YotaPhone 2 the world's first dual-screen always-on smartphone | Hacker News Reader

YotaPhone 2 the world's first dual-screen always-on smartphone

yotaphone.com

15 pointskcart11 comments

Cases for that would be interesting. Seems like the only thing you could get away with is a rubber bumper frame case like the iPhone has. Definitely an interesting idea, but I personally don't see the appeal of an always on e-ink display. I feel like you could get comparable battery savings from a lock screen using an AMOLED display.

£440! Very cool but price is a bit high :(

I always wanted an e-ink phone, seems like a good idea, but £440 is quite far from an impulse buy as a second phone.

My god that video is over pretentious. It was so painful to watch it made me want to switch to a dumbphone.

I don't know if I want information always being displayed publicly...

A truly unexpected would be a phone with an eInk display only. And with one very good camera. I enjoy my pictures taken on the phone mostly on my computer, so I use my phone only as a preview :)

I agree, such a phone would be awesome. It's a shame the Iridigm/Mirasol "butterfly wing" technology hasn't become viable after all these years (yield issues AIUI), because that would be almost as efficient with full color and contrast. Couldn't play games on it, sure, but everything else would be fine.

Only 8MP main camera, old Snapdragon 801, old KitKat... The specs leave something to be desired, especially at that price. Too bad, cause the eink screen is a great feature.

This is a phone from mid 2014, tho the 801 is still one of the best SOC's out there but you won't get a shred of support for this device.

Looks really good.

I wonder if you can prevent the eInk screen from being updated. Updating the screen would wake the CPU out of a deep sleep state and consume more battery power.

I have the 1'st one it's nice as a novelty item a kinda cool conversation starter in an iPhone world but that lasted for about 2 weeks and after that well complete meh.

The design is better than the Yota 2 the hardware in some cases is also better the 1st Yota has a very nice Sony 13MP camera (Same one as in the OnePlus One and many Samsung Phones), the new one comes with a better SOC (801 is still one of the best SOC's out there especially considering that the 810 is a disaster and the 820 isn't shipping) and higher resolution screens.

But the problem is that you pay kinda top dollar for a phone and get no support Yota is a Russian company and pretty much provides zero support for those phones after release, the Yota 1 came out with JB (4.2) and we were promised KitKat and other updates that never came. Yota2 is shipping with KitKat and there were talks about Lolipop since April/May back when the phone was still costing 699 Euro/555 GBP (which was more than the price of a 64GB off-contract iPhone 6 in the US) and nothing yet still even after the price cut.

The software support is also pretty lame there were talks about SDK's and global widget support for the eInk screen which was never really delivered on the Yota 1 at least the eInk display still freezes quite often especially if a related widget crashes or hangs in some way.

Accessories and repair services are also kinda hard to get even in countries in which the phones are officially supported like the UK there are no replacement screens, very limited selection of cases, no screen protectors etc...

If you want this to peak the interest of your VC friends while you waste money at some night club it's a great pick otherwise it's even less useful than the ridiculous Porsche Design BlackBerry's or the Gold plated iPhones with diamond ascents since those at least are some kind of a status symbol the Yota isnt...

If you want to spend money on a small scale operation better get something like the OnePlus they at least got some level of hardware and software support, as some one who've owned the OnePlus One and the Yota 1 I'm done experimenting with these no-brand/viral marketing experiments of Chinese and Russian phone makers. Yota has no support what so ever and OnePlus is a viral marketing beta test for Oppo devices with more lackluster support than the Find XYZ that is released by Oppo 2-3 months later.

This is the same reason why I'm not getting a Jolla or what ever next hipster phone that comes out might be. Anything that isn't backed up by a large carrier gets no support what so ever and even carrier backed phones aren't getting as much support as they should.

Phone makers(including the big ones cough Samsung cough) seem to not be willing to release even security related updates on time/at all for their phones if they are older than the bottle of milk in your fridge (with the exception of flagship devices). Google really needs to step in and have their own update service for security related bugs at least.

The Android echo system has finally pushed me most likely to get an iPhone I was actually thinking about it but after seeing the 6 coming with only 1GB of RAM decided to no too, 6s or 7 might actually be it for me not falling for Google's Android M hype any longer :(

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