Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sharp Aquos Crystal – Bezelless Smartphone!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is new – this is the sharp aquos crystal the most interesting phone in the world right now, no, but seriously. This is one of the most intriguing phones, i’ve seen in a long time and for one huge reason – or i guess one tiny reason that bezel all the way around this phone, except for the bottom, you have a minimal bezel that basically melts over the side. So really looks like there’s no bezel at all, so on the fourth side on the bottom, it has this huge chin and i call this the moto 360 approach. Basically, this design is the reason we’re looking at this phone at all.
It’S the reason it’s caught so many eyes. A lot of people are now interested in it. This might be a stretch, but it kind of reminds me of the zune hd from way back in the day.
Anyone no uh. Well, it has the prominent chin on the bottom and the smaller side, bezels that remind me of that, but looking at other phones on the market, there really isn’t anything else like this, so i wanted to show it to you guys get eyes on this thing share It around because i like, when manufacturers, take risks like this so props to sharp for thinking outside the box, so we’re looking at a 5 inch, 720p edge to edge display and at all those edges is the piece of glass on the front of the phone that Chamfers straight down to the metal sides in a way that’s pretty smooth and seamless, giving it a pretty dope. Look. Obviously the chin isn’t the prettiest thing in the world, but you got ta put the display driver somewhere and overall, it doesn’t really look terrible as a whole package. Also on the bottom. You also have your front-facing selfie camera, which actually asks you to hold the phone upside down to take selfies that aren’t at a weird angle and the white led notification.
Light is down in the bottom as well. Now one of the sacrifices they made for that bezel-less display is not having an earpiece on the top, and although it is a bit of a sacrifice, they’ve also kind of made it into a feature. Instead of having an earpiece, they still have a back facing speaker, but instead of having an earpiece on the top for calls, the entire glass front panel here vibrates.
So when you make a call – and you put your ear up to anywhere on the display, you’ll hear whoever you’re calling it’s a similar technology to what you have in that bone, conduction speaker in google glass that vibrates against your temple anywhere. You put this phone up against your head. You can hear it because it’s vibrating the whole screen and it’s actually decent quality too.
So they kind of turned a sacrifice into a bit of a feature. So using this display holding it and getting used to it was pretty quick to get used to and soon you start to see every other phone’s big bezels start to look even bigger, but you get a few nice aesthetic advantages with this edge to edge screen. So for one, the camera’s viewfinder looks really cool, it’s a five inch full screen viewfinder and while it’s not even a good camera at all, you get a pretty good idea of what it’s like to really take advantage edge to edge of a full screen from corner To corner so i just thought that looked pretty neat, the camera is definitely one of the better looking apps that you can open on this phone.
Another thing was videos and gaming, so videos, of course play back full screen and they create this immersive experience. Even though it’s a five inch display, it’s not the biggest in the world, but you can imagine being able to focus really well now on the media more instead of the device you’re watching it on and, of course, gaming. So games full screen, look really great too, but it’s not all pros.
Obviously, when the display goes edge to edge like this, you do have a couple of cons. Couple sacrifices. You still need to hold it somewhere and yeah. The device is pretty thick on the side. So you can hold it on the sides, but even so i found myself kind of obstructing the view of the screen by accident, sometimes just by holding it kind of wrong and also durability is going to suffer. It’S basically impossible to make a case for this phone.
That doesn’t cover up part of the screen, if you think about it, so you’re going to be carrying it naked and if you drop it on any of the sides other than the bottom you’re, basically making impact with the screen since there’s no bezel to shield it. So yeah you’re gon na have to be extra, careful handling this guy to not drop it and to not accidentally press stuff and, like i said it’s actually a five inch display, but it feels way way smaller than any other 5-inch phone i’ve ever held. In fact, the body of it is smaller than the iphone 6 body and the iphone 6 is a smaller 4.7 inch display. So i mean this aquos crystal is seriously compacted around its five-inch display.
I didn’t even realize it was a five-inch display until i looked it up. I would have thought it’s more like 4.5 and it is a 720p display, so it comes in at just under 300 pixels per inch and it’s not exactly super sharp or retina display or anything uh, but this isn’t a high-end phone. This is a low to mid-range prepaid phone that costs 150 bucks on amazon i’ll leave a link right below that like button. If you want to check it out, you can get this phone prepaid with boost or sprint but yeah. Basically, it’s 150 bucks. So, really in terms of unique features, once you get past the display in the design basically ends there.
It’S running a lower end, qualcomm chip and has what a gig and a half of ram eight gigabytes of onboard storage and it’s running a very near stock. Build of android 4.4 with a few features that sharp has built in so one is. It has harman kardon audio, which is supposedly going to add clarity to your audio, but i’d put that in the same category as beats audio. I wouldn’t really worry about that, and it also has some fancy full screen animations that can turn on when your phone is charging or when your alarm clock is going off.
Basically, this is sharp, adding some features in the settings. Saying hey, look at me. Look how freaking cool this looks to not have a bezel. Please notice how good this looks.
Uh and honestly, it does look pretty cool, but yeah performance. It’S okay, not spectacular. It does stutter once in a while uh, especially when web browsing or gaming, but nothing too extreme battery life was a bit better than i expected. Actually, thanks to the 720p display so thumbs up there and really that’s the whole deal with this device.
It’S not a flagship, like i said: cortex a7 chip, eight gigs of storage. It has a micro sd card slot in the back, but you can’t remove or swap the battery. This whole phone is more of trying new things with a new design that no one has ever really pushed before, and i am so down for more stuff like this.
I like, when companies, push the boundaries of design and what phones should look like or feel like in the hand, and even if this phone won’t make a lot of money for sharp, which it probably won’t, i’m glad they took that risk. I’M glad they’re taking risks and that’s why i’m sharing this. I want people to see this.
I want new eyeballs on this stuff and hopefully other manufacturers try some more outlandish or more interesting stuff too. This particular one isn’t the phone for me, but i am glad it exists. .