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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.
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.
When I saw the prototype YotaPhone last year at CES 2013, I was legitimately impressed with the concept - a smartphone with a standard, full-color display on the front, and a black and white e-ink panel on the back. The applications, functional and aesthetic alike, were not difficult to see.