What is arguably the biggest innovation in Smartphones since the introduction of the iPhone will be showcased at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week. The YotaPhone, by Yota Devices, was a Best of CES 2013 award winner. The YotaPhone abandons the classic single LCD Smartphone design. At MWC, Yota will be introducing a revolutionary new smartphone with an E Ink ePaper display on the back of the phone. The extremely low power E Ink display enables the YotaPhone to deliver new functionality and extended battery life at the same time.
The designers started with a vision of the type of phone that they wanted to design. Smartphone users consistently turn on the display of their phone to check the status of their messages, emails and various other apps on their phone. This is very inefficient for the customer’s time and the display of any Smartphone is one of the biggest power draws to the device. Constantly turning the display on and off prematurely drain the Smartphone battery. In contrast, E Ink screens can display information without consuming any power. Yota designers came up with a novel new idea to utilize a secondary, low-power display. Using the E ink display, they were able to deliver constant up to date information with a display that is always on and extend the battery life of the Smartphone.
The big challenge was that the second display would have to be on the back of the phone. This surface is usually contoured and has openings for a camera. The second display also could not add significant thickness or weight to the Smartphone.
E Ink’s flexible display technology provided the solution to this challenge. Being flexible, the display could be contoured to the shape of the phone. Its thin form factor allowed for a thickness of 0.40 inches. Best of all, the flexible ePaper display uses the same core E Ink technology that allow eReaders such as the Kindle® and the Nook® to support a month of eReading on a single battery charge.
The YotoPhone is excellent example of product developed from the design in versus incrementally tweaking features. If you are at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, drop by the YotaDevices booth to get more information on the YotaPhone.