Not so long ago, I shared my impressions of the two-week use of the YotaPhone 2 smartphone and sometimes I take out the device again and use it. Not because I am a fan of everything domestic or I have particularly vivid patriotic feelings, and not because there is nothing else to use. The fact is that I really like the smartphone, albeit with talk, I will not hide. The main caveat is, of course, the camera. I can't say that the camera in YotaPhone 2 is really lousy, not at all, but against the background of the same LG G4, Meizu MX4 Pro or HTC One M9 in manual mode with RAW, the lag is too great. And so I decided to think, what should be in the YotaPhone 3 besides the cool camera module so that I want to use it as the main device all the time?
Probably, I will act as the captain of the obvious, but let's go through the points.
1. Diagonal and resolution of the main screen. On the one hand, it would be logical to increase both the screen diagonal up to 5.5 inches (this is the fashion now) and the resolution, again, because it is so accepted. On the other hand, personally, I really want to see the new YotaPhone 3 roughly similar to the second model in dimensions, which means that the display should remain five-inch. And there is no sense in increasing the resolution at five inches from the current FullHD. And, it seems to me, given the current difficulties with production volumes and, accordingly, the price of a smartphone, the company will choose the second option, that is, it will leave a screen with a 5 'diagonal and a resolution of 192 × 01080 pixels, so as not to increase the cost of production. The question remains Super AMOLED or IPS and I have no answer at all. I will not hide, I want to see a high-quality IPS-matrix in the YotaPhone 3, not AMOLED.
2. Additional e-ink screen. The way the additional e-ink screen is made in YotaPhone 2 commands respect. The company really managed to make it quite large, while placing it not only in an appropriate and convenient way, but also beautifully fitting it into the overall design. To be honest, the design of the smartphone is one of the significant reasons I like it. But with the resolution of this display and its quality in general, not everything is smooth. The picture lacks contrast and clarity, sharpness, the refresh rate is low, afterimages when changing the picture are also noticeable, but most importantly, there is no backlight. For these reasons, in my opinion, the additional screen in the YotaPhone 2 is not taken seriously. Yes, it can be used to read books, replacing, to some extent, a full-fledged e-book, but not everyone will be ready to do this. Therefore, in my opinion, e-ink in YotaPhone 2 now is just a nice bonus in a good smartphone: see the time and weather, exchange rates, read a short news or use the display in a pinch and situation, by turning on the power saving mode and transferring the image from the main display on e-ink. In the next smartphone from the company, I would like to see mainly a qualitatively new e-ink screen in all respects – higher resolution, better contrast, and so on. And you definitely need a backlight. I think YotaDevices also understands this very well, and in the third generation smartphone we will see serious progress in this area.
3. Platform and memory. Here YotaPhone has several problems at once. First, the selected processor on the Qualcomm 801 platform heats up noticeably. It's certainly not an 810 chipset, but it's also not a gift in terms of heating. And if we add here the design features of a smartphone with two screens and the corresponding cooling difficulties, it turns out to be completely sad. The device periodically heats up a lot and this is a problem, it seems to me, which can be solved not only by further optimization of the arrangement of components and the choice of materials, but also by choosing a platform. In light of all the difficulties Qualcomm has with the heating of the flagship 810 chipset, it is likely that a different solution will be chosen for the YotaPhone 3. Maybe Samsung, maybe – Mediatek? Personally, it makes no difference to me, with a screen resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and with 3 GB of RAM, any modern platform gives a good margin of performance for Android 5.0. The second problem is flash memory.
YotaPhone 2 has only 32 GB of it without expansion, remember? I say 'only' about 32 gigabytes, because by the time the third version is released, I am sure that such a volume will be on the verge, as is now happening with 16 gigabytes. They are enough to install applications, games and to take a photo / video for about a month, that's all – the memory is full. There are two ways out, and the only question is where the company will stop. The first is to add a slot for the card. The second is to expand the internal memory up to 64 GB. Best of all, of course, both options together – 64 GB of internal memory and a slot for microSD.
4. Camera. The company's next smartphone would like to see significant advancements in the camera field. The concern is caused by the fact that even such large manufacturers as Sony and HTC, having serious resources and the ability to use the latest sensors, manage to make 20 megapixel cameras of average quality. What can I say about YotaDevices with much more modest capabilities? Probably, the company will choose a new sensor and at the same time they will not chase the resolution too much, then there is a hope that, in general, the camera will turn out to be quite good, but, to be honest, I don't even make any guesses or assumptions about the camera, too everything is vague here. It is clear that this component is not a priority for a company when there are more important things like a platform and an e-ink screen on which all positioning and promotion of the device in the markets is based. But I would like to hope that the camera will not be deprived of attention and in YotaPhone 3 it will become better.
An interesting effect turned out on YotaPhone 2, I tried to shoot the same on HTC One M9 and LG G4, nothing (# yotaphone2
Photo published by Artem Lutfullin (@lasterlar)
5. Software. Probably, from the point of view of software, there is almost nothing to complain about in YotaPhone 2. Clean Android 5.0, good possibilities for working with an additional screen, so good that you can just bring a desktop onto it and work almost like on the main one. If the YotaPhone 3 also has the newest OS version at the time of release and more widgets for the e-ink display appear, this will be enough, I think. As regards the software, YotaDevices did everything very well and there is enough stock for the third model.