Sprint Announces Innovative Dual Screen Kyocera Echo

Sprint just held a huge media event at a nice NY City venue, complete with a magician, to announce its new Kyocera Echo. This is one of several new Android based PDAPhone / Smartphone devices that are trying innovative new features to get consumers' attention in what is becoming a crowded market. The first of a kind feature with the Kyocera Echo is its dual touch screen, which is something that should get a lot of people looking. But is this going to be a hit or a dud, that's the question?

The overall specs for the device are not that different from other new Android devices hitting the market this spring - Android 2.2, 1Ghz processor, and 1Gb of RAM. What really sets it apart is that the device has two 3.5" WVGA touch screen displays that are connected by a unique pivot hinge. The display can be closed so that it looks like a regular, albeit thicker, touch screen PDAPhone, or it can be swiveled and opened to show both displays. The second displays can also be tilted.

There are four different ways in which users can interact with the screens, manage their apps, and multi-task with the Kyocera Echo. With the screen closed, the device functions like any other touch screen device. With both screens exposed, there is a "tablet mode" that allows an app to use the combined screen larger screen, but with the small gab between them. This will obviously work well for some apps, but not others. In "simul-task" mode, the user can have a different app in each screen. Finally, with "optimized" mode, an app showing on one screen can use the second display for enhanced functions. An example of the optimized mode would be an email app that uses the second display solely for a keyboard. It remains to be seen how developers will be able to use these modes, and whether there will be a big enough market to entice a significant number of developers to release applications that exploit the optimized mode. Without the support of developers, the value of these modes will be greatly diminished.

Another nice feature of the Echo is that included with the $200 contract asking price, Sprint’s two 1370 mAh batteries, and a portable battery charger so you can always have the spare battery charging while you charge or use the Echo. The portable charger is designed so that you can plug the charger with the spare battery into your phone as an external power supply. This is useful when you’re running low on juice in the middle of a phone call and don’t want to interrupt the conversation by powering off the device to swap to a full battery. With all this attention to the batteries, I'm going to assume that those two displays probably consume a lot of juice.

So will this be a hit or a dud? The Echo will certainly have a lot of people looking... its a very visual device, but I'm predicting its not going to be a huge hit. First off, its a 3G device, and Sprint has been harping its 4G WiMax network quite heavily so I don't think users are going to be willing to move to Sprint for 3G, in the face of Verizon rolling out the iPhone. The Verizon iPhone has enough market clout to overcome the lack of 4G at this point, but I don't think an unproven device on the number 3 network will. The Echo also lacks a front facing camera, which many users are starting to look for to use for video chatting. Finally, I'm guessing that the battery consumption of this device is going to be pretty high, so a user will be having to haul a spare battery and/or charger around with them all the time.

The Echo seems to be trying to find the perfect niche spot between a PDAPhone and a tablet, and I'm not sure there is a market in that spot. There have been a long line of very interesting innovative PDAPhones that never really took hold, and I'm predicting this will be one of them. The only thing that will really change that, in my mind, is if other device makers indicate their interest in dual display devices and the App developers start exploited the hardware to do unique things. The apps could sell this device, but sadly I don't think developers are going to spend the effort to developer for the special modes of this device (if there is even an API to allow them to do so).