More screens means greater efficiency. That’s the theory behind installing two of them side-by-side on your desk at work, or a Wall Street maven’s bank of flat screens in their workspace. Laptops are starting to get in on it, too, whether in the form of an upcoming Acer laptop with dual touch screens, or other manufacturers’ models whose screens telescope out for a wraparound effect.

Now, evidently, it’s time for the dual-screen philosophy to make its way to smartphones. On Feb. 7, Sprint hosted a high-profile event in New York City to debut the Kyocera Echo, an Android smartphone with two 3.5-inch WVGA touch screens connected by a hinge. All in all, the Echo is 4.53 inches long, 2.23 inches wide, and 0.68 inches thick.

Depending on that hinge’s angle, those screens can perform multiple functions. Slide one over the other, the Echo looks and feels like a somewhat thicker single-screen smartphone. Slid flat and side-by-side, the smartphone offers a 4.7-inch screen (broken by the hinge) for displaying movies and other media (each screen offers 800×480 resolution). One screen tilted at an angle to the other allows for typing on a virtual keyboard, on one screen, while viewing, say, e-mail or Facebook on the other.

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