Sharp has just announced its new, bezel-less smartphone, the AQUOS S2. This handset had been leaking for weeks prior to its announcement, and it’s more or less what we’ve expected. Interestingly enough, this phone got announced in China, which is something we’re not used to seeing from Sharp, but considering that the company is now owned by Foxconn, we’ll be seeing more such launches, that’s for sure, not to mention that Sharp announced that more than one ‘bezel-less’ smartphone will be coming to China in 2017.
In any case, the Sharp AQUOS S2 sports extremely thin bezels on the sides, and above its display, to the point that they’re almost non-existent. Below the display, however, you will notice the phone’s ‘chin’, which is not that thick, to be quite honest, but it’s easily noticeable. This display is using Sharp’s FFD (Free Form Display) technology, which is supposed to make small holes precisely in the screen, for front camera and earpiece, as you can see in the provided images. This phone sports a front-facing fingerprint scanner, and that scanner is s just 3,6mm thick, which makes it the world’s narrowest fingerprint scanner. The Sharp AQUOS S2 is made out of metal and glass, and in combination with its overall design, it looks really nice. The phone’s physical keys are placed on the right and this device also sports a dual camera setup on the back, and below those two cameras, you’ll notice an LED flash. The dual camera setup on this phone protrudes a bit, and Sharp’s branding can be found on both the phone’s front and back sides.
The Sharp AQUOS S2 sports a 5.5-inch fullHD+ (2040 x 1080) LCD display with Corning’s 2.5D Gorilla Glass protection on top of it. This phone actually comes in two variants, a more affordable variant of the phone is fueled by the Snapdragon 630 SoC and comes with 4GB of LPDDR4x RAM, while the other variant comes with Snapdragon 660 SoC and 6GB of LPDDR4x RAM. The more affordable model of this phone also comes with 64GB of internal storage, while the more expensive model offers 128GB of storage, both of which are expandable via a microSD card. There are two SIM card slots inside of the Sharp AQUOS S2, and Android 7.1.1 Nougat comes pre-installed here with Smile Ux on top of it. 12-megapixel (f/1.75 aperture, 1.4um pixel size) and 8-megapixel (f/2.0 aperture, 1.4um pixel size) shooters are placed on the back of this phone, the 12-megapixel sensor is a regular RGB unit, while an 8-megapixel snapper is here for capturing depth information. This device packs in a 3,020mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0, while the phone measures 141.8 x 72.04 x 7.9mm, and weighs 140 grams.
The Sharp AQUOS S2 comes in Black, White, Blue and Green color variants, while the two RAM variants (4GB and 6GB RAM models) of the device are priced at 2,499 Yuan ($372) and 3,499 Yuan ($521), respectively. The Sharp AQUOS S2 is available for pre-order over at JD.com (JingDong Mall) in China, and it will become available for purchase starting on August 14.
