YotaPhone 2: An Android Smartphone With Two Displays

on December 3, 2014 at 11:54 am

Expensive, but oh so cool.

The YotaPhone was inarguably one of the quirkiest smartphones released last year, with not one, but two displays. This curious marriage of LCD and E Ink was certainly a manufacturing achievement, but limited uses for the secondary screen meant it simply couldn’t live up to its potential. Yota Devices announced earlier this year it was cooking up a sequel, and today it’s ready to launch the new and improved YotaPhone 2. Its fresh design, high-end specs and bigger, higher-resolution displays are welcome upgrades, but most importantly, a thorough overhaul of the handset’s software means you can now make full use of the low-power E Ink screen, which has also been granted touch functionality for this generation.

The YotaPhone 2 includes a conventional 5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen along with a 4.7-inch always-on electronic paper display; it’s unclear whether the second screen is using E Ink or some other technology. As for other specs, there’s a Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 2500mAh battery, and an 8-megapixel front-facing camera. The YotaPhone 2 will cost £555 (about $872) and be available for purchase at a pop-up store in London starting tomorrow. Outside of the UK, the phone will be available direct from YotaPhone in 20 European countries and the Middle East for a cost €700. US availability is expected for 2015.