Dual-Screen Phone, OMAP 5 and More!

Hey guys! Got a new post today wrapping up Sprints "Industry First" mobile event that took place just a few hours ago. The announced the Kyocera Echo, a dual-touchscreen smartphone that features 2 high-resolution 3.5 inch touchscreens. The phone slides out on a unique liquid-metal hinge design to show both screens at the same time. The people over at Sprint and Kyocera say this device can "simultask" as they call it, capable of running 2 different applications, one on each screen. Under the hood, the device runs Android 2.2 Froyo powered by a 1GHZ second-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, has a 5-megapixel camera capable of shooting 720p, and is going to be priced at $199 on a two-year contract. The device is not capable of connecting to WIMAX 4G, which seems sad since Sprint was calling it an "industry first" and I assumed this of all phones would come with all the bells and whistles a good phone should have. The device itself looks extremely thick and will definitely bulge out of the pocket, and the dual screen UI seems extremely un-polished and inconvenient, but this is a good concept and one that we could build on and make work. Only if Microsoft hadn't killed their Courier idea. In other news, Texas Instruments has announced their OMAP 5 series, and if this chip ran a phone, it would officially replace your computer. Built off the ARM A15 platform, this chip has 4 cores running at speeds up to 2GHZ each core, a multicore PowerVR SGX544 GPU, which is supposed to have up to 5x the performance of the incredible GPUs in the Samsung Galaxy series phones, which is unbelievable. This also supports Kinect-like gestures, multiple operating systems, up to 8GB of RAM, 24 megapixel images and 1080p HD 3D video capture a 60 fps. Whoa. These chips will be sent out to vendors at the end of this year, with devices featuring it estimated to be available during the second-half of 2012. On a much less amazing note, be sure to make a stop at your local T-Mobile store this weekend as all phones are free for Valentine's day. Be sure to share & bookmark, and please follow me on Twitter if you liked this article!