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The YotaPhone 2 officially went on sale in the United States today through a good ol’ grassroots IndieGoGo campaign. This is a pre-sale, so the device won’t be shipping until August 2015 if you decide to get one.
The YotaPhone 2 is the second generation of this unique dual-display device. On one side is your traditional smartphone display for gaming, messaging, web browsing, watching videos and the like. Flip it around and you’ll see an e-paper display that’ll let you read books, check basic social networks and news apps, and more without excessive battery drain.
They claim up to 5 days of battery life if you’re just reading, and even a whopping two days for “basic smartphone functions” (meaning don’t expect to play a game for 2 days nonstop without the battery draining on you). The other benefit of using an e-paper display is that it’s an always-on element that’s ready to give you a glance at weather, incoming messages and more without having to fire up the more resource-heavy main display.
Beyond that, it’s a typical high-end smartphone. The 5-inch AMOLED display dishes out 1920 x 1080 resolution for 442 ppi, while the 4.7-inch e-paper display comes in at 960 x 540 for 235 ppi, both of which are more than adequate for their respective purposes. You’ll also get a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 chipset, 2,500mAh battery with wireless charging, WiFi ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS, 4G LTE and more. You can find out more details in our YotaPhone 2 hands-on from CES earlier this year.
So, price tag time: the normal starting price for the YotaPhone 2 will be $600, though getting in on some of the early orders can net you a decent discount. Unfortunately the $500 early bird option has already run out of stock. YotaPhone is running a special 48 hour price of $525, but that obviously won’t last. The more plentiful $550 option should be freely available for the life of the campaign. All options come with your choice of white or black, and a free bumper case worth $10. You can also snap up a portable wireless charging pad and a 4,000mAh power bank bundle for $50 more.
Be sure to check out all of the details right here, and consider ordering one if this quirky smartphone piques your interest.
They should have released a tablet. Having an e-ink display for reading books would have been a killer feature.
I really wanted one of these, but now I’m getting similar functionality from my Android Wear watch.
You have an e-ink display for reading or 5 day battery life on Wear?
No, but I don’t see how that’s relevant. I charge both my watch and my phone overnight, it’s a non-issue.
In terms of the screen, it’s better on the eyes.
I just like not having to necessarily think about battery life during the day. Recently my phone’s battery has been draining too much since Lollipop, hopefully this is the answer to that.
My Wear device tracks my sleep, thankfully that’s already lasting two days as is under ideal situations.
I’m assuming you were initially referring to quick notifications, but you didn’t specify. I don’t think this is a Wear replacement or vice versa. If anything a Pebble (e ink watch) would be the equal to Wear, and that’s not a sacrifice I want to make.
With Yota I’m only sacrificing phablet size, but gaining better mobile reading for blogs, books etc.
Your points are valid. I give you an extra “+1” for the Lollipop battery issues – it’s killing me and my VZW Note 4! Battery life has been reduced by 50% since the update. :(
Seems it supports T-Mobile band 2,4,12. Which means I have ~40 hours to decide in making this my next device. I just want to read my Amazon Kindle library and have battery for days.
Позорище. Телефон хороший, и если бы он был выпущен год назад, то он имел бы смысл. Но как обычно, русский “бизнесмен” успешно похоронил целый ряд инженерных достижений, а теперь еще и побирается на краудфандинге, чтобы все-таки начать производство.