Remember the YotaPhone? This Android device's claim to fame was its dual-screen setup, with a regular 4.3-inch 720p panel on one side of the unit and a 4.3-inch eInk screen on the other side. This two-faced handset took its sweet time to hit store shelves, finally doing so nearly a year after its December 2012 introduction. Now Yota Devices is back with the follow-up to the OG YotaPhone.
Known simply as the next generation YotaPhone, this new model utilizes the same dual-display design as its predecessor. Both screens on the next-gen YotaPhone have been bumped up in size, though, with 4.3-inch LCD getting swapped for a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED display and the 4.3-inch eInk screen getting the boot for a larger 4.7-inch 960x540 eInk panel. What's more, the eInk screen on the next-gen YotaPhone is backlit and supports touch input, allowing users to respond to messages and post to social networks.
Yota Devices has stuffed a quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor inside of the next-gen YotaPhone's body, along with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The cameras on the device are of the 8-megapixel rear and 2-megapixel front varieties. Yota Devices has also included a special Smart Power Mode feature that allows users to turn off the AMOLED display and use just the eInk screen in order to extend the YotaPhone's battery life.
Overall this new YotaPhone sounds like a pretty solid upgrade over the original model, especially with the improvements made to both of the next-gen unit's displays. The bad news is that Yota Devices says that the new YotaPhone won't be available for purchase until Q4 2014, and that's just for folks in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia. A YotaPhone for the U.S. and Asian markets is expected to follow three to four months later.
One other tidbit worth noting is that Yota Devices plans to offer the new YotaPhone to buyers of the original device at a reduced cost. No exact numbers have been given, but the discount is described as "significant." That's a pretty cool move by Yota Devices, and considering all of the big upgrades that the new YotaPhone has over its predecessor, I'm betting that any OG YotaPhone owners that were upset at the news of this new model five minutes ago are now pretty happy.
What do you think of this next generation YotaPhone? Do you think that its dual-screen design would come in handy or is it more of a gimmick?
