Announced back last year in CES, the Yotaphone is the first smartphone that features a dual screen display – a IPS LCD Display on the front and an always on E-Ink display on the back. The Yotaphone is now officially available in Malaysia via local distributor Globaline, the Yotaphone can be yours for RM1699 and you can order it via Yotaphone’s website with free shipping.
It is certainly an interesting concept, the Yotaphone doesn’t really require you to turn on phone’s main display to check out notifications, news, weather and etc. Thanks to the extremely low power saving always on E-Ink display that makes the phone’s back really much more useful, there’s a touch zone under the display if you want to control the display and change different views.
The Yotaphone’s specs is a bit dated in today’s standards, powered by a Snapdragon 400 1.7GHz Dual-Core processor with 2GB RAM, 32GB of internal memory, 13 Megapixel main camera and 1 Megapixel front camera, dual 4.3 inch displays at 1280×720 (IPS, main) and 640×360 (E-Ink, back) resolutions, WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0 and LTE network support. We weren’t at the event yesterday but we believe the phone already has Android 4.4 onboard despite still having Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean being advertised on the main site.
So there you have it folks, this is probably the best phone if you are the type of user who doesn’t want to wear a smart watch but wants information to be shown all the time without even turning on the display, we aren’t too sure of app support made for the E-Ink display but we certainly can anticipate that local developers will be able to take advantage of it. As for the Malaysian consumer market, the phone is certainly priced a bit high but if you know the value and advantage of having an E-Ink display onboard, the price is certainly worth to pay for. And hey, it supports LTE networks so it isn’t really too bad though.
