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The Bigme HiBreak Pro is something of a cross between a smartphone and an eBook reader. It has a 6.13 inch, 824 x 1648 pixel black and white E Ink display with 300 pixels per inch, making the device a sort of pocket-sized eReader sort of like the Onyx BOOX Palma series. But unlike the Palma, the HiBreak Pro is a full-fledged smartphone.

Not only does it run Android, but it features support for 4G and 5G cellular networks. The Bigme HiBreak Pro should be available for purchase soon, and customers who want to "pre-order" can pay $5 now to get $30 off the $439 retail price.

Bigme has launched a number of eBook reader and E Ink tablets in recent years, and earlier in 2024 the company launched the original Bigme HiBreak smartphone which is available with a choice of color or greyscale E Ink displays.

The new HiBreak Pro has a bigger, higher-resolution display, a faster processor, more memory and storage, a bigger battery, faster charging, and a higher-resolution rear camera, among other things. It also runs a newer version of Android.

Bigme has also added support for adjustable color temperature to the front light, allowing you to choose from warm or cool light tones to increase or decrease the amount of blue light that shines on the screen. But so far the company has only introduced a greyscale version of the new phone: there's no color display option.

It's also unclear from the product page whether the HiBreak Pro has a microSD card reader or not: the original HiBreak supports removable cards up to 1TB. But with twice as much built-in storage, that may not be a dealbreaker.

HiBreak Pro HiBreak / HiBreak Color Display 6.13 inches824 x 1648 pixels300 ppiE Ink (greyscale)Color adjustable front light 5.84 inches720 x 1440 pixels276 ppi (greyscale) or 92 ppi (color)E Ink (greyscale or Kaleido color)Front light (single color) Processor MediaTek Dimensity 10802 x ARM Cortex-A78 @ 2.6 GHz6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 2 GHzMali-G68 MC4 GPU MediaTek Dimensity 9002 x ARM Cortex-A78 @ 2.4 GHz6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 2 GHzMali-G68 MC4 GPU RAM 8GB 6GB Storage 256GB 128GB OS Android 14 Android 11 Cameras Rear: 20MPFront: 5MP Rear: 13MPFront: 5MP Wireless Dual-band WiFiBluetooth 5.24G & 5GNFCIR (remote control) Dual-band WiFiBluetooth 5.04G Battery 4500 mAh 3300 mAh USB Type-C (18W fast charging) Type-C Biometric Security Fingerprint sensor N/A

While you can use the 20MP rear camera and 5MP front cameras to shoot photos, record videos, or hop on video calls, I still doubt you'll want to do too many of those things on a phone with a black and white E Ink display. But you can use the rear camera as a sort of document scanner – the HiBreak Photo can use optical character recognition to convert pictures to editable documents. There's also a text to speech feature for listening to eBooks or other text.

Although not all Android apps play well with E Ink displays, Bigme says the phone ships with the Google Play Store pre-installed. That means you should be able to install and try most Android apps. And Bigme says its "SSS-level super refresh mode" leads to faster screen refresh rates, smoother scrolling and "minimal ghosting" when compared with other E Ink displays.

via ITHome

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