Background: Yandex. Phone

Comments under the post of “Yandex” about their “Phone” made it clear that habrayuser do not submit renders and official opinion, but the photo and the story firsthand. So without embellishment - both about the annoying vibromotor, and about the cool solution with the color filter, and about the glossy case collecting the prints, and about the cute I-paper clip, which is elusively similar to the Kalashnikov machine gun. I walked with the device for a week and a half and now I will try to answer the questions about Yandex.Telephone that my friends have been asking me all this time.

What is the general feature?

The main feature of the device is Yandex software over Android 8.1. But this is a little more than just Yandex.Loncher. The developers have worked on the system's patches, for example, to introduce Alice to Lockscreen, make cosmetic changes to the Android UI, create a custom initial configuration dialog and do a pass-through search on the smartphone and the Internet. And from the point of view of iron, this is an average such good-quality, but not top-end, smartphone.

It turns out that all Yandex applications are installed there? And you can delete it?

This smartphone for the company is such an anchor to which the entire ecosystem is tied so that the user does not sail away from it. But they didn’t go too far, and only eight of their applications were pre-installed: Maps, Taxi, Music, Browser, Disk, Keyboard, Money and Launcher. The rest offer to install during the first setting of the smartphone, but do not insist - it is not necessary. There is also a Google search widget on the start screen, but when you delete it, it automatically changes to Yandex search. Plus on the leftmost screen - endless tape "Zen".



And you can delete anything you want.

Okay, but what can Alice in the "Phone"?

Approximately everything that Alice can on the “Station”. You can call her at any time, saying “Listen, Alice”, and then set the alarm, start the application, turn on the music before going to bed, play words. Plus something that is not available to Alice on the "Station" - search for photos from the camera.



She is still not very able to recognize the context and most often forgets the previous question, but in general she cheerfully responds and “hears” you better than, for example, Siri in iPhone. I tried to measure the distance at which you can call an assistant in the Yandex smartphone without raising your voice. It turned out about two meters. And if you speak loudly, then from five meters away she will easily hear you. Dedicated DSP with 1 MB of memory allows Alice to respond to a key phrase without an internet connection, because the smartphone (a small neural network in it) is constantly listening, have you heard something similar to “Listen, Alice” next to it. But connection to the web will be required for any subsequent requests.



In addition, Alice settled on the home screen - you can call her by tap on the icon in the lower left corner of the screen. And in the "Phone" it was made more active - in some situations, the assistant himself will issue tips about the weather and upcoming meetings. The plans of the developers are to make more complex scenarios, like a visit to the cinema, when Alice shows the ticket purchased at Kinopoisk to the user at the right moment.

And, they say, Alice will be taught to recognize the owner by voice.

Is there really a clip in the shape of the letter I?

Yeah, like that. Comes as a key fob on a bunch of keys. Only carefully, you can inject.

They say there is a weak iron?

Well, not that weak, no. But not top. Kvalkommovskogo chip SDM630 enough for 90% of tasks. And with games, of course, more difficult - sometimes it delays. In Real Racing 3 fps sometimes sags noticeably, it becomes uncomfortable to play.

If you are too lazy to google, here are the characteristics and results of Antutu.

It turns out, is it a Chinese phone with Russian software?

I would say that nothing more than everyone else. Formally, the smartphone is Russian-Taiwanese, although assembled, indeed in China. It was developed by engineers of Yandex and Arima Communications. According to Fyodor Yezhov, the head of the development of “Phone”, this Taiwanese IDH company also worked on smartphones for ASUS and LG.

By the way, Fedor let the early prototype of the device turn in his hands. From what is immediately noticeable: they added a tangible rim around the fingerprint scanner to the final version, rounded the corners more strongly, moved the buttons on the ends and made the smartphone as a whole thinner. There were about ten iterations.

Can I change the Yandex launcher?

Yes you can. I tried to set the default AIO, it works. If you delete the services of “Yandex”, then you can even forget whose tube it is.

Well, what about the battery? They say weak?

"According to the passport" there is not a lot of mAh - 2 970. But surprisingly, the "Phone" worked steadily for me from one and a half days and even a little more. For reference, the iPhone 7 Plus even at the very start, I kept for 20 hours.



Plus, the included Quick Charge 3.0 charger charges the device 100% in about an hour.

NFC is? You can pay in the supermarket?

Yes. By default, the main payment instrument on the Phone is Yandex.Money. Buyers of a smartphone on the account in the "wallet" fall 500 free rubles. And on the first screen of the application, the banner “Order a Yandex.Money Card” looms, real in the sense of plastic, for 300 rubles - brought to any post office.

However, “Money” can be changed at any time to G Pay. I did not notice the difference between them.

And how many simok are there?

Either two or one + microSD card. You can not immediately insert two SIM cards and a memory card.

How do you like the camera?

The camera is like a camera. Module - Truly, 16-megapixel sensor - Samsung. It turned out far from terrible, but not the topman - with the flagship Huawei can not be compared. Although it is being improved and will be further improved in terms of firmware. Here, for example, the difference in several months of development.




Stabilization during video shooting is not.

Speaker?

Mono. Very loud - the alarm clock is unbearable in the morning.

What with the body for a week and a half?

Not scratched like. But slap be healthy for a couple of minutes in your hands. However, for the same minutes in his pocket, he wipes himself while walking.



And still the device is very slippery, I dropped it several times on the parquet, and once he deigned to move himself from the glossy horizontal (apparently not perfect) surface. The glass of Gorilla Glass 3 turned out well done - it didn't crack.

How often will updates come out?

The team plans to release large updates about once every three months. The fact that you can update with the help of new versions of applications will arrive via Play.Market.

I asked about the gap between the new version of Android and the release of the corresponding firmware for the "Phone". They say that it will take about five months: two - to actually develop and test, another one and a half - to “make sure everything is OK”, and it will take about a month to be certified by Google.

What annoys the smartphone?

The vibration motor makes such an unpleasant "bz-zz", which is not only noticeable, but also audible. Especially while typing:

bz, bz, bz-bz-bz, bz-bz ... Although the screen is not frameless, anyway, I often touch its edges with my palm, and this makes it no longer respond to other presses. We have to keep it pretty neat, but, as I said above, it is rather slippery.

What do you like?

Everything is beautiful. The gadget itself is visually good, gloss black, nothing superfluous. Good packaging, well crafted manual. Fonts, carefully polished interface.



Particularly conquered sorting applications by color in the main menu.


And also in the "Phone" there is a through search, as on the "iPhone". You brush your finger across the screen down and drive in whatever you want - it searches for applications and on the Internet, and also offers to download the missing appy, if they are not installed.

Built-in number identifier. When an incoming person arrives, the “Phone” is checked against the list of organizations that have been added to the Yandex database and, if the number is not in the user’s contact list, shows who is calling. That is, you do not need to install everyones Truecaller and WhoCalls and bother with the periodic update of the spammers databases.

Well, the smartphone really works for a long time. It's good.

What are the competitors?

• Sony Xperia XA2 Dual
  SD630, 3/32 GB, 5.2 "FHD, 23 megapixel camera., From 16,490 ₽;
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5
  SD636, 6/128 GB, 5.99 ”FHD +, 12 megapixel camera., From 15 500 ₽;
• Xiaomi Mi A2
  SD660, 6/128 GB, 5.99 ”FHD +, 12 megapixel camera., From 16,370 ₽;
• Nokia 7.1
  SD636, 3/32 GB, 5.84 ”FHD +, 12 megapixel camera., From £ 17,990;
• Honor 8X
  Kirin 710, 4/128 GB, 6.5 ”FHD +, camera 20 megapixels., From 17,340 ₽.
• Motorola Moto Z2 Play
  SD626, 4/64 GB, 5.5 ”FHD, 12 megapixel camera., From 13,990 ₽.