Well, pardners, if you’re up for a “dual,” Sprint has now put up its preorder page for the Kyocera Echo, so you’ll be able to plunk down $199 to ensure you get the dual-screen Android handset when it launches April 17.
The Kyocera Echo page also has a cute little Flash game in which you duel (or “dual,” as Sprint is saying) some Western baddies and it’s a fun way to kill five minutes. As for the device itself, it is an odd duckling that may appeal to the more adventurous of you out there.
The Sprint Kyocera Echo rocks two 3.5-inch touchscreen displays which fold out to reveal a combined 4.7-inch display. Why? Well, I’m not quite sure but Kyocera is saying it will give you a smartphone experience as well as a tablet-like view once it’s folded out.
The Sprint Kyocera Echo also rocks a 5-megapixel camera with HD video recording capability, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, EV-DO Rev. A and WiFi connectivity, GPS, Bluetooth and a memory card slot.
I finally got a chance to play with this thing at CTIA 2011 and I didn’t get it. The screen folding mechanism is actually pretty neat but the customized apps like VueQue didn’t seem to add too much to my experience. The company is also courting developers to make sure that your favorite browser, Twitter or other app will run properly on the dual-screen device.
I’m not quite sure if I’m against the form factor itself. If the Sprint Kyocera Echo rocked a dual-core processor, front-facing camera and WiMax, I might be much more tempted than I am with this current model. I’ve been wrong before but I don’t know how well this thing will be received.
What do you think, friends? Is this form factor appealing to you or does it just seem like a needless gimmick? Let us know in the comments.
We’ll have a full review soon, so check out the video below.
[Via Sprint]