Bigme has released a new smartphone called the Bigme Hibreak, and it features a 5.84″ color E Ink screen and it runs Android 11.
It’s available to order from Bigme’s Amazon store for $329 (there are two identical listings for some reason), but there’s currently a coupon that takes $50 off, making the price $279. Shipping is still a few weeks out but they’re accepting orders now.
The Amazon listing is lacking in details so I checked Bigme’s website for more information. They also sell a version with a black and white E Ink screen, but it’s not listed on Amazon yet.
The Hibreak is basically Bigme’s answer to the Onyx Boox Palma, except the Hibreak can be used as a phone instead of just looking like one.
It runs Android 11 and comes with Google Play preloaded to install apps. At this point that’s a pretty old version of Android—I have a phone that’s 6 years old with Android 12—but E Ink devices always seem to use older versions of Android for some reason.
One weird thing about the color version is they never say it uses a Kaleido 3 screen anywhere, which is E Ink’s latest color screen technology. In fact, the color resolution is listed as one third (91.9 ppi) the black and white resolution (275 ppi), which is what the older Kaleido screens had instead of half like the newer ones (which are 150 ppi in most cases), so it would appear they are using an older version of color E Ink with lower resolution.
It’ll be interesting to see people have any interest in E Ink phones. A few companies have released E Ink phones over the years but they’ve never really caught on. The Boox Plama seems pretty popular, though, despite not being an actual phone.
Bigme Hibreak Color Specs
- 5.84″ color E Ink screen.
- 275 ppi BW, 92 ppi color.
- Frontlight.
- 2.3GHz octa-core CPU.
- 128GB internal storage.
- 6GB RAM.
- Memory card slot (supports up to 1TB).
- Cameras: 5MP front, 13MP rear.
- Android 11 OS with Google Play.
- USB-C port.
- Speaker, mic, GPS, rotation sensor.
- 3300mAh battery.
- Dual band WiFi.
- Bluetooth 5.0.
- LTE 4G.
- Weight: 170 grams.
- Dimensions: 76.8 x 154 x 8.6mm.
- Price: $279.
Now this looks nifty. It might be small for some but this size is what I’d like for a pocket reader.
Do bigme products have the phone home thing that Onyx does? That’s a big hang up for me with Onyx.
I don’t know, I haven’t used any Bigme products yet, but probably everything phones home these days. I might get the BW version to test if it comes up on Amazon.
That’s the phone with the glossy screen where one has to apply a matte screen protector by oneself: https://youtu.be/ddmwlsWl038
I rather use my new TCL 50 PRO NXTPAPER 5G with Android 14, 5G (hence the product name), real colours (and not the wishy-washy e-ink colours), better camera and without ghosting. The price in the EU is around 280 Euro at the moment, so more or less the same as the Bigme phone. Even the previous NXTPAPER phone with 4G seems better in my opinion than the Bigme phone, and it’s even cheaper (around 140 Euro).