Hisense unveiled the world's first cell phone with a color e-ink display at CES 2020.

The company is best known for its TVs and consumer electronics products, but it has also brought several Android phones to market. Hisense's color e-ink device is not its first foray into the idea of using e-ink displays in smartphones. [At last year's IFA, the company introduced the $220 Hisense A5. It features a high-quality grayscale e-ink display and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 439 octa-core processor, which can last several weeks on a single charge.

Hisense also has a dual-display phone to follow the innovative Nubia Z20. However, instead of OLEDs, Hisense phones use e-ink for the secondary back display and LCDs for the main display. It is called the Hisense A6L and costs about $470 in Europe. [For those who want to read news, web pages, or e-books, the e-ink display makes it easy to turn the phone around, saving a lot of battery power. And if you want to watch videos or play games, which is not possible with the e-ink's low refresh rate, you can use the main screen.

The new color e-ink phones cannot display video, but according to Hisense, they have "better refresh rates than previous e-ink phones. However, there is no video showing how fast the "better refresh rate" is. Also we have not tried it yet, so we do not know if this is true or not.

If video and gaming are not a priority, a phone with a gorgeous color display that can be viewed in any lighting conditions and lasts for weeks on a single charge seems like a great device. It also looks good for digital wellbeing.

Color E-ink displays seem ideal for reading the web and comics, working with email, spreadsheets, and presentations. The nature of the display also makes it unsuitable for watching video, which would reduce cell phone usage. Of course, one would not waste one's eyes looking at a bright LCD or OLED screen.

Stay tuned for more news as we attend CES 2020.