World’s first E-ink smartphone with colors is going to be announced next week

These days, smartphone displays don’t look or feel like they did some ten, or even five, years ago with their stunning high-refresh rates, high resolution, bright and vivid colors. The competition in this area of the smartphone market has become stronger with phone vendors offering 90Hz refresh rates, or even 120Hz, like on the Samsung Galaxy S20 series or, as rumored, on the yet unreleased OnePlus 8 Pro. However, there is one company that seems to think about displays quite differently.

China-based company Hisense is now going to offer the world’s first smartphone with a colorful E-ink display (electronic paper display), SlashGear reports. Phones that have E-ink displays are nothing new, however, E-ink displays are usually secondary always-on displays - they are usually colorless (grayscale) and therefore easier on the eyes, but are not at all up to competing in the refresh rate wars with even the slowest LCD screen.

The upcoming E-ink phone (its name has not been released yet) will be able to display 4,096 colors, which seems great in comparison with older E-ink displays, capable only of black and white. However, in comparison with LCDs and OLEDs… Well, those two technologies can display millions of colors.

People may be wondering why someone would want to use such a phone. Well, there are two advantages of the technology. Firstly, an E-ink display is great for reading books or comics. Secondly, it does not need as much power, so it can last longer on one charge than modern-day smartphones. Unfortunately, the slow display refresh rate of the phone makes it impossible to comfortably watch a video or play a game on it.



The company has not released any additional information on the phone. Maybe such a device will be good for someone who doesn’t want to be glued to his phone 24/7 but still wants to be able to go on social media or read on it, or perform some basic tasks on it. Reportedly, the phone will be announced to the world on April 23.