Kyocera Echo Review

2011. The year when Apple released the iPhone 4. It was the year when Samsung launched the Galaxy S2. Many successful smartphone manufacturers started production in this period. However, there was this japanese company, Kyocera, which released a new successor to their models: the Kyocera Echo.

The phone was pretty interesting at its time. It had two modes: normal mode and tablet mode. The normal one was pretty usual, a thick squared hardware with an average display on front and a 5 megapixel camera on the back. However, open the phone and you will have a surprise. The device becomes a tablet, and the second display comes out, again, same size and same resolution. The idea is awesome, after me, but at that time it was a bit hard to execute.

First of all, the phone is very thick and cumbersome to use, and the design overall can be considered unattractive. Luckily, the bulky design has a reason: the phone can be dropped several times from normal heights on concrete and survive with light scuffs and scratches. Kyocera relied on this "feature" and made a commercial for it. Second of all, the hinge used to open and close to phone may seem broken, but it is not. It is just the weird design of the phone. one more thing to note is that this phone cannot stay flat on a table, for instance, during "tablet formation". Kyocera really tried hard on this design, but the times were too early back then. 

The software is a bit tricky here. In regular use, there are no problems, due to the normal aspect ratio, but when in laptop formation, the display becomes a square. The OS is optimized for the display, as for some applications, like Facebook. The experience is pretty cool, but due to the lack of resolution and average camera, I would like to see this idea from other companies again. Kyocera Echo was a bold experiment, but now-days this concept can really take shape.