LONDON: The Yotaphone 2 has released a dual-screen handset combines a traditional colour touchscreen on one side, with an e-book display on its rear.
This second screen is a ‘low power display’ that shows emails and text messages, and can be used to post to Facebook and other sites without using as much energy as the colour screen. The e-book screen is also ‘always on’, meaning owners can see their messages at a glance.
The handset was unveiled at this year’s Mobile World Congress by Russian firm Yota. Yota made the released announcement on its Twitter feed. It will then rollout to the rest of the UK, into Europe later this month, and worldwide early next year. Prices have not yet been announced.
The full-HD, 5-inch screen works in the same way as typical smartphone touchscreens. While the electronic paper display measures 4.7-inch and is similar to the screens found on e-readers such as the Kindle. It runs Android 4.4, with an 8MP camera on the back, and a 2.1MP front-facing camera.
Yotaphone 2 features 32GB of built-in storage and is powered by a quad-core Qualcommon Snapdragon 800 processor.
The firm boasts that 74 per cent of the YotaPhone 2 is a usable, interactive display, compared to just 30 to 40 per cent on other smartphones. It claims the second screen also give the handset’s battery life a major boost, with more than 50 hours of reading time when using the always-on display.
