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In an era where most smartphones all look and function mostly the same, it's always a shame to see more interesting designs fall flat. Russian-based phone manufacturer Yota, best known for its line of Yota Phone devices with rear e-ink screens, has declared bankruptcy and all its assets will be liquidated.
We learned earlier in the year that Yota's third generation dual-screen device would be announced around this time, and sure enough, the Yotaphone 3 is now official. The last two phones had a certain charm to them, especially the Yotaphone 2, and the novel E-Ink rear display that sets Yota's devices apart is unsurprisingly still the main attraction. The most noticeable change is that the phone has followed the general trend and increased in screen size. Here we have a 5.5" 1080p AMOLED display on the front and a 5.2" 720p E-Ink panel on the rear.
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- Engadget claims that the YotaPhone 3 will have a Snapdragon 625 processor, which would make sense for the device's price point. The front screen will be a 1080p 5.5" display, with a 5.2" 720p e-ink display on the back. The phone will also have 4GB of RAM, dual SIM slots (one of thm can also be a microSD card slot), a 12MP back camera, a 13MP front camera, a 3,200mAh battery, and a USB Type-C port.
Pictured: YotaPhone 2
The dual-screen e-paper/LCD YotaPhone 2 has a sufficiently interesting gimmick that it was able to rack up almost $300,000 on Indiegogo last month. However, the Russian smartphone maker has reached out to backers to share some sad news. It is unable to get the North American variant manufactured in a timely manner, so it's cancelling the device entirely.
In what sounds like a perversion of the crowd-funding concept, Yota has taken to Indiegogo to bring a phone that has existed since early 2014 into existence... in North America. To perform this undertaking, the company wants a paltry $50,000, and it has set a flexible funding goal to get the funds. Fortunately that's irrelevant, because it has already shattered that bar in under three hours with the help of nearly 100 funders.
The YotaPhone 2 and its predecessor have always intrigued me. They're probably the only significant departure in form factor available on the market right now that isn't different for the sake of being so, adds value, and has been relatively successful in its endeavor. After its European release last December, the YotaPhone 2 is coming back with a new color variant: white. And it looks striking if you ask me, especially with that new E Ink white theme where the old interface's colors are inverted.
Update: It looks like a few English-speaking news outlets have been given early review units as well. Engadget has one, and so does Cnet, among a few less-reliable sites. Cnet was kind enough to post a video, embedded below.
Are you curious to see how the versatile YotaPhone 2 performs in the real world? So are we. But with a launch in Russia and Europe scheduled for later this week and no US launch in sight, we'll have to admire it from afar. One Russian technology site is a little more lucky, however: Hi-Tech.mail.ru has managed to snag a review unit. If you're fluent in Russian you can head over there now - if not, you can check out this Google translation.
Yota's unconventional hardware design has gained the company a lot of press, but following the Mobile World Congress debut of the YotaPhone 2, we've heard nary a peep for the better part of a year. That changed today in a Moscow presentation: the second-gen phone with a built-in e-ink screen on the rear of the case will go on sale in 20 European countries later in December, presumably including Russia. The price will be 33,000 Rubles, approximately $610 or 495 Euro, though taxes and fees may push it higher in some places.
When a large tech company starts to fail, there's a real downside regardless of how we feel about its product. People lose their jobs. Often, thousands do. Many of these people then find themselves having to move to another state or country to continue working in their chosen field.
The YotaPhone was one of the only genuinely exciting mobile products to come out of CES 2013 nearly a year ago. If you've been itching to get your hands on this interesting combo device, you can lay down your money right now... so long as you're laying down Rubles. YotaPhone just started online sales of its LCD/E-Paper combo phone in Russia. Our Russian readers can pick one up for 19,990 Rubles (about $600 USD).