Hands-on with Sprint’s dual-screen Kyocera Echo

 

The dual-screen Kyocera Echo smartphone for Sprint lets you do two things at once, or look at the world through a 4.7-inch window. But it's only the vanguard of a legion of dual-screen devices that may be coming to American shelves, Sprint and Kyocera said today.

First, the phone itself: the Echo is a crazy device, but it thinks the way a lot of us do. It multitasks. The Echo starts out as a standard touch-screen Android 2.2 phone, and it works fine like that. But then you slide the 3.5-inch, 800-by-480 LCD screen, it does a strange hingey thing, and pow: the screen almost merges with another screen hidden under it. (Look at the slideshow below to understand.)

The Echo's unique hinge is made out of "liquid metal," Sprint's vice president for device operations Fared Adib said. It felt like plastic to me, but he said it was metal - and when tested, it was stiff and strong. The phone can survive a seven-foot drop test, he said.

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