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[GK86]

Link.

Time was you could rely on Japan to provide some of the most off-the-wall phone designs in the world, but companies like Sharp and Fujitsu have largely settled into producing straightforward Android slabs that could have come from anywhere. Thank NEC, then, for its Medias W N-05E, announced today for release on NTT Docomo. Originally teased close to a year ago, the Medias W is NEC's attempt at a dual-screen folding Android smartphone. It's not an entirely new idea — the Kyocera Echo and Sony Tablet P have done similar things to middling results — but can NEC be the first to get it right?

The Medias W has two qHD 4.3-inch screens that, when unfolded, combine to create a roughly square 5.6-inch display. The phone runs Android 4.1, and when navigating the OS you have two basic options for what to do with the extra pixels — double your home screen real estate, or use the second screen as a browser, photo gallery, or app switcher. The ability to call up a browser on one screen while doing anything at all on the other is a pretty convenient use case scenario, but we found the most utility out of apps that had been designed for both screens at once.

The browser works really well across both screens, loading the full desktop versions of websites as well as you'd expect from a tablet, and two-screen Google Maps is another killer feature — how many times have you wanted more screen space when zooming in and out of narrow city streets on your phone? Another dual-screen feature is the ability to play a video on both screens at once, letting you watch something at the same time as someone sat across the table. We also found it a lot easier to type on than most phones, with the keyboard comfortably spanning both screens. All of this is handled well enough by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, though there was some occasional lag when switching between display configurations.

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of apps that actually work like this, and while the Kyocera Echo had a neat feature that stretched software across screens, we didn't see anything similar here — most apps simply told us that they would only work in single-screen mode. The good news is that using the phone like any other is actually quite an attractive option even if you ignore the second screen bolted to the back. At 12.2mm thick it's not exactly the sleekest device we've ever seen, but it's solidly built and the design has a slightly retro charm of its own. Could we ever see this outside of Japan? It seems unlikely, but then NEC did call it a "global model" when first unveiling their dual-screen prototype.

We'll have video of the Medias W shortly.

 

[Bgamer90]

Interesting.

Cool but doesn't seem practical.

 

[bbdude]

Challenging the status quo with something that no devs will be willing to adapt to? Brilliant!

 

[davepoobond]

black bar in the middle is terrible.

 

[catmincer]

Would actually consider.

 

[royalan]

Ummmm...this has been done before, and recently.

Meet the Kyocera Echo:

And the idea sucked then and I'm sure it'll suck now.

EDIT: the article meantions the Echo. My bad...but still, the guys at The Verge know how much the concept sucks so I don't know why they're playing cute about it now.

 

[RM8]

I actually like it a lot. Call me a phone hipster, but I really like when modern phones aren't just glass rectangles.

 

[Cipherr]

Are they showing any worthwhile applications or usages for it? If not then meh.

 

[GK86]

black bar in the middle is terrible.

If they got rid of the black bar, I would probably consider it. Looks interesting nonetheless.

 

[KarmaCow]

I like the idea of the phone more than the actual product.

 

[dreamcastmaster]

I like the idea of the phone more than the actual product.

 

[MarkusRJR]

If Samsung used their new bendable screens to make this without the gap in the middle they could make a fucking awesome Galaxy Note 3. Damn.

 

[Zaptruder]

Ahahaha. I called this shit in the Apple thread.

I'm also predicting it's utter and abysmal failure.

Flexible screens are fraught with technical challenges - you can't really fold them.

Maybe in 2-3 years time, you'll have an unrollable phone. The screen and electronics is contained in the tube/stick, and you pull out the touch sensitive screen.

But even that won't do that well - because it'll be perceived as gimmicky.

Why? Because what can it honestly do that's much better than a traditional smart phone? Have a larger screen size and more pixels?

Because such a device is released into a world where Google glasses and VR headsets exist. People will quickly come to grasp that the extended FOV possible on a heads up display allows for better use and exploitation of ever growing computing power.

 

[Radec]

Samsung will release the superior flexible OLED that almost has no bezel.

 

[terrdactycalsrock]

I saw this on The Verge and thought it was stupid. In the demo they showed off how you could mutlitask by having one screen be a web browser and the second screen being an app. But its like at a certain point your implementing features that aren't true to what the device was built for.

 

[GK86]

The NEC-made handset has gone from a mere plastic shell to an LTE-wielding phone with a pair of 4.3-inch LCD displays (each 540 x 960 in resolution), a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel shooter, 16GB of built-in storage and a microSDHC slot. When open, the device serves up roughly 5.6 inches in diagonal screen real estate, and measures up at 64mm in width when shut.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/22/medias-w-folding-two-screens/

 

[DrFunk]

Ummmm...this has been done before, and recently.

Meet the Kyocera Echo:

And the idea sucked then and I'm sure it'll suck now.

EDIT: the article meantions the Echo. My bad...but still, the guys at The Verge know how much the concept sucks so I don't know why they're playing cute about it now.

Sprint supported the Echo for 2 minutes before they dropped it. Haven't seen a Kyocera device since

 

[Bomber Bob]

Awful, and knowing japanese handsets, materials looks cheap as hell

 

[Alrus]

Looks just as pointless as that dual screen Sony Tablet (did it ever come out anyway?)

 

[The Faceless Master]

Sprint supported the Echo for 2 minutes before they dropped it. Haven't seen a Kyocera device since

they have the Kyocera Rise (starter QWERTY) and also the Kyocera Hydro (waterproof starter on Boost)

Looks just as pointless as that dual screen Sony Tablet (did it ever come out anyway?)

it did, not that consumers noticed...