Most of us spend an awful lot of time looking at pocket-friendly screens these days, which can take its toll on our peepers. Last year, Bigme offered an eye-friendly alternative with its HiBreak E Ink smartphone. Now a Pro version has launched.
The original HiBreak launched as a 5.84-inch handset with either a monochrome or color ePaper display – the former priced at US$249 and the latter $279. For that money you got octa-core processing, dual cameras, Android 11, and 4G LTE.
The phone also came with Bigme's xRapid refresh technology, which aims to nix one of E Ink's pain points – where the ghost of a previous image spoils the visuals on the current screen view. This has been boosted to "SSS" super refresh for the monochrome Pro version, resulting in a "faster, cleaner and smoother" experience with minimal ghosting and a refresh rate of up to 21 frames-per-second.
The ePaper display is bigger too, at 6.13 diagonal inches and 824 x 1,648 pixels for a ppi of 300. In fact, just about everything on the HiBreak Pro has been improved. There isn't a color E Ink version yet, but the front light gains a warm temperature setting to go with the cold.
The handset now comes with faster Dimensity 1080 processing supported by 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage (with microSD expansion). Its front camera is the same 5-MP module as before but the rear-cam gets bumped to 20 megapixels (from 13 MP). The company has also thrown in optical character recognition for scanning documents on the go.
Though per-charge battery life isn't specified, the combination of E Ink display tech and the low-power CPU should help keep you going for longer than a regular smartphone. And if you do run out of juice, 18-watt fast-charging arrives with a battery capacity increase to 4,500 mAh.
In addition to dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, there's 5G mobile too. Built-in GPS should help you get around. NFC is cooked in for tap-to-pay functionality. The phone runs Android 14, GPT is on hand to help with searches, there's a dual-mic array for call-taking, as well as a free voice-to-text feature, and Bigme has also included an IR emitter to potentially control gadgetry remotely. Lastly, fingerprint unlock makes its HiBreak debut for added peace of mind.
The Bigme HiBreak Pro is currently up for pre-order for US$439, with white being your only finish option.
Product page: HiBreak Pro
