YotaPhone 2YotaPhone recently tweeted news of a press event in London: “#YotaPhone2 will be presented December 3! We will celebrate with a by-invitation only event in London – stay tuned!” accompanying it with a beautiful picture of this now-almost-mythical device. Now almost mythical because of the sadly protracted release time. “So late!! announced in MWC 2014” complained one respondent, and you can see their point. The design, however elegant, doesn’t appear to have moved on much from February this year, but an implementation of a competitive smartphone design with a solid state ereader back is stillcompelling.

As Chris Meadows reported earlier, the YotaPhone 2 apparently is already able to work with the open source FBReader, but exactly how the final iteration will be remains to be seen. For one thing, the Android phone landscape has somewhat shifted with the introduction of Android  5.0 Lollipop, with its new and faster runtime engines and generally enhanced experience. Further work to meld the YotaPhone 2’s unique characteristics with Lollipop might account for some of the extended development time, but it’s hard to imagine the new phone getting a strongly favorable reception without Lollipop – although the Kit Kat chevron at the bottom of the screen in the picture looks hopeful. A smart-looking e-ink backboard is not likely to compensate for failure to use the latest version of the Android OS on what is supposed to be a cutting-edge design, especially after such a long wait.

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