The Yotaphone 2 specs offer one featured sales pitch: its rear e-ink display.
The striking feature in the Yotaphone 2's specs is its back panel, a largely ignored real estate in smartphone and tablets.
The device maximizes its every square inch, featuring a rear display for e-readers, notifications, and a gaming screen for those who want to keep battery consumption to a minimum.
A usual Yotaphone 2 review may not be so forgiving, but it will give credit to the e-paper innovation just the same. At the very least, the back panel can be appreciated as an alternative screen, for those who can do without the colors and vivid front display.
The 4.7-inch e-paper display covers the back of the 5-inch smartphone, with Android 4.4 OS installed. The monochrome back display is perfect for apps which rely on function more than on eye candy, such as a quick game of chess or an ebook.
At present the Yotaphone 2 comes with a handful of applications (YotaApps), checkers, Sudoku, and YotaRSS; the possibilities abound for the alternate display, though, and CEO Vlad Martynov announced at this week's London launch the Yotaphone will feature Twitter (theverge.com) as well.
The e-paper display can actually serve as the main screen, albeit slower and low-tech by comparison. Ideally, every app on the front screens should perform just as well on the back. Web browsing and emails work just as fine in monochrome, unless in browsing photos.
Notifications may be accessed without waking the front display's AMOLED screen, which should translate to extra minutes saved in the phone's battery life.
The Yotaphone 2's price could be its downfall, though. Unless the company can bring down the price from a steep $860, the novelty of a secondary display isn't enough reason to choose the smartphone over the competition. The e-paper screen considered, the Yotaphone 2 comes with midrange specs, but with a price tag in the league of the elite Samsung Galaxy S5, iPhone 6, LG G3, and Sony Xperia Z3 smartphones (cnet.com).
