Russia's YotaPhone 3 to Be Manufactured by ZTE, Arrives in Q1 2016

Yota, a Russia-based smartphone manufacturer which sells dual-screen phones, is said to be working on a new smartphone, in the form of the YotaPhone 3.

Recently, the company has attempted to expand beyond European confines by bringing its phones into the US via Indiegogo. Shortly after, however, Yota Devices announced it had to cancel the US launch due to unforeseen delays in producing and delivering the North American variant of the device. Still, the company is confident that it can survive without the US market.

Actually, the company is prepping the next-gen YotaPhone 3 as we speak. According to a fresh report coming out of Oana News claims that the Russian device maker has entered a partnership with ZTE for the manufacturing of its next-gen flagship.

The company is said to have explained that ZTE will handle not only the production of the new smartphone but also the development and integration of mobile services and software. Until now, the YotaPhones were manufactured in Singapore by an unknown “entity.”

The new YotaPhone is coming next year

What about availability? According to the aforementioned report, the handset should make a debut around Q1 next year, although we don’t have an exact date. Initially, around 100,000 units of the YotaPhone 3 will be offered for purchase.

The current YotaPhone 2 offers a main 5-inch AMOLED display with full HD (1080p) resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 3, as well as a secondary 4.7-inch always-on greyscale display with qHD (540 x 960 pixels) resolution.

So Yota Devices has a lot of room to improve upon here. With its next-gen device, it could offer a QHD display and an improved E-ink display. The current model is powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor with Adreno 330 graphics and 2GB of RAM.

Given the fact that the YotaPhone 3 will make a debut in Q1, we might assume that the Russian company might be willing to implement a Snapdragon 820 or Snapdragon 620 under the hood of its next project.

Earlier reports indicated that the company was also prepping a YotaPhone 2c model, which is probably a downsized version of the YotaPhone 2, designed to be sold for a more affordable price.

See Yota Phone 2 on video below