Sprint Launches Dual-Screen Android Based Echo Smartphone

Sprint Nextel Corp., a provider of wireless and wireline communications services offering mobility to consumers, businesses and government users, has announced the launch of a new smartphone with two screens, one of which is stacked on top of the other.

Developing and deploying innovative technologies, the company brings a range of telecommunication services such as mobile data services, instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities and a well known Internet backbone to its customer base of over 49.9 million users.

The new smartphone named Echo, has been manufactured by Japanese manufacturer Kyocera Corp. and features two screens of the size of an iPhone's display. The top screen slides out and can be snapped it into place so that both the screens may be arranged side by side to offer a larger space; which makes it convenient for the user to type e-mails, play games and watch videos. Combined display offered by both screens is around half the size of an iPad, which is still much larger than the display size offered in most of the phones.

Consumers can also use just one screen if they intend to do the same, and alternatively can stretch a visual application such as YouTube or Google Maps across both screens. Sprint also allows the users to display two different applications on both the screens,as they can read e-mails on one screen and type in the reply to the message through an oversized onscreen keyboard on the second display.

The Echo smartphone is powered by Google Inc.'s Android platform, and Sprint has equipped it with an extra screen to make it different from a number of other Android based smartphones. Initially, Sprint has modified the basic features of e-mail, text messaging, photo, video, Web browsing and some games, to enable the consumers using them while also using the second screen for other jobs-and the company aims at adding more Android based apps to the list in future.