A new smartphone with a battery that only needs recharging after several weeks has been developed by researchers.

The smartphone made headlines at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week where its prototype was unveiled.

E Ink, the manufacturer of electronic paper displays, had two prototypes of phones running on the Android operating system, ‘The Australian’ reported.

Since the phone draws battery power only when it is redrawing the screen, the battery life on the prototypes was said to last up to a month or several weeks of normal use.

The prototypes could be made as a low-cost option for under $200 that would suit people in markets where limited power supply was a greater concern than full smartphone features, Nicholas Carbonnier, of ARMdevices.net, told the blog Laptop.

Carbonnier said E Ink was also working on clip-on covers for popular smartphones that would add an E Ink screen to the back of the phone, the report by News Limited Network said.

Russian manufacturer Yota also showed off its dual-screen smartphone, which it claims will have a much longer battery life, because people would read long articles, check social media updates, display photos and boarding passes without having to drain their phone’s battery or wake it up from sleep mode.

The E Ink screen on the Yota phone even displays an image when the phone battery is dead.

The Yota phone, which was unveiled at International CES in January, will be produced by a Singapore company and launched late this year.

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