Smartphones are mostly similar, barring differences in performance, attention to detail and features that these days can seem pretty minor, especially on paper. YotaPhone is a different kettle of fish, a device from a Russian company that boasts a fairly standard smartphone display on one side, but also comes complete with a power-saving e-ink screen on the back. Generation 1 of the device was promising, but ultimately flawed, but now the next iteration is poised for its official introduction.
The YotaPhone 2 will be unveiled to the world on December 3, at a special invite-only to-do in London. The new YotaPhone has already been in the hands of journalists via prototypes as early as February of this year, but now it’s finally arriving. The consensus is that this version is much improved over the previous generation, with a fully-touch sensitive e-ink display (the last one couldn’t receive touch) which can handle much more of the phone’s core functions, including calls, texts, emails and more.
The YotaPhone 2 might actually make it possible for those without intense use needs to operate the device entirely via the low-energy e-ink display, without ever having to activate the power-hungry LCD.
While the design looks essentially the same based on the image accompanying YotaPhone’s event announcement, a lot could have changed between February and next month, so we’ll have to stay tuned to see what the final specs and capabilities of this device are. The first one was basically a tech demo, but this one might represent an extremely useful practical shift in terms of how mobile devices work. Battery tech is lagging other improvements on smartphones, so this might be a decent workaround until we can deliver better mobile powerhouses.