New Delhi: Sharp has launched the Aquos Crystal smartphone, which will be exclusively sold via Sprint in the US at $239.99 (approximately Rs. 14,500) without contract.
The most striking feature of the phone is its sharp and thin rectangular design with almost no bezel around the screen. The product's promotional tagline is, "take the edge off," – a reference to the Aquos Crystal's borderless HD display, which runs right to the edge of the phone.
It has a 5-inch display with a so-so 1280 x 720 resolution and is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 (MSM8926) coupled with 1.5GB of RAM. It comes with built-in 8GB storage, which is further expandable up to 128GB via microSD card.
The device sports an 8-megapixel rear camera, and has a 1.2-megapixel front camera. The rear camera comes with features such as scenery modes, framing advisor, night catch, HDR, Panorama, sequential shots, and shutter detect. Interestingly, the Sharp Aquos Crystal features the front-facing camera at the bottom of the front panel of the handset.
The phone measures 139 x 73 x 11mm, making it much smaller than the 5.5" LG G3 146.3 x 74.6 x 8.9 mm.
The handset packs a Harmon Kardon-branded sound package with Clari-Fi and LiveStage tech (the first allowing you to recover some information after compressing the music and the latter to stream to the Harman Kardon ONYX Bluetooth speaker). The phone is based on Android 4.4.2 KitKat.
Interestingly, the phone is not water-resistant, a feature some Aquos smartphones have.
Sharp also announced another smartphone, the Aquos Crystal X, but that device is exclusive to Japan as of now. It comes with a larger 5.5-inch display, a 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801 processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
