Russian dual-screen YotaPhone 2 debuts in China

BEIJING - YotaPhone 2, a dual-screen smartphone that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent to Chinese President Xi Jinping as a gift during the 2014 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing, has been released in the Chinese market.

Unlike other standard Android-based phones, the device has a second E Ink display on its back, which can provide notifications for social media updates, messages, weather and other information.

According to Vladislav Martynov, the CEO of Yota Devices, the E Ink display also acts as an e-book reader with a battery life of up to five days.

The phone has been a hot topic in China thanks to its disruptive innovations, but it is yet to be seen whether Yota can compete with Apple, Samsung and China's homegrown brand Xiaomi. The company announced a relatively high price tag of 4,888 yuan ($799) on Wednesday, almost the same as an iPhone 6 and much more expensive than Xiaomi Note, Xiaomi's flagship device.

The phone features a quad-core 2.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip, a 5-inch, 1080P AMOLED screen on the front and a 2GB random access memory.