Today, the stage was taken by the Sharp Aquos S3 Mini, a mid ranger that is basically an Essential PH-1 clone, with a price tag way lower than the flagship.
Sharp Aquos S3 Mini Design and Specifications
Nothing new in this department. Like I said earlier, the Aquos S3 has a front design that looks exactly like that of the PH-1 with the only difference being the presence of the fingerprint scanner on the bottom bezel. The display is a 5.5-inch InCell panel with a resolution of 2040 x 1080 pixels. It has an 87.5% screen-to-body ratio. The notch houses the 20MP front camera with support for AI. The back has a 2.5D glass back where the 16MP camera rests.
Powering the phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chipset coupled with 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB of on-board storage expandable via microSD card. That’s flagship level memory configuration. Sharp could’ve cut it down to 4GB and 32GB, lost the unnecessary 2.5D glossy-like-a-new-paintjob glass and gone with a dual camera setup.
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A 3020mAh battery runs the phone along with Android Nougat and Sharp’s Smile UX. It comes with Face Unlock that has a response time of 0.1 seconds. The phone does not skip on the 3.5mm jack, even after sporting the USB type-C port. It does lack NFC though, which shouldn’t be much of a problem since the use of NFC is not as widespread.
Sharp Aquos S3 Mini Pricing and Availability
The S3 Mini is available for pre-order on Jingdong for 1599 Yuan and is available in three colours, blue, black and gold, all of them glossier than lip gloss.