YotaPhone 2 to go on sale in the US: a Q&A with the COO

Russian mobile phone maker Yota Devices has announced that its new device YotaPhone 2 will be sold in the US by major mobile carriers including AT&T and T-Mobile. The dual-screen phone features a traditional smartphone display on the front side and an electronic paper display on the back, the latter working like an e-reader while helping to conserve the phone’s battery life.

The tech company launched the first version of the phone in December 2013, exactly one year before the UK launch of the second version in December 2014. The Calvert Journal talked to Yota Devices’ COO Jens-Uwe Theumer about the company’s plans to rival the flagship players and “revolutionise the way users interact with their phones”.

Why do customers need the second screen at all?

When we started our journey, we were thinking about the most important things that need to be changed about smartphones. One of the most disappointing elements is short battery life; another is a phone’s inability to keep us up-to-date without becoming too annoying. With this in mind, we came up with the idea of adding an electronic paper screen to the back side of the phone which has never been used before. We believe that e-paper screen solves all of these problems — it’s always on and gives you all the necessary notifications in a subtle and intelligent way while consuming a fraction of power compared with normal screens. You probably don’t need all the bells and whistles when reading news or checking emails so it really helps you to stay on top of information without even noticing it. You can even read this screen in bright sunlight.

Almost every review of YotaPhone 2 has pointed out that the phone is prohibitively expensive, currently around $700. Do you think that the price might get lower at some point?

There is a lot of R&D that we’ve put into the device. It took more than three years to develop the phone, and a lot of the components have been custom-made for YotaPhone. So from this perspective we feel that the current price of the phone accurately reflects its value.

Which phone brands do you see as your major competitors?

There is a number of hugely successful and popular brands out there but none of them provide the same functionality and extended usability as our phone. That’s why we can’t say that we are in direct competition with any of those brands. Ours is a pretty unique proposition.

Do you think that the dual-screen model can be emulated by other smartphones in the future?

This is actually something that we would welcome. If other companies follow the same pattern by giving users better ways to interact with their phones, it will only show that we were right in the first place. I really believe it’s the best avenue that everybody should take in the next few years.

Dubbed by state-backed RT as ‘the Russian iPhone’ and promoted among Russian officials, the phone has already been accused of being a propaganda tool for the Kremlin. How do you respond to these claims?

I’m not a politician therefore I prefer to stay away from commenting on such issues. We do have our roots as a spin-off of the Russian network provider, but we are aspiring to become a truly international company. We have engineers and designers working in Russia and Finland, a marketing department in Germany, a supply office in Singapore, and we are launching another branch in the US very soon. This clearly indicates that we are a global company that doesn’t follow any kind of political agenda.

Do you expect that the second screen will create a new generation of e-paper based apps?

We provide our software development kit for free to any developers who would like to create or modify existing apps. On the other hand, the great thing about the e-ink second screen is that you can already run any Google or Android apps on it. It looks great and it’s fun to play around with.