Hisense just did something no other phone maker has tried. Instead of cramming more features into one screen, they built a phone with two separate displays, and one of them comes off completely.
The A10 Ultra pairs a standard 6.13-inch color screen with a 4.96-inch E Ink panel that snaps onto the back using magnets.
You get your normal display for everything you’d expect: apps, video, browsing. Then you get a second screen built specifically for reading, one that sips battery and works well in direct sunlight. Notebookcheck announced the news on August 28.
The idea sounds odd at first, but the reasoning behind it holds up. E Ink screens draw very little power, and you can read them outside in full sun without glare getting in the way. That means you could read books, PDFs, or any other text-heavy content without draining your regular display, the one that normally eats through your battery the fastest.
Hisense A10 Ultra: A two-screen smartphone
Let’s talk about the specs. The main screen on the A10 Ultra is actually a 6.13-inch E Ink Carta 1300 panel, running at 1,648 x 824 resolution with 300 PPI. No color here, but that’s the tradeoff you make for a screen built to save battery and stay readable outdoors. For night reading, Hisense added a front light you can adjust across 36 brightness and color levels.
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The back panel is where the color lives. That’s the removable 4.96-inch LCD, and it handles anything the E Ink screen can’t, like smooth video or full-color apps. Since it attaches magnetically, you pop it off when you don’t need it.
Battery-wise, you’re looking at 4,000mAh, with 15W wireless charging and 18W wired charging over USB-C. Under the hood sits a Qualcomm Q-6690 Dragonwing ARM chip, backed by a 48-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel front camera. You also get NFC, Wi-Fi, and an infrared transmitter, plus Android 16 with full Google Play support.
If the detachable screen isn’t your thing, Hisense sells a stripped-down version called the A10 Pro. Pricing in China starts at $400 for the A10 Ultra. The A10 Pro runs 2,799 yuan (about $420) for the 8GB/128GB model, or 3,499 yuan (about $520) if you want 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. No word yet on whether either phone is heading outside China.
Hisense A10 Ultra: A real battery-saving smartphone
What makes the A10 Ultra interesting isn’t the novelty of having two screens. It’s that each screen has one job to do. Reading gets easier on your battery thanks to E Ink, and when you need color or motion, you flip to the detachable panel instead.
That setup makes real sense if you read a lot on your phone. Right now, heavy readers often carry a phone and a separate e-reader. The A10 Ultra tries to fold both into one device, and you can take the extra screen off entirely once you don’t need it.
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Whether this catches on with buyers is a different story. Most phone makers are racing to make devices thinner, not more complex, and a detachable screen goes against that trend.
Still, credit where it’s due. Hisense built something that breaks from the usual slab-of-glass Android phone. The A10 Ultra treats your phone display as something you can swap and reconfigure, not a fixed piece of hardware. It might point toward a genuinely different way of designing phones going forward.
