This Chinese smartphone looks like a miniature Kindle machine with a call and listen function

E Ink screen reader is quite popular product for e-book lovers because of the feature that does not cause eye pain as when reading on other types of screen. Knowing this, a Chinese company decided to bring electronic paper technology to smartphones, of course, colors were not limited to traditional black and white.

Hisense, a well-known Chinese electronics company, specializing in the field of TV, has recently announced a new device with a color E Ink screen that they "tasted" at CES 2020 earlier this year.

A regular smartphone will use a backlit LCD or OLED screen, meaning they will glow whenever you turn on the screen. The Hisense A5C is the opposite: its 5.84-inch electronic ink display does not emit light every time you turn it on.

E Ink displays are famous for having high contrast, better reflections than light in bright environments, allowing them to recreate the experience of reading content on real paper. But to be able to view the screen in dark environments, Hisense also equips its device with an integrated backlight.

E Ink displays became popular thanks to the black and white Kindle devices. The company behind this technology – Amazon – has only recently begun to equip color E-Ink screens on their consumer devices.

Hisense went even further, equipping the E Ink screen with the phone. The company says its screen can display 4,096 colors using a color filter on the black and white screen.

Because this screen doesn't require light and doesn't refresh instantly, it will also consume less power. Hisense says that if Wi-Fi is off and the screen brightness is turned to the lowest level, the A5C can last 93 hours on a single charge. Even when the brightness is at its maximum, the phone can hold up to 62 hours.

But using the E Ink screen also has many drawbacks. First, this screen refreshes much slower than traditional smartphone screens. If you own an e-book reader, you will see the screen flickering slightly after a few page turns to completely erase previous content, ready to display new images. This is an acceptable minus when you only read books; But when you want to scroll through multiple websites or social networks, it's hard to ignore.

To prevent the screen from flickering constantly, Hisense introduced a feature called "full screen flipping." This feature will basically eliminate scrolling entirely. When you're done reading, you can refresh the screen to show the content of the next page.

This feature is best used when reading books, which is why Hisense promotes this phone to users who like to read. You can still watch movies and play games on the A5C, but the experience is much worse than a regular smartphone, like last year's black and white A5.

The device runs Android 9.0 Pie

The basic features you can see on budget smartphones are still present, like a rear camera and a front-facing selfie camera. But don't expect advanced features like 5G, wireless charging, NFC, etc.

The A5C is one of the cheapest smartphones you can buy at this time. It will go on sale in China on April 29 for $ 240. The A5Pro CC upgrade, with faster refresh rates, NFC, and fingerprint sensors, will be on sale on June 1, starting at $ 254.

Reference: AbacusNews