The back of your phone is useless. There. I said it. Sure, the cameras are back on it, but what about all that white real estate that monopolizes 90% of the surface? Honestly, he needs to start carrying his own weight here. However, a fully functional screen is not the answer. That means a lot more battery drain, a thicker design, and a much higher price tag – for what, exactly?
The concept of a secondary e-ink display is not new. Yota Phone did it years ago. Ultimately, however, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2019, four years after the launch of its second device. By then, foldable devices had already been on the market for a few years, making the innovation more than a passing novelty.
Infinix E-Color Shift improves Yota’s phone somewhat by adding color to the mix. It’s not, however, the full low-power secondary display that the previous device promised. Instead, it’s more of a fun aesthetic addition to the part of your device that’s almost always covered by a case, your hand, or otherwise facing down.
Image Credits: Brian Heater
The surface is not proper e-ink, and certainly not capital “E” E-Ink. The company describes the technology as follows: “By applying different voltages, the electric field within the microstructure changes, causing the corresponding color particles to move and display the desired colors. This innovative approach allows the phone’s shell to change skins at will, keeping the screen on without consuming power.”
The technology debuted at CES last month, but I’ve been sick in bed with Covid, so I’m telling you about my experience with E-Color Shift here at MWC in Barcelona. Having played with it a bit, I have to report that this is the most original of the originals. Not only are we not talking about a real product here, but the technology that Infinix was showing required the virtual unit to be connected to an external battery.
Like e-ink, however, the rear panel has the advantage of maintaining a static image even when the battery is dead.
It remains to be seen if this gets a third-party license or just shows up on an Infinix device. My guess is that the Hong Kong company is hoping for the latter, as it’s hard to imagine too many people buying a smartphone based on this technology alone. For one thing, it doesn’t really do much.
For another, as mentioned above, it will probably be covered in some shape or form 99% of the time, except for those rare occasions when you want to show a friend the weird thing your phone is doing.
