YotaPhones : With Double Screens
The startup is launching a dual-screen smartphone Wednesday at an event in Moscow's Gorky Park with the hope that it will change the way people view mobile technology by allowing information streaming without the usual constraints of limited battery life.Called the YotaPhone, the device pairs a traditional LCD color touch-screen on one side with a black-and-white, electronic-paper display on the other, allowing users to continuously view data in real time without having to constantly wake up their phones and drain their batteries."You don't need to keep the phone in your hand and you don't have to wake it up every five minutes," says the company's 44-year-old chief executive, Vladislav Martynov. "Who needs a personal assistant you need to keep waking up?"
General interaction will be done through the LCD screen, but the e-paper display allows an image to be displayed at all times—from maps, airline boarding passes and family photos to Twitter TWTR -1.47% messages and emails—but only uses power when the picture changes. The e-paper screen works much like an Amazon.com Inc. Kindle e-reader does.On the YotaPhone, the e-paper image will remain in place even if the battery dies. The company says the system allows for up to 68 hours of life if just using the e-paper display alone.
Mr. Martynov said designing the phone required jumping through several technological hoops with temperature shielding and imaging software as e-paper displays are highly heat-sensitive and mobile phone processors tend to generate excessive heat.