Yesterday we learned that the YotaPhone 2 would be launching in 20 European countries this month, with rollouts in China, Latin America, Canada and more planned for 2015. There was no mention of a U.S. release at the time, but that’s changed today.
Yoga Devices has announced that the YotaPhone 2 is now on sale in 20 countries in Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Middle East. The device will hit Hong Kong by the end of 2014, followed by Taiwan, China and other Asian markets in Q1 2015. Yota Devices says that launches in the U.S., Canada and Latin America will follow.
Pricing for the YotaPhone 2 will be set at 555 GBP in the U.K. and 700 euros in other European locales. If we translate those prices into U.S. dollars, we’re presented with a price around $860 or $870.
The YotaPhone 2 features two displays; a 5-inch 1920x1080 AMOLED display on its face and a 4.7-inch e-ink touchscreen on its rear. It’s also got a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 4G LTE, an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter The device is powered by Android 4.4.4.
Yoga Devices also detailed a few of the YotaPhone 2’s other unique features today. Those include YotaEnergy, which will switch “all key functions” to the low-power e-ink screen once battery life hits 15 percent, which Yota says will give you another 8.5 hours of use; YotaSnap will let you transfer a crucial piece of content, like a map or travel ticket, to your e-ink display that will remain on, even if your battery dies; and YotaCover, which will make your e-ink screen private with a photo or other notification.
Not many phones utilize the back of their bodies for anything useful, and so that’s one thing that makes the YotaPhone 2 interesting. The new YotaPhone also has a much-improved design over its predecessor. For those reasons, it’s great to see Yota Devices making the YotaPhone 2 widely available, including planning a U.S. launch. The phone’s high price could end up limiting its adoption, but hey, good on Yota for at least making the YotaPhone 2 available to lots of folks.
