several patents on — the phone can be closed and used like the unchanging single-screen phone, unfolded all the approach, or propped up into a faux-laptop configuration shown above. Under the hood there’s a 1GHz second-gen Snapdragon using Android 2.2 — we’ll pardon a older program because Kyocera had to do endless customization to supplement dual-screen support to 7 core apps similar to the browser, email, as well as messaging. The seven optimized apps can be run upon any screen individually so you can have the browser up top as well as email next, as well as several of them embody utilitarian full-dual-screen views as good. There’s also a new dual-screen app manager, that is brought up by tapping the two screens concurrently. Unfortunately, third party apps can’t be run in any of the brand new modes as well as only fill the entire display for now — Kyocera as well as Sprint contend an SDK is entrance shortly.

Interestingly, a Echo doesn’t unequivocally run a optimized apps simultaneously when you have two of them open — it fast switches them in as well as out of hibernation, even though they’re both displayed upon shade. That equates to you can’t do things like watch the video whilst writing an email, for e.g. — it’s an odd reduction, though it seems similar to it’ll only be an emanate in limited resources. As for battery life, Kyocera and Sprint aren’t giving definite numbers, though we were told things would last about a day with complicated make use of of both screens — and a Echo is being sole in the gold with the second battery in an outmost charging box, so you should have plenty of extract on a go. Downsides? Well, it’s not the most tasteful phone we’ve ever seen, as well as we’d be remiss if we didn’t indicate out which there’s only the sole rear-facing 5 megapixel camera with 720p video constraint as well as which the Echo is 3G-only — there’s no WiMAX, that is a bit peculiar for the Sprint halo device. Still, it’s definitely one of a most intriguing Android handsets we’ve ever seen, as well as at $189 when it launches someday in a coming months, it’s firm to pique a little serious interest. Check the reduced hands-on video after the mangle.
Kyocera Echo hands-on

Via Engadget