Summoning illusionist David Blaine to help with the hype, Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse on Monday night unveiled a first-of-its-kind dual-screen smart phone made for multitasking and with the potential to splice two screens into one larger view.
The Kyocera-made Echo is sleek enough to slide into pockets, but with a pivot hinge and double-screen operation that opens wide enough to become a small work station. It was introduced in a publicity event in New York City.
It’s the latest phone from Overland Park-based Sprint, packed with next-level technology aimed at snagging customers in the knives-out fight for subscribers that defines the wireless industry.
The Echo’s launch marks the first unveiling of a gee-whiz gadget from Sprint since it released the Epic last summer. Sprint had kept the news tightly under wraps for weeks, and it only began to leak out a few hours before the Echo demonstration in a Manhattan ballroom.
Sprint’s new device, working on Google’s popular Android operating system, can display two apps at a time. Or it can be used, particularly for functions like maps, to stretch a single image over both screens. It’s a combination traditional smart phone rigged to double as a miniature tablet.
Its multitasking ability — Sprint’s show tried to inflict the words "simultasking" and "pocketable" into our lexicon — could set it apart from an ever smarter set of phones flooding the market.
Sascha Segan, the managing editor of PC Magazine, got a preview of the handset before the show Monday. He responded by declaring it a "bold" move by Sprint that puts something "absolutely unique" into the marketplace.
"You don’t see a two-screen phone anywhere else. I love innovation," he said. "This is innovation. … This is a way of having multiple windows open on your phone the way you always do on your computer."
He imagined a special appeal to a younger set of social networkers who might, for instance, want to drag photos from a gallery on one screen to their Facebook feed on the other.
Time will tell how just how much noise the Echo will make in the marketplace. The much-coveted Apple iPhone, which had been the exclusive of AT&T’s much-derided network since its birth, expands to industry leader Verizon Wireless and its reputation for wider and more reliable coverage this weekend.
That raises the stakes for third-place Sprint, which has had success with the Evo and Epic phones. Both operate with relatively fast processing chips and use Sprint’s 4G, or WiMax, wireless version of broadband for data feeds.
For a time, the 4G, or fourth-generation, cellular system was Sprint’s way to stand out from the crowd. But both in marketing and reality, that 4G edge has faded as the competition championed other technologies that rival the speed of land-line Internet hookups.
Surprisingly, the Echo works only on Sprint’s slower 3G network. That could make sense given that it would seem less a platform for bandwidth-hogging activities like video than the Epic or Evo. This is the first high-end device featured by Sprint in more than a year that doesn’t connect with the faster download technology.
Even so, it at least turns heads in the world of people who care about fancy cell phones.
Travis Geary is an information technology specialist for a home health care company in the Kansas City area, and he weighs in regularly with gadget reviews on his t-rave.com blog. Geary counts himself as restrained for having bought just three phones in the last year, most recently upgrading to Sprint’s Evo Shift. The Echo caught his eye.
"If I hadn’t just upgraded…," he said wistfully.
More clinically, he sees the dual-screen device as a significant breakthrough.
"It will definitely draw attention," the 24-year-old said. "I could see you having your e-mail going on one side and Twitter on the other. Lots of things."
Folded up, the Echo sports a 3.5-inch screen about the size of an iPhone. Stretched out, it can put twin touch screens to work or function like a small tablet, measuring 4.7 inches diagonally. (The bulkier Evo’s screen is 4.3 inches.)
When it goes on sale this spring, it will run $200 upfront, a cost that is heavily subsidized by a two-year contract. Two screens mean more energy consumption. So the phone ships with a spare battery.
The Echo’s unveiling comes just ahead of Sprint’s scheduled posting of fourth-quarter 2010 financial results this week. The company has been struggling to turn a profit. It gives Sprint a showcase item for the Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona, Spain.
Already Monday night, gadget freaks were breaking down the Echo online.
"I’m surprised we haven’t seen something similar already," wrote Rob Jackson on the Phandroid blog. "I’ve been suggesting this in articles and podcasts for the better half of two years."
That said, he worried whether the hundreds of thousands of apps available for Android phones would work on the Echo.
At the Engadget blog, Nilay Patel worried a tad about the battery life and the wrinkle of displaying two apps at once but running only one. (It can’t, for instance, show you a YouTube video as you type an e-mail. But you can toggle back and forth.)
Still, he gushed.
"It’s definitely one of the most intriguing Android handsets we’ve ever seen," he wrote. "It’s bound to pique some serious interest."
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