Review: Bigme HiBreak Dual e-ink Android phone

Review unit provided by Bigme

The Bigme HiBreak Dual is an Android phone with a 6.1-inch e-ink display on the front and a 1.8-inch circular LCD display on the back, and comes with pen support.

The phone was released in May 2026 and listed below are the prices at the time of review.

• 8GB RAM + 128GB BW - USD 389
• 12GB RAM + 256GB storage BW - USD 449
• 8GB RAM + 128GB Colour - USD 409
• 12GB RAM + 256GB storage Colour - USD 469

Prices above are only for the phone. Adding the case and pen will cost an extra USD 40.

The Bigme HiBreak Dual is very similar to the Bigme HiBreak Pro BW I reviewed in early 2025. The price then was USD 439, and now with a 20% coupon it's USD 352. This phone has 8GB RAM, 256GB storage, and the processor is also the MediaTek Dimensity 1080.

Specifications

Things included

• Phone
• Silicone case
• SIM eject tool
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• User manual

No charger is included, but you can use any USB charger you may already have.

Design

Design of the phone looks like early generation Android phones that appeared shortly after the first iPhone. It's a dated design but it's functional.

The BW e-ink display look great and I'll talk more about that later. E-ink phones still look really cool even though I've reviewed so many. There's a good chance people will ask you what phone you're using if they see yours.

The body is available only in white.

Back of the HiBreak Pro (left) is completely flat. The HiBreak Dual has a 1.8-inch LCD that's a circle. That LCD bump or protrusion is big.

The circular LCD can show several things and there's an app provided to customise the display and content.

There's the option to show notifications such as phone calls, Whatsapp messages, SMS messages.

One benefit of getting an e-ink phone is so that you can use the phone less, or use the phone more intentional. Having the secondary display with notifications will definitely make you want to check your phone more often.

This secondary display has function, but I don't think it's a good idea to pair with an e-ink phone that's all.

Image quality from the 20MP back camera is so-so, not that great, and that's not surprising or unexpected. Challenging aspects of using the camera are:

• There's no OIS to help with stablisation
• The display is black and white so you can't check colours
• It's not easy to check focus, so it's always best take multiple shots as backup

You can choose to show time.

That's one of the default wallpaper and you can swap it with yours.

And there's an AI chat bot that gives out brainy quotes. This is just gimmicky.

The case for the HiBreak Dual also comes with a pen holder. The case is transparent and hopefully will not turn yellow with time. The HiBreak Pro's opaque white case is now slightly yellowish after more than a year.

There are two customisable side buttons on the left. These shortcut buttons are really useful. You can set shortcuts to single, double press, and long press. So you can actually get 6 shortcuts in total.

Shortcuts that can be set to the buttons are:

• None
• Back home screen
• Back
• Screenshot
• Multitasking Switcher
• Clear cache
• Full refresh
• E-ink center
• Previous page
• Next page
• Light switch

On the right side, there are the volume control buttons and the red power button with a fingerprint scanner secure enough to unlock banking apps. There's haptic.

The phone has a front 5MP camera with face unlock. The phone has infrared, a rare feature. The phone has NFC and can be used for contactless payment.

I'm in Singapore and I use an app called SingPass, and the cameras do not work with the face scanning feature of that app.

The phone supports 5G and the SIM tray can hold two nano SIMs. There's no microSD card slot, no headphone jack.

The downward facing speaker is loud enough but audio sounds flat which isn't surprising. Top speaker is alright, calls are clear enough.

With firmware 1.6.0, audio only comes out from one speaker when playing audio, so there's no stereo. Bigme HiBreak Pro has dual speakers playing audio. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed with a firmware update.

Display

The HiBreak Dual is available with a BW or colour e-ink display.

There's no mention of the tech for the BW e-ink display. HiBreak Pro uses E Ink Carta 1200 so that could be the same here. It has good refresh rates up to 80FPS. Ghosting and image retention is not an issue. But how responsive or how good the screen looks will depend very much on the refresh mode selected.

I highly recommend the BW because the e-ink canvas is much lighter, so you will not need to use front light unless your room is dim or totally dark. Colour e-ink displays are noticeably darker and front light has to be enabled almost all the time.

Text quality for BW e-ink is also better, sharper because there's no additional grain/matrix caused by the extra colour layer. BW e-ink is also cheaper although not by much, just USD 20.

Reading experience on e-ink is quite similar to reading newspaper.

You can use E-ink Centre to adjust e-ink settings to get your preferred image quality and refresh rate.

The display is matte texture and anti-glare works even though it's not obvious from the photo above. Legibility under direct sunlight is excellent.

There's 36 levels of warm and cool light adjustment. Lighting looks even to me and there's no wavering pattern at the edges.

One issue with front light is the light will spill from the gap between the display and the frame of the body. HiBreak Pro has the same issue. I don't think it's that distracting, but once you see it you can't unsee it.

BW e-ink can only produce 256 shades of grays, and black is not deep black, think newspaper black.

Colour conversion to BW is alright but there will definitely be some colour info that is lost.

For example with Google Maps, it can be difficult to see outlines of buildings and roads.

The workaround is to increase contrast using the E-ink settings, but that will also cause photos to look too dark.

Note that when you adjust e-ink settings for an app, it's specific to that app. So you can create individual e-ink settings for different apps.

Performance

The phone uses the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 which is an upper mid-range 5G processor from 2022. It's a decent chip and overall performance is responsive for an e-ink device.

My review unit came with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. The phone can hold many apps in memory. 8GB RAM is actually sufficient but the model with 8GB RAM only has 128GB storage and there's no microSD card slot.

Apps are able to launch quick. Web pages load fast.

OS and software

The phone uses Android 14. Current Android version is 17. I don't think Bigme is gonna update the OS so that's a shame. They could have loaded this phone with Android 16 and that would be a strong selling point, also assuming there will be no future OS updates.

One downside with not having Android OS updates is new versions of apps may require new versions of Android. Having said that, many apps actually can run on very old versions of Android.

Bigme has their own UI on top of Android and they have added some useful features, such as

• There's an on-screen NavBall or Float Ball with 9 customisable shortcuts
• Lift to wake
• Page refresh when back to Home
• Always-on wallpaper that can show time, calendar
• Can set 6 shortcuts to the two side buttons
• Set 5 shortcuts for Android navigation bar
• Put device to airplane mode when it's in sleep mode

There is official support for Google Play Store.

There is no bloatware unless you consider the pre-installed Bigme apps to be bloatware. Bigme has included translator, voice-to-text, voice recorder, AI, etc.

Pen

The included pen is quite small so it's not comfortable to hold for long periods of time. There's no side button, no eraser button.

The pen is powered by battery and charging is with the USB-C port. Pen's battery capacity is small so it is important to not leave the pen in a discharged state for long period of time as that will damage the pen easily. If you do not use the pen often, it's best to set a monthly calendar alarm just to charge the pen.

The pen supports pressure sensitivity and palm rejection, but there's no tilt sensitivity.

Thankfully the phone case comes with a pen holder.

Display is laminated but that's a noticeable gap between the line and pen tip if you look close. Parallax is not an issue on small screens though. Pen latency is actually not too bad.

Overall handwriting experience is alright, not the best due to the gap between the line and pen tip from the display thickness. There's pressure sensitivity but the pen isn't that sensitive which for note taking still works.

Third party note taking apps will have very noticeable latency, and the UI for those apps do not work well on BW e-ink displays.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 4,500 mAh and is considered big for an e-ink phone.

Battery life is difficult to test because you can't just run looping videos, and this phone is not made for watching videos.

Anyway, based on my usage of reading, and web browsing, the battery life can easily last for a day or two. The Always-on Display does not drain battery life significantly, thankfully.

When showing home screen with icons, not doing anything but with internet connection, battery drops 3% per hour.

Reading an ebook for 1 hour dropped 2%.

When showing Always-on Display, battery drops 1% every 2-2.5 hours. In other words, overnight drain with Always-on Display is around 3%.

Conclusion

I usually sell away review units after publishing my reviews, but I still have the Bigme HiBreak Pro after more than a year. That phone is not amazing but it's good as it does what it's advertised to do. I keep it around so that I can compare future e-ink phone releases with it.

The Bigme HiBreak Dual has mostly similar specifications except there's now an extra LCD display behind and pen support. An e-ink phone to me is to help make you use the phone less. That extra LCD display goes against the reason for having an e-ink phone. Having pen support is nice but the pen performance is good just for quick notes and that's fine.

Whether to get the HiBreak Dual or HiBreak Pro is just personal preference. Decision probably comes down to whether you want the pen support and how much you want to spend. If you want to get the HiBreak Pro, read this two reviews too: A | B.

One disappointment with the phone is it's still using Android 14 when the current version is 17. And it's not likely for Bigme to update the OS so it's really a downside.

Pros and cons at a glance
Pros and cons at a glance
+ 6.13 inch 300 DPI
+ Has Google Play Store
+ 8GB and 12GB RAM option
+ More responsive than Hibreak
+ Side button shortcuts very useful
+ E-ink has good contrast
+ Matte display has excellent legibility under sunlight
+ Fast refresh (depends on mode)
+ Decent audio quality, volume is low
+ Comes with case
+ Dual 5G SIM
+ Has GPS, gyroscope
+ Great battery life
+ NFC, Infrared
+ Has face and fingerprint unlock
+ There's haptic feedback
+ Android 14
- No SD card
- Front light spills out from frame of phone
- Limited grayscale contrast
- Not likely to have Android OS updates
- Audio only from bottom speaker when playing media

Availability

The Bigme HiBreak Dual is available from Bigme online store.

If you have the intention to buy this phone, consider supporting my blog by making your purchase through the affiliate links. I get to earn some commission but at no extra cost to you. Your support allows me to continue to make reviews such as the one you have read.