If you are looking for a flagship smartphone with Color E INK technology, the Bigme Hibreak Pro Color will fit the bill. It boasts outlandish hardware specs and runs cutting-edge software to ensure it can be your daily driver for years to come. This phone was just released a couple of weeks ago, so it is relatively new. There are not many E Ink phones with color anymore, ever since Hisense exited the business.

Hardware

The HiBreak Pro features a 6.1-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 e-paper display with a resolution of 824 x 1648 pixels and a 300 PPI for black and white content, and 412 x 824 pixels and 150 PPI for color. The device’s color scheme is black, and the screen is slightly sunken and is not protected by a layer of glass. The rear has a nice leather-like finish, but it does little to alleviate the overall plastic feel. Bigme said the display offers zero blue light and zero flickering, which makes it highly safe for the eyes. The front light feature offers 36-level warm and cold dual temperature controls for comfortable reading in external lighting. A light sensor is at the top to automatically adjust the screen’s brightness. The dynamic refresh technology automatically removes residual images, resulting in minimal to no ghosting.

Under the hood, the phone features a 6nm octa-core 2.4GHz MediaTek Dimensity 1080 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. You cannot expand the storage since it does not have an SD card. However, the storage should be enough for thousands of apps, audiobooks, and e-books. It has a 20 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front shooter. The phone supports 4G/5G with dual-SIM, 2.4G/5G Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.2 for wireless headphones or earbuds, allowing you to listen to audiobooks, music, or podcasts. NFC and a USB-C port are available. The phone features a single speaker located at the bottom, which is mono and produces a sound quality that is not very good. A speaker grill is at the top, which is how you hear what people are saying, if you should use this as an actual phone. There is a microphone located at the bottom of the screen and another at the top. A power and volume button is located on the right side, a USB-C port is on the bottom, a dual-SIM port is on the left, and two customization keys are on the right.

The device is powered by a 4500 mAh battery, which should last for a few weeks on a single charge. It supports 18-watt fast charging, so the battery should recharge quickly. I like that it has a fingerprint sensor, to keep things secure, so you don’t always need to enter a device password. A gyroscope is also handy for switching the orientation from landscape to portrait mode.

Software

The Bigme Hibreak Pro Color runs on Google Android 14 and has full access to the Google Play Store, making it easy to download millions of apps and keep them up to date. Google Play Services is also pre-installed to download all the leading Google apps, such as Google Books, Maps, and Chrome.

The home screen is very busy and right out of the box. There are so many apps. Text, instant messaging, and folders populated with even more apps that the average user will likely uninstall. Suffice it to say that there is a shortcut to the Google Play Store, a screen saver, a bookshelf, an app manager, settings, music, a clock, and all the usual Google preinstalled apps. At the bottom of the screen is the UI, with the camera.

If you swipe down from the top of the screen, you can access quick settings to establish a Wi-Fi network, connect Bluetooth accessories, connect to the data connection, use airplane mode, turn on the flashlight, and enable system-wide dark mode. Slider bars control the front-lit display, color temperature system, and volume slider.

The E INK Control Center is also housed in this area and is quite important, considering this is an E INK phone, which typically suffers from refresh issues. You can set the phone to different reading settings, such as books, magazines, comics, and video. Custom settings unlock various system tweaks, such as anti-shake, auto-clean, set the refresh mode, contrast, and speed modes. Speed modes are standard fare if you have ever owned a Boox or Bigme device. HD 256 displays 256 levels of grey scale, instead of the typical 16 levels. Regal, fast, and extreme have their uses, but quick and extreme tend to compromise image quality to increase performance. This is beneficial if you stream content, browse the Google Play App Store, or navigate complex websites.

Aside from all of the above features, the HiBreak Pro Color feels like a typical Android phone, and you can do everything you would normally do with a Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, or anything else on the market. However, the Bigme does not have much bloatware that comes preinstalled, except for Google apps and some proprietary software. Everything else can be uninstalled.

Reading

There is a stock reading app, but you don’t want to use it, considering you would have to sideload all your content. This phone has Google Play, which is heavily app-reliant but perfect. Since it runs Android 14, it can access every e-reading, comic, manga, or library service app on the market. Want to use Kindle with animated page-turns or Google Play Books? This handles it all, with speed. This is primarily due to the sheer amount of RAM and the processor. The different speed modes also help in this regard.

An E Ink phone has clear advantages over an iPhone or other flagship devices. E Ink is the closest you can get to reading on paper, offering tremendous resolution, ease on the eyes, and suitability for long reading sessions. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max with a super-large screen, and the bright light hurts my eyes when I read websites, use apps, or browse websites on Flipboard or Google News. I find myself staying up late at night due to all the eyestrain. This is why, lately, I have been turning the screen off and listening to an audiobook before bed. If I want to read a book, I have a Kindle Colorsoft as my daily driver. The Hibreak Pro is an iPhone and an e-reader replacement; you don’t need both anymore.

The screen on this is better than the Kindle’s, because there is no layer of glass, so using the Hibreak will not reflect overhead lighting nor get any glare from the sun. The battery life is not as good as the Kindle’s because it runs on Android, which often suffers from battery life issues due to the numerous background processes that run simultaneously.

I will not list all the apps you would want to install; people with phones or Android tablets already have the preferred apps they use on a daily basis. There is an excellent Reddit thread on what other Bigme users have on their Hibreak phone or other Bigme tablets, worth reading.

Ultimately, this phone should be capable of being your daily driver for years. Most other e-readers and other devices on the market still ship with Android 11, which won’t be supported in a few years. However, since the Hibreak Pro runs Android 14, it should be compatible with any app for at least six years in the future.

Wrap Up

The Bigme Hibreak Pro Color is unique in the market, as it is one of the few devices that can act as a fully functional smartphone with a Kaleido 3 display. The upcoming Palma 3 does have a SIM card, but it is only relevant for mobile data and can’t make phone calls in the traditional sense; it can only be used with voice communication apps such as WhatsApp.

The phone comes in two colors: black or white. Bigme is satisfactory at releasing firmware updates to support their devices over the long term, typically releasing one every few years. The software is polished; they tend to use the same UI and software on their phones as they do on their e-readers. I would recommend this phone if you are looking for a secondary device or if you have vision disorders and need an E-INK screen that is easy on the eyes.

However, there are a few downsides. If you just need a device to read e-books, a color e-paper display might not be suitable. However, if you do light reading, internet browsing, online banking, and everything else, then this is ideal for your needs.