BARCENA—pan’s NEC has come up with a different way to answer consumer dems for bigger screens on smartphones. Rather than use a single, larger display, which makes the entire phone larger, the company has fitted a second screen to its s hset that folds out when needed to double the display area.

At first glance the phone, due on sale in pan in April, doesn’t look very different from other Android hsets. Its 4.3-inch display takes up most of the front of the device, but flip the phone over there is a similar screen taking up most of the rear. In fact, if it wasn’t for the phone’s br name on the front a camera on the rear, it might be difficult to tell the front from the back.

In normal use only the front display is powered, with access to all the usual apps software.

But flip the back of the phone around the screen size can be doubled. There’s a black border between the two screens down the center of the enlarged screen, so it’s not quite as good as a single, large display—but it’s much easier to fit in the pocket.

Each screen has 540 x 960 pixel resolution, giving the side-by-side screens an effective resolution of 1,080 x 960 pixels.

The two screens can either be run side-by-side as a single large display—albeit interrupted by that border — or each can be used to run a different app. This is one area where the s has an advantage on phones with a single large screen. Usually it’s impossible to run two Android apps side-by-side, but that’s not a problem on the new NEC hset.

NS

NEC demonstrated the phone running a video in one screen a b browser in the second, or a map on one screen note taking app on the second.

The back-to-back screens means the phone is almost certain to be sitting on one of its displays when resting on a desk, but both are protected with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 so scratches shouldn’t be an issue.

The phone was on show at Mobile rld Congress in Barcelona this week. A prototype version for the global market was also on show, although it’s unclear how much this differed from the pan model. NEC has not made any announcements regarding global availability of the hset.

The phone supports GSM, DMA E, runs Android 4.1, includes a Sony Exmor R image sensor in its 8-megapixel camera. NTT DoCoMo, which will sell the hset in pan, puts battery life at up to 630 hours in stby 3G talk time at just over eight hours.