Yandex is more popular for being a company that won an anti-trust complaint against Google in Russia. The company has been around even before then, rolling out a web browser, launcher, and a search app. Our last related feature was when Alice, Yandex’s intelligent assistant, was introduced. Over a year later, we’re hearing about the brand’s first ever smartphone–the Yandex.Phone. The device is a first from this company that comes up with intelligent services and products that mostly rely on machine learning. The Yandex Phone features the Russian AI assistant Alice. It comes with several mobile services widely used from the Yandex ecosystem.
What Yandex does is to take advantage of artificial intelligence to bring a more personalized mobile experience for a user. It looks at the location, usage pattern, and routine of a user. Some of the information Yandex can provide the consumer includes turn-by-turn navigation and traffic updates courtesy of Yandex.Maps, weather forecast (Yandex.Weather), music playlist, schedule, and standard AI experiences.
Alice can do many things for the Yandex Phone user across many different mobile services and apps like replying to voice prompts, adding an event to calendar, booking flights, calling a taxi, or ordering food.
Yandex.Phone can even make the calls for you as made possible by the Yandex.Dialogues skills platform. Some other benefits of the Yandex smartphone include the following: Yandex Business Directory, Yandex.Plus (free 6 month-subscription), Yandex.Music, Yandex.Drive, and Yandex.Taxi. If you purchase a Yandex.Phone, you will receive 10% cash back on purchases thru Yandex.Money for three months plus a Yandex.Taxi 300 ruble credit.
The Yandex.Phone boasts the following specs and features: 5.65-inch Full HD+ screen, 2160 x 1080 resolution, fingerprint sensor, NFC technology, Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chipset, Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec, and Android 8.1 Oreo. When it comes to imaging, there is the 5MP selfie shooter plus the dual rear 16MP and 5MP cameras.
Pricing is set at 17,990 rubles which are about $270 in the US. The phone is available starting today, December 6. You can buy straight from the Yandex Store in Moscow but you can also buy from Beeline and M.Video and Eldorado stores nationwide. Online, the Russians can buy it from Beru beginning December 7–that’s tomorrow.
SOURCE: Yandex
