Officially Launched
Hisense A2 Smartphone Launched with 5.5″ AMOLED & 5.2″ E-ink Displays
A couple of months back, a new smartphone from Hisense called as Hisense A2 is listed on TENAA with dual displays featuring AMOLED and E-ink screens. We have already seen the similar type of smartphones from the Russian manufacturer, YotaPhone. The YotaPhone with its high price tag failed to attract the larger audience. In November last year, the company shifted its manufacturing operations from Russia and Finland to China in order to make the device affordable. Almost two years after launching the YotaPhone 2, the company is yet to launch its successor. Though the YotaPhone 3 is first announced to launch in 2016, it was later postponed to 2017. In between all these delays, the Chinese manufacturer, Hisense has officially launched the Hisense A2 as a crowdsourcing project and while the market price of the device is 2999 Yuan (approx $435 / Rs. 30,000).
The device comes with same specifications as seen on the TENAA website. On the front of the device is a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution and on the rear is a 5.2-inch E-ink display with qHD (960 x 540 pixels) resolution. The E-ink display is the same that is used for Kindle E-book readers. There will be a backlight for these e-ink displays and has the reflectivity that is almost close to the normal paper. Both the front and rear displays come with a 2.5D glass on top. The built-in iReader app also has a resource of 300,000 online eBooks and company offers 5,000 credits for free with every device and JD’s online catalogue integration. It comes with dual-mode dual-touch technology, where the user can control the main screen of the device by swiping or tapping on the E-ink screen on the rear.
Talking about the internals, the Hisense A2 is powered by Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and coupled with Adreno 505 GPU. This is the same processor that also powers the Nokia 6 smartphone. It packs 4GB of RAM which can handle almost all the apps without any lag, and we expect it to give smooth experience while shifting from AMOLED display to E-ink display. The 64GB of internal storage will be sufficient for the regular user, or else there is also MicroSD card slot for further expansion up to 128GB. On the camera front, there is a 16MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, 5P lens, and PDAF. It has 75-degrere wide angle view and can record videos in Full HD resolution at 30fps. While on the front is a 5MP sensor with f/2.4 aperture and 84-degree wide-angle view for capturing selfies.
With all these high-end specifications and dual displays, the device is kept powered on by a 3,090 mAh battery and supports fast charging with the 5V/2A power adapter. The Hisense A2 has dual SIM dual standby and supports all the three carriers – China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom. Connectivity options include 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, 3.5 Audio port, USB OTG, and a USB 2.0 Type-C port. The device measures 157 x 76.8 x 8.45 mm and weighs 188 grams. It also an IR Blaster for controlling the TV and Set-top box just like a remote controller. As seen on Sony Xperia smartphones, the power button on the right edge of the Hisense A2 also comes integrated with a fingerprint sensor. It also supports gestures and can be used to authorize mobile payments through AliPay and WeChat apps. Stay tuned on PhoneRadar for more details!