Want a powerful Android phone with an LCD on the front and a Kindle-like E-Ink screen on the back? The YotaPhone from Russian startup Yota Devices is coming back with a revamped design.
Speaking to Wired.co.uk ahead of its reveal at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Yota CEO Vlad Martynov told Wired.co.uk the first model was always going to be "a proof-of-concept". The next generation will be aimed at the mainstream, now with a fully touch-sensitive E-Ink display -- good for reading, good for battery life.
Inside the 8.9mm-thick second-gen YotaPhone will be a quad-core 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor paired with 2GB of RAM, powering the Full HD 5-inch Amoled LCD display and an unmodified build of Android 4.4 KitKat. The device has 4G LTE, NFC, wireless charging using the Qi standard, an 8-megapixel rear camera and 2-megapixel front-facing camera.
The 4.7-inch E-Ink screen on the back has a resolution of 960x540 pixels and supports a capacitive input, so unlike its predecessor it's possible to use the monochrome display for quick interactions such as checking the time or weather, responding to meeting requests (yawn, we know, but some people have to do this a lot) or replying to texts and social network updates. "We remove the bad habit of having to wake up the device every five minutes to check what's on screen," Marynov says.
It's much slimmer and lighter and generally more attractive than the previous model, and the E-Ink screen looks and functions much better in person. The rounded corners and curved grey back make the phone feel like a perfectly smooth pebble. Plus the wallpapers that appear on the rear of the phone make it almost look like the back cover has been tattooed -- a bit special, we thought.
But who's showing an interest in such a device, we asked? Who has been buying up the stock of the first version? "Two extreme groups of people," Martynov said. "One is early adopters. The other is artists, designers, musicians etc. People who are really into art and expressing themselves."
Martynov's company has been working on YotaPhone for two-and-a-half years. Originally a three-person team, the company is now employing over 70 staff. "We made a few mistakes and learned a lot but now we know what must be done for the product to be available in the mass market," Martynov said.
The second-generation YotaPhone won't launch into the UK until Q4 of 2014, but Martynov said the first-generation model will become available in the UK within the next few weeks.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
