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Yota has just announced that the YotaPhone, the smartphone with a second e-ink display on the rear, is now on sale from www.yotaphone.com for £419 here in the UK. The e-ink screen on the rear of the phone makes YotaPhone one of the most innovative handsets we’d seen, but it until now it wasn’t officially available in this country.
The e-ink screen is fantastically useful for those of us who use our phones as always-on information resources. As e-ink screens only use power when they refresh, the YotaPhone’s secondary display can stay on constantly, displaying information such as your calendar and the time, without using any power; much more convenient than having to wake up your phone whenever you want to check the time. Yota calls it the “Antidote to the always-dark display” – you can check for messages or reminders at a glance, without touching your phone.
The YotaPhone has a 1,280×720 LCD display on the front, with a 4in e-ink screen on the rear, and is powered by a 1.5GHz processor, so isn’t particularly up to the minute as far as high-end smartphones are concerned.
This leaves potential buyers in a quandary, as the original YotaPhone is soon to be replaced with a new, much more powerful quad-core model with a 1080p screen. The forthcoming second generation YotaPhone may have a better specification than the phone it replaces, but Yota plans to mollify original customers by giving them the option to purchase the new handset at a “significant discount”.
However, with a release date not expected until later in the year, if you want a dual-screen e-ink phone you’ll need to stick with the original.
