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The Bigme HiBreak is a budget smartphone with that ships with at least 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, ships with an Android based operating system, and global 4G LTE network bands.
It’s also one of only a small number of smartphones to feature an E Ink display, and it’s one of the first with optional support for an E Ink Kaleido color display. First announced earlier this month, the Bigme HiBreak is now available for pre-order for $219 and up and it’s expected to begin shipping by the end of June.
The starting price is for a model with a 5.84 inch, 1440 x 720 pixel black and white E Ink display with 275 pixels per inch, a front-light with support for 36 levels of brightness adjustments (but no option to adjust color temperature.
Bigme also offers a model with a color display that has an effective pixel density of 92 ppi for color content, but which should be able to match the 275 ppi offered by the black and white model when viewing grayscale content.
E Ink is most often associated with eBook readers like the Amazon Kindle thanks to its paper-like properties including a high-contrast, low-power display that’s easily visible in direct sunlight using nothing but ambient lighting. It’s also proven increasingly popular in tablet-like devices designed for reading, writing, and drawing. And E Ink also makes displays used for digital signage and other applications.
But E Ink displays typically have much slower refresh rates than LCD or AMOLED displays, which makes them less commonly used for smartphones, general-purpose tablets, or other devices that you might want to use to display videos, play games, or just have smoother animations for activities like scrolling.
Device makers like Bigme have adapted to these form factors a little bit by offering different display modes, allowing users to prioritize smooth animation or better picture quality. Basically you can increase the refresh rate until it’s almost fast enough for video if you’re willing to put up with partial screen refreshes that may leave artifacts from previous images on the display until your next full refresh.
The versions of the Bigme Hibreak that are up for pre-order now are powered by a MediaTek Helio P35 processor and feature 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, support for WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, and 4G LTE network bands B1/B2/B3/B5/B7/B8/B20/B28/B34/B38/B39/B40/B41.
Other features include a 3,300 mAh battery, a microSD card reader with support for cards up to 1TB, a USB Type-C port, dual microphones plus a speaker, a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera.
While this device probably isn’t going to be great for snapping photos or joining video calls, Bigme says you can use the rear camera to scan a document and then use OCR technology to convert words in the document to printed, searchable text.
In other words, this is a phone for people who want the features that make an eReader special in a pocket-sized device they can use as a phone.
It ships with Android 11 and comes with the Google Play Store pre-installed, which means you should be able to run a wide range of Android apps and games. But don’t expect all of them to play well with a slow screen with a limited color range.
What you can do though, is use the Bigme HiBreak to read eBooks, documents, or web pages. And since E Ink displays only consume power when the image on the screen changes, you can even do things like bring up a boarding pass and then shut down your phone. Even if the battery is dead, the last image shown will remain on the screen, allowing you to show that boarding pass to the gate agent.
The Bigme Hibreak measures 154 x 76.8 x 8.6mm and weighs 170 grams.
Bigme also plans to launch a second model later this year that will have a higher-performance MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an operating system based on Android 14. That model’s expected to sell for $339 and up, but here’s how that model stacks up against the cheaper model that’s launching today:
| Dispay/chipset | Helio P35 (B&W) | Helio P35 (Color) | Dimensity 900 (B&W) | Dimensity 900 (Color) |
| CPU | 4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 2.3 GHz 4 x ARM Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz |
2 x ARM Cortex-A789 @ 2.4 GHz 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 @ 2 GHz |
||
| Graphics | Imagination PowerVR GE8320 @ 680 MHz | Mali-G68 MC4 | ||
| Memory/Storage | 6GB / 128GB | 8GB / 256GB | ||
| OS | Android 11 | Android 14 | ||
| Price | $219 – $309 | $249 – $339 | $339 – $429 | $369 – $459 |
Alex Mitchell is your go-to expert for all things mobile. With a passion for the latest smartphones, apps, and mobile innovations, Alex provides in-depth reviews, insightful analyses, and breaking news about the ever-evolving world of mobile technology. Stay connected with Alex to navigate the fast-paced realm of mobile devices.
