Today, Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo has announced that the new Sharp Aquos Pad SH-05G will be available later this week on Friday. The Aquos Pad SH-05G is the lightest 7-inch tablet available on the market at the moment, tipping the scales at just 210g, which is around two thirds that of the 2013 Nexus 7 as a point of reference. However, whilst the SH-05G is a lightweight in terms of chassis design, it is certainly no lightweight when it comes to internal components. Sharp have given their new tablet a full HD IGZO LCD panel equipped with PureLED technology together with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 System-on-Chip, which is backed up by 2 GB of RAM. The device also ships with 32 GB of internal storage, an 8MP rear camera and a 2.1MP front facing camera for video calling and selfies. The design has a metallic edge, runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and contains a 3,900 mAh rechargeable embedded battery. Although the lightest 7-inch tablet available, the SH-05G is not the thinnest although at 7mm it is hardly what one might call chunky.
The IGZO screen, which stands for Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, is an improved LCD technology offering a more responsive screen capable of reaching higher resolutions. IGZO’s higher performance technology is used to improve power efficiency as the screen is quicker to wake up, so may be idled more often. Sharp’s use of IGZO may help mitigate the slightly small looking battery for the tablet compared with many similar sized modern tablets, although their use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 could also help, depending on what the customer does with the device. The Snapdragon 810 is an efficient processor when not working so hard, thanks to the 20nm process size and big.LITTLE configuration (this sees the four lower powered cores handling the light duty processing, and the Snapdragon 810 can use as many or as few processor cores as it needs to). At the opposite end of the scale, Sharp using the current flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon should give the SoC the chance to stretch its legs. This particular Snapdragon chip has the unenvious reputation of overheating, which is partially associated with the processor running warm when working hard and of the manufacturer placing it in a tight chassis with inadequate cooling. Sony use the Snapdragon 810 in the Xperia Z4 tablet and in the larger chassis, there is no overheating issue. It will be interesting to see how the 810 performs in the Sharp 7-inch tablet; will the larger chassis mean that the SoC can keep its cool when working hard?
Unfortunately, at this time we don’t have any information as to when or if the Sharp Aquos Pad SH-05G will be available elsewhere in the world, but this is a developing story and we will keep you in the loop if we hear any news.
