In under two hours before the event, Sprint has some information about the Kyocera Echo smartphone that will almost certainly be unveiled tonight. This coincides with rumors this morning of the Echo being announced tonight. No official page is up yet on the website, but doing a search for "echo" on sprint.com results in this:

The Kyocera Echo smashes the last barrier between you and the ultimate mobile experience. Its unique dual-touchscreen, pivot hinge design gives you all the space you need to run the apps that connect you to the people and information you need every day. Spread your work across all 4.7 inches of combined display or use each smaller display independently to run multiple apps. Closed, the Kyocera Echo is a pocket-friendly smartphone. Open it and expand your world.

It looks to be Sprint's attempt at bringing the beneficial screen real estate of a tablet to the smaller form factor of a smartphone. Why the two need to be merged, I don't know. The event takes place tonight at 6pm EST so stay tuned for more information.

Update (7:50p ET): As predicted, Sprint unveiled this dual screen smartphone. It's pretty sleek, but pretty square. Both screens are 3.5 inches diagonally with 800x480 resolutions. The phone runs Android 2.2 Froyo, has a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and a 5MP camera with flash.

The phone takes a similar design concept to the Nintendo DS, in that when the phone is open, there is a display on the top and bottom that can both provide different views in apps and games or even the ability to use two apps at once. Sprint plans on releasing a developer API to take advantage of both screens in apps made for the Echo. You can imagine that with two screens, battery life is going to be horrid. Sprint already knows this, as they have opted to ship an extra battery with the device.

The Kyocera Echo is a unique take on a smartphone and will be available on Sprint for $199 with a two-year contract in the spring.