Hands-on with Infinix's E-Color Shift 2.0 concept phone

Back in 2018, Dai Nippon Printing unveiled an e-ink dress that could create new designs on the fly. Last year, BMW showed off the i Vision Dee concept car, which similarly had color-changing e-ink panels. Wouldn't it be a shame to have such things if your phone couldn’t change its look to match them?

Infinix loves experimenting with technology like this. The Infinix Concept Phone 2021 had both a solid electrochromic film that could change colors and an electroluminescent film that could light up. Earlier this year we got hands-on time with another prototype device, which used E-Color Shift to change the look of its back. Today, we are looking at the next evolution of this tech – E-Color Shift 2.0.

First off, what is it? It covers the back of the phone and can change colors at the user’s command. It is similar to e-ink where the new colors take a while to settle. But once they do settle, they require no power and will remain even if you power off the phone. Note that this isn’t a display, it can’t really draw things, but it can change the color of several elements individually.

And this is where v2.0 beats v1.0 – the original E-Color Shift concept phone could only change the color of four quadrants on its back in a 2x2 grid. The new version can change the background plus several foreground elements in fairly free-form patterns. This allows for many more different looks to be created.

The ColorShift app controls the back

You use the ColorShift app to control the back – you can choose between six different designs and six different color palettes. Look at the palettes (the colorful circles in the screenshots below), the upper left quadrant represents the background. It can be White, Black, Orange, Yellow or Blue. The other elements are colored so that they stand out against the background.

Here are some of the different looks you can enable:

Yellow, white and blue backgrounds with E-Color Shift 2.0

And some different patterns, so that you can see the different elements that can be controlled:

Different pattern options

The colors are not particularly vibrant (especially the yellow and orange), but the blue is a nice, inky color. The blue and the black backgrounds really transform the look of the phone.

You could go for a white background too, which then just shows a pattern of diamond shapes on the back. Or even turn this feature off for a plain look – when you do, you can’t really see that there’s anything there.

Or you can pick the fun option and enable the Loop Display toggle in the app. It will cycle through different designs and animate them along the way. This keeps things moving, but will be better once the tech improves and is able to change colors faster.

As with previous concept phones, Infinix is exploring different ways to use color-changing technology, beyond just appearance.

This back can show incoming and especially missed calls and new messages. We say “especially” since the colors do take a while to settle, which means this isn’t suitable for “pay attention to me right now” type of notifications. As usual, notifications on the back ideas run into the same issue – most people keep their phones with the screen facing up. Especially since most phones have always-on displays, which handle notifications just fine.

But with this, you will know you missed a call – even if your phone’s battery died! Then, you can plug it in and watch the colors change as the phone finishes charging.

Infinix is also exploring how this technology can be a reflection of you, beyond your style and color preferences. AI Emotions Recognition analyzes your photos and detects how you feel – then it changes the back to reflect those feelings.

Similarly, it can detect weather conditions and adjust based on that – a nice yellow background for sunny days or blue for gloomy, rainy days. We think this is a cool idea, but we’d rather have it tied to the weather forecast instead of photos.

ColorShift styles can be created based on weather, emotions and colors

One day in the not-so-distant future, this technology can put an end to different color SKUs for phones – the color of the back will just be a setting, similar to your wallpaper. And as the tech matures, it will be able to form complex patterns, so that your phone has a different look every day.

Of course, this could turn out to be one of those “in the year 2000” predictions that never come to pass. And it could be because of the most mundane reasons, e.g. people put cases on their phones. E-Color Shift does work with transparent cases, for what that’s worth. Either way, we love to see innovation and forward thinking, even if it never makes it past the prototype stage.