Russia’s first smartphone has an extra e-ink screen on the back

The continued popularity of Kindles and other e-book readers makes it clear there is still a lot of interest in e-inkdisplays even as tablet sales soar. However, this display technology is severely limited — it’s hard to imagine leaving the house with only an e-ink screen. If the YotaPhone proves to be a success, you might not have to choose between the battery savings of e-ink and power of LCD. This device, from Russian company Yota, runs Android 4.2.2 with a regular LCD on the front and an e-ink screen on the back.

The rear-facing 4.3-inch screen is not simply a dedicated e-reader, though. Carrying a phone around in your pocket containing all your personal information leads you to wake it up quite a lot — sometimes just to check the weather or time. You don’t really need a backlit LCD screen refreshing 60 times per second to check email notifications, right? This works out to be a big drain on battery life over the course of the day, as Android’s stock battery usage monitor will tell you. The YotaPhone puts relevant content on the back e-ink panel so you don’t have to fire up that power-hungry LCD as much.