Sharp. Smartphone. Those two words don’t exactly look right next to each other, do they? We’ve not really heard of Sharp making high-quality phones over here in the States and the West as a whole and that’s because they’re clever enough to keep their phones over in Japan and Asia. Sony are a Japanese company and they’ve struggled to get their phones off the ground in America and look what that’s done for their reputation over here. Sharp, however, could well be hoping for some better luck, the Aquos SH-10D has recently gotten the green light from the FCC and is now cleared for use in the States.
There’s a lot to love about the Aquos SH-10D, aside from the fact it sounds so cool you can’t pronounce it, like the 4.5″ HD display and the dual-core Snapdragon S4 clocked at 1.5Ghz. As well as this there’s a whopping 12.1 Megapixel camera round back and also a front-facing camera but, don’t expect much from it’s 0.32 Megapixel sensor. The poor quality front-facing camera shocks me as the Japanese are always happy to take photos of themselves and a friend on these things. On connectivity side of things there’s a GSM radio in there as well as a WCDMA radio for US 3G. No word on LTE here but, if it’s already passed through the FCC then that pretty much means that there’s no support for LTE. Which is a real shame as LTE is starting to really take off in the states.
Aside from the tech-specs of this from Sharp the design certainly looks to be a little different from what we’ve seen before of course, it’s not going to be for everybody but those kooky corners and a questionable paint scheme is going to catch a few eyes, for sure. On the software side of things there’s Android 4.0 onboard with Sharp’s own skin atop it as well as the inclusion of soft keys which is something that’s becoming more and more common.
We’ll bring you more news of this, including whatever carriers it gets to as soon as we have it.