We thought Yotaphone was as good as dead, but we’ve just spotted a comment on its official Instagram account which suggests we will get a third generation of the dual-displayed smartphone.
It last tweeted in May 2016 (its CEO in June of the same year), its Facebook page posts relatively infrequently and it suffered a large-scale embarrassment in 2015 after cancelling its Yotaphone 2 rollout in North America leading to the firm issuing hundreds of refunds to unhappy Indigogo backers.
Two new products teased by the firm in May 2015, including a budget Yotaphone 2c, failed to materialize and while hope was briefly restored when Yotaphone joined forces with ZTE in September 2015 with the aim of launching the Yotaphone 3 in the first quarter of 2016, the phone never showed up.
Meanwhile, those who do have a Yotaphone 2 are still waiting for an Android 6 update - software which Google launched back in 2015. The party line is still "We are not ready to announce our plans concerning updating firmware to Android 6.0 version. As any news appears, we will publish it on our social media pages."
It seems as though the Russian firm is falling quietly to the wayside.
Light at the end of the tunnel?
However, a comment from the Yotaphone Instagram account on February 16, 2017 shows the smartphone marker is still alive and kicking.
Roughly translated from Russian the comment, responding to fans asking about future handsets, reads: "Thank you for your interest in our product. At the moment, we are developing the third generation of the smartphone. Follow us on our official group. Sincerely, The Yotaphone Team."
We have contacted Yotaphone asking for more details on its future plans - but even that proved difficult.
Our UK-based contacts have long left Yota and US MD Matthew Kelly also moved to pastures new a while ago, so we've hit the firm direct and will update this article when we get a response.
