Google has today announced a brand new Android One phone in Japan, with the Sharp X1 going on-sale with Japanese carrier Y! Mobile.
The Sharp X1, like the previous Sharp Android One phone, the S1, is more a premium handset than one designed for ‘developing markets’ like other Android One handsets. Like the previous model, the X1 is water and dust resistant and comes with some decent internals.
The X1 has a 5.3″ FullHD (1920×1080) resolution IGZO LCD touchscreen, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 and 3GB of RAM powering the device. 32GB of storage comes standard, with an option to add a microSD card to expand storage. On the rear, a 16.4MP camera is mounted on the rear with an 8MP front-facing camera.
The X1 also has a 3,900mAh battery included which the Y! Mobile specs page claims gets up to 4 days of battery life.
The phone is relatively modern, with a USB-C port for connectivity, and it also includes a fingerprint scanner on the front underneath the screen.
The phone is shipping in three colours, White, ‘Dark Purple’ which looks Black to us and what appears to be an almost khaki green they’re calling ‘Mint Green’.
As with all Android One handsets, Google will be keeping the phone up to date with the phone starting with Android 7.1 (Nougat) on-board.
The phone is available to purchase now from the Y! Mobile website, but unless you’re in Japan you’ll probably have trouble getting a hold of it.
The current gen SD400 and SD600 series chips outmoded language about “mid range processors” as seen with this phone. If “high end” i.e. SD800 chips equals poor battery life then for many users they become a weaker value proposition. I think the SD660 is going to really punctuate this when it’s in 1080p phones everywhere.
4k screens will be most useful for previewing camera shots to see if you need to take more to get a sharp picture but for most apps the difference will not be worth the battery cost for lots of end users