Bigme is preparing a second run at the two-screens-in-one-phone idea, and this time the hardware underneath is a proper mid-range Android device rather than a novelty. The HiBreak Dual 2 puts a 6.13 inch E Ink panel on one face and a 5 inch color LCD on the other, and it runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 8300, an octa-core chip built on TSMC's second-generation 4nm process with four Arm Cortex-A715 and four Cortex-A510 cores plus a six-core Mali-G615 GPU. That is enough silicon to drive smooth-scrolling apps and 3D games on the LCD side while the ePaper display handles reading and other static content.
The pitch is collapsing two gadgets into one. Instead of carrying a phone alongside a dedicated E Ink reader like the Onyx BOOX Palma 2, you get a single device with one processor, one OS, and one library of books and apps that never need syncing. The E Ink display will come in black-and-white or color versions, both of which top out at 4096 colors, so the LCD exists to cover everything ePaper handles poorly: video, high-motion gaming, and anything that benefits from a high refresh rate. Refresh-boosting modes do exist on E Ink, but they trade image quality for speed and still stutter, which is the gap the second screen is meant to close.
The device ships with Android 16 and supports dual-SIM 5G along with stylus input on the E Ink panel. Running current Android matters here beyond the version number: it means the phone sits on the same open source base as the rest of the ecosystem, so sideloading reading apps, syncing a self-hosted library from a Calibre or Kavita server, or running a local model through an app like Termux is all on the table rather than locked behind bespoke reader firmware. The design itself is unusual, with the LCD section resembling a front panel grafted onto the back of an E Ink phone, complete with large bezels and a raised camera-bump-like housing.
Bigme has not published full specifications, pricing, or a ship date yet. Details so far come from a teaser and a preview page for an upcoming Kickstarter campaign, so anyone interested will want to wait for the crowdfunding launch before the numbers and the usual caveats of a small vendor entering the smartphone space come into focus.
