All Eink Color Phones 2023 – Android & Google Play

If you want to get a color eink phone in 2023, unfortunately, you can only get them from one company- Hisense. While they are not perfect and have their drawbacks, they are pretty good and powerful for an eink device, and with some modifications, you can definitely use it as your primary phone (been using my A5Pro CC that way for more than a year now). So let’s take a look at these three phones-

Hisense A5C

Hisense A5C was announced in April 2020 and it was the first ever eink color phone in the world. It had all the specs of a normal smartphone- running on Android, having a camera, speakers, Sim card support, and you can even install google Play on it. In fact, it is the only device on this list that can do that.

It has a 5.84″ screen that can display 4096 colors but with only 100 PPI. It has a RAM of 4GB and 64GB internal storage but there is an option to expand up to 256GB through microSD. It also has a camera- 13MP in the rear and 5MP at the front. The 4000mAh battery will give you enough juice to last a day even if you use it as a smartphone- and probably a week if you use it as a pocket ereader.

Hisense A5 Pro CC

2020 was a big year for eink phones as a few months after the A5 and A5c release we got the A5 pro and A5 pro cc in june. The A5 pro CC is the most popular of the three phones in this list and most probably the most popular eink phone overall. In fact in a poll on Reddit at the end of 2021, it ranked as the most popular device on the eink subreddit. It has the same screen size as the A5 at 5.84″ but a more powerful specs like 4/6Gb RAM and 64/128GB storage and runs on Android 10.

Unfotunately it also has a different processor (Unisoc T610) which doesn’t allow for rooting and installing Google Play. So you have to install a different app store like Aurora or Apkpure for your apps. It costs around and you can get it (and the other two as well) from AliExpress.

Hisense A7 CC

The color version of the Hisense A7 has overall more powerful upgraded specs compared to the two above whether it be camera, processor or screen at 6.7“. It has only one variant- 6GB ram with 128GB internal storage but you can choose between silver or black color. It also has a more powerful GPU with the PowerVR GM9446 at 800 MHz compared to the A5’s 614MHz. It has a 16MP rear camera and a 4770 mAh battery and it weighs more at 221g compared to A5’s 164g.

Hisense A9 CC ???

Hisense released in 2022 what is in my opinion their best eink phone yet with the A9 because while the A7 had better specs than the A5 pro, it’s size was too big for a handheld phone and many reviews reflect this sentiment with many people reselling their phones because of this issue. But with the A9 they’ve reduced the screen size to a perfect 6.1″ making it almost the same size (if not smaller) as the A5 series because even though the display is bigger, it had smaller bezel size. And Hisense also claims that it is 33% faster than it’s predecessor.

So a color version of this would have been the best thing to happen to eink phone users and am sure many would have upgraded their phones to it. Especially since the new Kaleido 3 can display 150PPI colors while the past ones only had 100 so it would be so much better But sadly Hisense never released an A9 color and there is no news of them planning to do so anytime soon. There are also rumors that the company is retiring from making eink phones and I sincerely hope that this is not true as these devices are needed and loved by many people around the world.