Kyocera KY-01L: Compact E-Ink Smartphone with Unique Card Size Design
In recent years, smartphones have become increasingly larger, and thanks to the trend towards nearly bezel-less designs, they’ve already breached the 6-inch screen diagonal, which is considered the standard size in the eBook reader market. Aside from the LCD technology, the aspect ratio (up to 19.5:9 in smartphones vs. 4:3 in eReaders) is far less practical for reading eBooks.
However, not everyone in the smartphone market seems thrilled with this gigantomania. The Japanese technology company Kyocera has swiftly developed a mini-smartphone, which it recently unveiled.
The device is called “KY-01L” and is also simply referred to as the “card phone” by the mobile provider NTT Docomo. The name fits, as the device measures just 91 x 55 x 5.3 mm, making it hardly larger than a bank card (about 85 x 54 mm) in height and width. The weight is also impressively low at only 47 grams.
E-Ink Display Due to Battery Constraints
A significant aspect has fallen victim to the downsizing: the battery size. The battery has a capacity of only 380 mAh. One of the biggest power consumers of a modern phone is undoubtedly the LCD screen. The solution: the Kyocera KY-01L is equipped with an E-Ink display.
The 2.8-inch screen therefore does not require power to display an image. Power is only consumed when the image changes, just like with an eReader. The resolution is relatively high at 600×480 pixels, giving the card phone a pixel density of around 274 ppi.
The pure standby time is supposed to be around 100 hours. You can talk for up to 110 minutes.
For the operating system, Kyocera uses a customized version of Android. The CPU in use is a Snapdragon Wear 2100 Chip, supported by 1 GB of RAM. The device features LTE, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi (including tethering functionality). However, you’ll have to do without two things: a camera and a speaker.
The price is expected to be around 250 euros at launch in November.
