The Hisense A9 smartphone is the 2022 model and just came out. This takes the best aspects of the Hisense Hi Reader and packs it into an extreamly viable daily driver. The major selling points is the E INK Carta 1200 display, which increases performance by 30% and the large 6.7 inch E INK display. It also has Android 11, which is great for those of you that want to sideload apps. This phone comes in many different languages, including English. It retails for $409 for the 4GB of RAM and $439 for 6GB of RAM and you can buy it from the Good e-Reader Store.

The Hisense A9 features an E INK Carta 1200 6.1-inch E Ink display with a resolution of 824×1648 with 300 PPI. It has an impressive 84% screen-to-body ratio. The screen flush with the bezel and protected by a layer of glass. The color scheme of the phone is black and the backplate is also black, however it has glitter sand texture, which makes it a joy to touch and hold. There is a rear facing camera with a slight bump on the screen it is 13 MP and LED flash, it can record at 1920×1080. The front facing camera is 5MP and has a resolution of 2592×1944. It is rare that any E INK devices have cameras, and these ones are mighty impressive. There are volume rockers on the right side an E INK button on the left and power button on the top. You can read and use the A9 during the night, thanks to the front-lit display and color temperature system. There is a total of 27 white and amber LED lights.

Underneath the hood is a Snapdragon 662 octa-core 2.0 GHz with Adreno 610 GPU. If you are a big fan of high quality sound, the A9 is utilizing the ES9318 chip which allows for HiFi quality sound output while having integrated support for the LDAC, AAC, SBC, and APTX Bluetooth audio codecs. This makes the new A9 great for not only listening to audiobooks but some quality music as well. For the best sound possible, you will want to plugin wired headphones via the 3.4mm headphone jack. There is also a small speaker on the bottom and also a microphone. There is a grill on the top so you can hear in HD. There are two different variants for RAM, 4GB or 6GB. I would go with the 6GB version because it is running Android 11 and since you will be using apps, the more RAM you have, the better they will perform. It has 128 GB of storage and has dual SIM card tray, one can be used for an SD Card that is capable of an additional 128GB. You can transfer apps, books and other content via the USB-C port, this is also how you charge it. It is powered by a 4,000 mAh battery. You can keep your phone secure with the face unlock, fingerprint sensor or a passcode. The dimensions are 159.00 x 79.50 x 7.80 mm and weighs 183 g.

On a software level it is running Google Android 11 and you can sideload in your own apps. This phone is primarily marketed in China, so you will obviously have some preinstalled apps such as Kindle China and a bunch of others. You can long press on them and uninstall whatever does not make sense. I would suggest that you install a 3rd party app market, such as the Good e-Reader App Store, so you can keep everything updated.

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