Yota Devices is putting the big unused area on the back of their phones to an innovative use – a second screen. Hold on, I hear you say, I can only use one at a time, what’s the point of that?
You’re right, of course, but Yota Devices (me neither) have put an ‘always on’ e-ink screen on the flip side of the Yotaphone. This means that it uses next to no power compared to their standard 5-inch AMOLED screen, giving a claimed 50+ hours battery life when used exclusively, and although it’s only monochrome that’s fine for reading/typing text.
There’s an icon in the status bar which flips the contents of the main display onto the rear, and then back again. Here’s a video Gears got on the stand today. Sadly there wasn’t a great deal of light but you should be able to see how it works better here.
There’s a more professional video below if you want to take a look at another demonstration of the phone in action.
The Moscow based firm will release the Android handset in Russia in the autumn initially, then Asia and the US in 2015. It’s being shown at MWC at the moment, so there’s hope that we may see it in Europe at some point.
Yota Devices CEO Vlad Martynov said:
“YotaPhone’s arrival on the market last year marked one of the first game changers in
smartphones in many years.Yota Devices proved that there is an antidote to the always-dark smartphone screen.
The future of smartphones is always-on displays allowing users to stay connected without turning off the real world and disrupting the people around you.
The next generation YotaPhone takes this totally innovative concept in smartphones and makes it even better.
Now, with two full-touch displays, the next generation YotaPhone is twice as smart, twice as useful and twice as beautiful.”
The YotaPhone’s SDK is available to third-party developers in the hope they will write apps to use the second screen.
I hope Yota have some success with this technology, because it’s the sort of innovation that the big names are sadly lacking these days.
