Sharp has introduced a new lower-range smartphone under the name of Sharp Pi, and the device is now available for purchase in Vietnam and Indonesia for the price equivalent of around $130. As any other respectable budget device that aims to compete with brands such as Xiaomi, the smartphone features two main cameras on the back panel and has a fingerprint sensor embedded in the front-facing home button. According to reports, the exterior of this smartphone is made from polycarbonate, despite the fact that the apparently faux antenna stripes running across the upper and lower back panel would suggest otherwise.
The Sharp Pi is equipped with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 720 and a more conventional 16:9 aspect ratio. In other words, the Pi doesn’t represent SHARP’s biggest ambitions in terms of display technology, and unlike the company’s top-range Aquos series it doesn’t have a borderless or edge-to-edge display. The top and lower bezels are relatively thick, and the lower part of the front-panel accommodates not only a physical home button but also a couple of capacitive keys to its sides. The speaker grille is positioned on the lower back panel and the main dual camera is positioned horizontally next to an LED flash. Spec-wise, the main camera is comprised of a 12-megapixel sensor coupled with a 2-megapixel secondary shooter, though prospective buyers shouldn’t expect the same level of imaging quality as from a premium flagship equipped with dual cameras. Either way, the front-facing sensor has a resolution of 8-megapixels and appears to lack a flash.
The Sharp Pi is powered by a 64-bit MediaTek MT6737T chipset featuring four CPU cores clocked at up to 1.3GHz and 2GB of RAM. The device conceals 16GB of on-board storage expandable via microSD, and offers Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and 4G LTE Cat. 4 connectivity. It runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box and all the components rely on a 3,000mAh battery. As far as availability goes, as yet there’s no information pertaining to a possible global or European launch, but prospective buyers who reside in Vietnam and Indonesia can now acquire the Sharp Pi for VDN 2,990,000 or IDR 1,899.000 ($131), respectively.