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Russian mobile phone, out today, has TWO screens

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

December 4, 2013 | 3 min read

A dual-screen smartphone will be launched in Moscow today at an event in Gorky Park.

The YotaPhone: Two screens

Called the YotaPhone, by start-up Yota Devices, the handset pairs a traditional LCD colour touch-screen on one side with a black-and-white, electronic-paper display on the other.

Users can continuously view data in real time without having to constantly wake up their phones and drain their batteries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"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?"

Users will generally use 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 messages and emails.

It only uses power when the picture changes and works much like an Amazon.com Inc. Kindle e-reader, says the WSJ.

The e-paper image will remain in place even if the battery dies and reportedly gives up to 68 hours of life using the e-paper display alone.

Powered by Google’s Android operating system, the phone will initially be available only in Russia, Germany, France, Austria and Spain but will expand to the U.K. and more widely in Europe and the Middle East early next year.

It will sell for 19,990 rubles in Russia (about $600) and 499 euros in Europe.

Russia has never been known for consumer technology so the YotaPhone could represent a breakthrough. Yota Devices has never made a phone before, although it has done well in Russia with wireless routers, modems and 4G networks.

The company is aiming for sales of around 500,000 phones—half of them in Russia.

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