We’ve been following Russia’s YotaPhone since 2012, but it seems like the saga of the power-sipping E Ink-backed dual-screen handset has come to an end. Yota Devices is bankrupt, reports Cnews.ru and Liliputing, pointing to a liquidation notice published in the Cayman Islands Gazette (PDF).
According to Russian media reports, it was a lawsuit that eventually wound up bankrupting the company. Yota’s manufacturer for the first two YotaPhones, Hi-P Singapore, sued for $126 million back in 2015 because YotaPhone reportedly refused to take delivery (and presumably pay for) the minimum number of phones it agreed to order. (In 2016, The Financial Times reported that the first two YotaPhones only sold around 75,000 units.) Hi-P had agreed to take $17 million instead, but apparently that deal fell through.
Truth be told, the YotaPhone hasn’t exactly been all that relevant to the west — or even Russia — in recent years. The company failed to ship the YotaPhone 2 to the United States in 2015 despite blowing past its Indiegogo crowdfunding goal, and by late 2016 it decided to pull out of Russia and Europe as well, shifting its operations to China instead.
With Chinese factories and Chinese investment, Yota apparently only ever wound up selling the latest YotaPhone 3 in China, despite promises it would appear in “Russia and other markets” as well. The YotaPhone 3 did win an iF Design Award in 2018, though.
Now, we’ll probably never see another YotaPhone. But if you’re interested in a multi-screen handset, a new wave of foldable devices might fill that hole in your heart.
I backed a crowdfunding campaign once for a different thing, a phone case where an e ink display was on the back. So the idea was that one could use it with a few different phones of the time and then send an image to the back side eink display and have it remain there until one changed it.
I rarely rarely used it, because the thing came out so much later, that by then i already didn’t have the phone to use it with anymore, but i at least took it for a spin once and out a photo of myself on the e ink display.
It meanwhile sits there in a drawer, every few years i stumble over it and am again amazed each time my picture still shows there.
I mean i understand how it works, but in these times where a phone with actual 1 day battery runtime when one uses the screen a lot , that thing in my drawer still has a weird special fascination to me, like a glimpse into an alternate timeline where such stuff made it mainstream for phones.
The yota phone line is of course an even much more progressed version of that, sadly i just never had one since it wasn’t released here.
I still check up on eink progress sometimes, like i watched this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-t00ubcU0
It can be surprising to hear e ink is actually already used for so many things (check the video and you’ll see what i mean), i think one of the major problems for marketing the technology is how little obvious the major benefits of it are.
Like if you watch that video, it is impressive how thin and light and bezelles etc these devices can be.
So when such major advantages are less obvious (to the degree of one just mistaking an eink display for regular paper or thinking it is a regular lcd/oled not knowing how few power it sips and hence can be used for signage in stores etc), many then only think about the current limitations like slower refresh rate or for color ones still a bit muted colors.
Anyway, i hope some companies still take this stuff forward way more, because it is fascinating tech which to me would for example be quite appealing to be used as outside display for a folding device which has the main screen on the inside.
Was it the PopSlate? I reviewed that one for Gizmodo, and my colleague Dan reviewed it for us here:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/21/8458805/popslate-e-ink-iphone-case
https://gizmodo.com/popslate-lightning-review-this-iphone-case-has-an-e-in-1699213849
Def agree that e-paper would be pretty cool as the secondary display for a Galaxy Fold style foldable. I think I might prefer a Xiaomi style foldable, though. https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/23/18194065/xiaomi-foldable-phone-tablet-device-teaser
There was once a demo laptop display that had LCD and e-ink baked into a single surface. Flipping a lever switched the screen mode. I wanted it soooooo bad. Reading the web would be improved so much and battery usage should improve significantly.
Are we talking about Pixel Qi, or something else? https://www.engadget.com/2011/05/31/pixel-qi-takes-aim-at-android-tablets-with-higher-res-10-inch-an/
More recently, we’ve seen some Courier-style devices with LCD on one side, E Ink on the other:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17993690/intel-computer-concept-copper-harbor-tiger-rapids-dual-screen-pc-prototype
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18019840/lenovo-yoga-book-c930-review-e-ink-tablet-laptop-windows
It was the Notion Ink tablet with pixel qi technology. There were many problems with the Notion Ink tablet but the display technology was the most interesting. It was not perfect though as even in e-ink mode there was glare as it didn’t seem the screen was laminated. Google hired the Pixel Qi technology developer and seems to have killed it.
Lenovo’s implementation of dual LCD and e-ink is half baked at best as only a few apps can be opened on the e-ink side, so no Kindle/Nook apps, no Latermark (Pocket) etc. What a waste!
Maybe someone else will do the Tiger rapids concept at the 7-8" screen size instead of a 10" size when people start thinking of it as laptop and want it to do laptop things well. A smaller size that feels like a tablet and costs like a tablet will be much better.
Ah yes, the Notion Ink Adam! I reviewed it for Engadget and wished it had been better. https://www.engadget.com/2011/04/27/notion-ink-adam-review/
I’m reading this from my YotaPhone 2 that I bought more than two years ago, when they started liquidating inventory. Even though the phone was originally released in late 2014, thanks to the use of an 800-series Snapdragon and a then respectable 2 GB of RAM, it’s held up fine and I’ve been enjoying it a lot, despite the horrible camera and dying battery (replacing it didn’t do much).
The eink screen never got as much use as I had envisioned before ordering the phone, but apps like Pocket and Kindle are a perfect match for it. When I’m not actively using it, I have it set up so that it always displays a weather forecast, the notification icons, and my upcoming appointments. The SDK was well documented and for some time I dabbled in it, even though I never released anything.
I’ve never had a "normal" smartphone (aside for a couple of years with a Moto G2), so it makes me a little sad that they’re going under, even though it clearly was a matter of time. I’ll probably go back to normal phones once the Mi A3 is released and then we’ll see. Foldables are definitely a much needed breath of fresh air in the phone industry, so at least there’s that!
Does it have LTE?
Yes, although the exact bands used vary depending on model number (YD201 or YD206).
I’m surprised to see this related to the galaxy fold (also in the review, Dieter said he really liked reading on the Kindle app with it, although that seemed more down to the form factor than anything, which really means the difference is the bezels on the kindle). One smaller backlit screen might provide to some users a ‘quality time’ benefit where they use their phones less like a timewasting kaleidoscope, but the big thing for E-ink is long-form text reading with no eye strain. I could see the yotaphone being useful for a better experience reading news articles, especially outdoors, whereas the galaxy fold’s strength will be in browsing the web with rich media. Sad to see anybody genuinely trying to do something different go out…
Rest in peace, YotaPhone. It was a predictable path but it was also great that they existed in the first place!
You know, if Amazon made a touch Paperwhite like phone, I think that’d be something worth a buy. If not as a primary, as a device for traveling. Much more novel than the Fire Phone anyway.
Amazon shouldn’t have given up on phones, they simply should’ve carved out a niche for reliable budget phones up to $300
that’s what u get for being innovative.. just release lame iphones every year to become the richest company
I’ve never understood why other companies don’t do what Apple does: just release lame expensive phones every year. There’s absurd amounts of money for the taking.
It’s so easy. Don’t they want to make money?!
But slapping an e-ink display to the back of a crap Android phone isn’t much of an innovation. People didn’t want it. It didn’t add any value to anyone.
If it did, Yota wouldn’t be bankrupt.
I wonder if something like this might be the future for both Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and Kindle Fire lines. Merge them into one successor device with a color e-ink display that has tablet capabilities, but focuses on a pre-installed e-reader app or e-reader functionality.
Perhaps such a device might even offer instant access to the ereader off the lock screen with a touch gesture or a physical button, or boot directly into the e-reader app without showing anything else if that’s the last thing the user has done on the device previously, or if the user sets a preference, and could do the same for those who want to primarily (or only) use it as an Android tablet, going directly to a standardish Android home screen sometimes based on the most recent previous session’s usage, a touch gesture, a button, or an option/preference set by the user. That way, it would preserve the functionality (and isolation from other functions- some people really want to avoid distractions or temptations to get involved in other things, and want a device that can be set up to go directly to reading books without passing go) e-reader users expect, with the tablet aspect being able to be essentially hidden forever if the user desires it, and the functionality tablet users expect, with the e-reader being reduced to a single app if the tablet users desire it. Users could of course access the opposite function of what they normally use it for or switch their device’s default configuration if they have a temporary or semi-permanent/permanent need for it to do something different.
I envision this as being a single screen device*, though. Basically, it’s only screen would be color e-ink. That would be a unique selling point even for people who only want to use it as a tablet- less eye strain and light in their eyes, etc.. I am not sure if the refresh rate is good enough to really do a color e-ink device like that with webpage loads and app usage having something that is close enough to a normal tablet reaction time to not annoy mainstream customers yet, but it should be eventually, and it’s worth noting that development is ahead of the e-ink e-readers in the Kindle line currently (By how much, I don’t know), because of course Amazon has to weight things like how much a feature will add to the user experience relative to the cost it’ll add to the device.
One example of this is that having color e-ink instead of regular e-ink isn’t really a feature that would have a ton of impact on a pure e-reader to the point where it’d be worth it if it raised the price of a device significantly, because for most books, the only place the color would matter would be the book cover art. I suppose they could add in things like choose your text and background colors, but most of the audience for a pure single-function e-reader device is not going to pay double the price or something just for adding color. People say they want it, because who wouldn’t? However, for most, the impact to the reading experience would be relatively small, and not worth paying much if any premium for.
As the cost for color e-ink comes down and the refresh speed and reaction time get better, I could see there being a definite market for an e-ink tablet- and, of course, it could meet the needs of the e-reader user base as well provided that they do more than simply putting the e-reader app on it, and create the possibility for users who really just want to generally use the thing as an ereader to just have it boot into that and not see the tablet aspects if they don’t want to.
I still think it’s a great idea. Hope to see someone take the reins and run with it. This should have been the Amazon fire phone.
Too bad, but not surprising.