The Bigme HiBreak Plus is a 6.13-inch smartphone featuring a Kaleido 3 color ePaper display, designed specifically for users who want a “go-anywhere” device for reading, writing, and digital minimalism. It bridges the gap between a standard smartphone and a dedicated e-reader by running on Android 14 with full access to the Google Play Store.
Hardware
The HiBreak Plus features a 6.1-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 e-paper display with a resolution of 824 x 1648 pixels at 300 PPI for black-and-white content, and 412 x 824 pixels at 150 PPI for color. The device’s color scheme is white, which gives it a bit of distinction from the Hibreak Pro, which has a black body. The screen is slightly recessed and not flush with the bezel. It has a front-lit display with 36 levels of brightness and a 52 FPS super-fast refresh rate. The phone has white bezels on the front, surrounding the screen, and white on the back plate, which is also made of a cheap plastic shell.
Under the hood is an octa-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. It has dual SIMs, and one can be used for an SD card with up to 1TB of additional storage. It has a 5MP front snapper and a rear 20MP camera, along with a basic flash. It has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.1, speakers, USB-C, and a 6400 mAh battery. Coupled with precise GPS, it confidently guides you from city streets to off-the-beaten paths. This is more than a phone—it’s your tool for a more intentional and exploratory life.
Unlock the full creative and productive potential of your device with a compatible capacitive stylus. Experience a natural, pen-on-paper feel for note-taking, sketching, or annotating documents directly on the screen with pinpoint accuracy and low latency. Please note that to use this advanced handwriting functionality, a stylus is required and is sold separately.
Software
The Bigme Hibreak Plu runs on Google Android 14 and has full access to the Google Play Store, making it easy to download millions of apps and keep them up to date. Google Play Services is also pre-installed, allowing you to download leading Google apps, such as Google Books, Maps, and Chrome.
The home screen is very busy and right out of the box. There are so many apps. Text, instant messaging, and folders populated with even more apps that the average user will likely uninstall. Suffice it to say that there is a shortcut to the Google Play Store, a screen saver, a bookshelf, an app manager, settings, music, a clock, and all the usual Google preinstalled apps. At the bottom of the screen is the UI, with the camera.
If you swipe down from the top of the screen, you can access quick settings to set up a Wi-Fi network, pair Bluetooth accessories, connect to a data connection, enable airplane mode, turn on the flashlight, and enable system-wide dark mode. Slider bars control the front-lit display, color temperature system, and volume slider.
The E INK Control Center is also housed in this area and is quite important, considering this is an E INK phone, which typically suffers from refresh issues. You can set the phone to different reading settings, such as books, magazines, comics, and video. Custom settings unlock various system tweaks, such as anti-shake, auto-clean, set the refresh mode, contrast, and speed modes. Speed modes are standard fare if you have ever owned a Boox or Bigme device. HD 256 displays 256 levels of grey scale, instead of the typical 16 levels. Regal, fast, and extreme have their uses, but quick and extreme tend to compromise image quality to increase performance. This is beneficial if you stream content, browse the Google Play App Store, or navigate complex websites.
Aside from all of the above features, the HiBreak Pro Color feels like a typical Android phone, and you can do everything you would normally do with a Google Pixel, Samsung Galaxy, or anything else on the market. However, the Bigme has little bloatware preinstalled, aside from Google apps and some proprietary software. Everything else can be uninstalled.
Reading
There is a stock reading app, but you don’t want to use it, considering you would have to sideload all your content. This phone has Google Play, which is heavily app-reliant but perfect. Since it runs Android 14, it can access every e-reading, comic, manga, or library service app on the market. Want to use Kindle with animated page-turns or Google Play Books? This handles it all quickly. This is primarily due to the sheer amount of RAM and the processor. The different speed modes also help in this regard.
An E Ink phone has clear advantages over an iPhone or other flagship devices. E Ink is the closest you can get to reading on paper, offering tremendous resolution, ease on the eyes, and suitability for long reading sessions. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max with a super-large screen, and the bright light hurts my eyes when I read websites, use apps, or browse websites on Flipboard or Google News. I find myself staying up late because of all the eyestrain. This is why I have been turning off the screen lately and listening to an audiobook before bed. If I want to read a book, I have a Kindle Colorsoft as my daily driver. The Hibreak Pro is an iPhone and an e-reader replacement; you don’t need both anymore.
The screen on this is better than the Kindle’s, because there is no layer of glass, so using the Hibreak will not reflect overhead lighting nor get any glare from the sun. The battery life is not as good as the Kindle’s because it runs on Android, which often suffers from battery drain due to numerous background processes running simultaneously.
Wrap Up
The HIbreak Plus is everything you would expect out of a pocket-sized device. It comes with all the fixings, including everything you would need out of an e-reader, a fully fledged dual SIM smartphone with data communication for calling and texts
And now even better with full note-taking capabilities
It really does have it all, The body is a plastic build with a camera with no camera bump, and it even has an infrared sensor at the top of the unit
The pen itself is not very good; it’s slow, it doesn’t have a Wacom, you have to charge it, the pen tips are not interchangeable, and you can’t use any other pens.
But the fact that it does have note-taking in general is impressive in and of itself
The unit features an all-new hyperspeed mode, breaking the barriers and going beyond the current industry standard extreme/xmode, making this the fastest smartphone-sized unit in the market
Overall, the unit has more positives than negatives. It takes a few steps back with its poor performing pen and lack of 8 GB- 256 GB specs, but overall it is a win