After a seemingly interminable wait, the YotaPhone 2 will soon make its way to Canadian shores with a pre-order campaign on Indiegogo.
This is, of course, the Android smartphone that has been turning heads with its dual screens.
On the smartphone’s back is a 4.7-inch electronic paper display. This is a fully useable screen that future YotaPhone 2 owners will be able to customize with widgets and apps.
The screen on the other side of the phone is a more prosaic 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display with a pixel density of 442 ppi. Inside of the phone is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.2 GHz, which is supported by 2GB of RAM. In terms of internal storage, the devices comes with 32GB.
The phone runs on a special version of Lollipop. Yota has released an SDK that allows developers to tailor their apps to the e-ink display. There’s also a screen mirroring feature that can make up for apps that aren’t natively built to take advantage of the display.
A 2500 mAh battery powers the whole affair. One of the YotaPhone’s unique features is something called YotaEnergy. This feature powers down many of the phone’s more power hungry systems to conserve the battery life of the phone. In this state, the functionality of the YotaPhone is greatly reduced, but it’s possible to get many hours of use out of the phone.
During a hands-on at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Matthew Kelly, the company’s managing director for the Americas, told MobileSyrup that the YotaPhone’s battery is able to last for six days when the e-ink display is the only screen that is used. Kelly went on to say that the company estimates that the phone’s battery will work for a still respectable two days when a mix of the e-ink and regular display is employed.
Kelly also told MobileSyrup that the company was in talks with Canadian carriers to bring the phone to Canada. That said, for now the only way to buy the YotaPhone 2 is to pre-order through the company’s Indiegogo page. As of publication, the campaign has raised $39,800 of its $50,000 goal, and has 61 days left to go before its completion.
The first 100 backers can get the phone, a bumper case and a three month subscription to e-reader service Bookmate for $500 USD. Once that tier has been claimed, people who purchase the phone within the first 48 hours will get it at a special $525 USD price. After that, the phone’s price will rise to $550 USD, which Yota says is still a significant from the “at least” $600 USD price tag it will cost at launch.
The company says backers can expect to receive the phone in August. A more general launch will follow shortly afterward.
[source]Indiegogo[/source]
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