YotaPhone no longer vaporware, device launches in Europe for 500 Euros starting today

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Published 4 Dec 2013

NSFW AI

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Disclosure

yota

In mid-December of last year, some Russian company the tech press never heard of announced an intriguing smartphone called the YotaPhone. The spec sheet isn’t anything too special, you’re looking at a 4.3 inch 720p display, Snapdragon S4 (remember those?), and 2 GB of RAM. What makes this phone unique, however, is the rear mounted e-Ink display. See something you want to remember? Two finger swipe down, a screenshot will be taken, and it’ll appear on the back of your phone. Sounds brilliant, right? Not so fast.

YotaPhone dual screen smartphone with E Ink display - Hands on and feature tour [ENG]

That e-Ink display only works with a handful of applications. There’s an API for developers to hook into, but come on, how many developers do you think will actually do that? And worst of all, the e-Ink display isn’t touch enabled.

So should you buy this 500 Euro experiment? You can already tell by the tone of this article that I’m going to say no. If you’re really worried about your phone not lasting through the end of the day, then why not just buy an external battery pack? For 500 Euros, you can get a top of the line LG G2 or even a Galaxy S4 if it’s on sale.

Still, I applaud more players entering the smartphone space. And hey, you never know, maybe someone in Samsung is reading all the press the YotaPhone is getting today and will assemble a team of engineers to create the “Galaxy Ink”. Stranger things have happened.

[Via: TechCrunch]