Sharp Aquos Mini with 4.7-inch display, Snapdragon 808 announced

A compact powerhouse smartphone running Android is hard to find nowadays, with only the Sony's Xperia compact lineup available in the main market along with the iOS powered Apple's iPhone 5s, SE (4-inch) and iPhone 6, 6s (4.7-inch). But Japan based Sharp has released a new smartphone that has a screen size less than 5-inch with extremely thin bezels and top specs, at least for the size it offers.

Dubbed Sharp Aquos Mini (SH-03H), the pocket friendly compact phone measures 126 x 66 x 9 mm and weighs 120g.  It has a unique notification system called Emopa, that can emit light or pulse as breathing lights at the bottom corners of the phone. Another feature is the pressure sensitive sides that you can squeeze to confirm an action, instead of tapping on screen. The fingerprint scanner is missing, which is now found in top-end and mid-range phones as well.

The Aquos Mini (SH-03H) sports a 4.7-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) IGZO LCD display with 120Hz refresh rate, that double than most smartphone offer, for smoother animation and reduced blur when viewing. To preserve power it can go as low as 1Hz.

Under the hood there's the older, but high-end 1.8GHz hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor backed by Adreno 418 GPU and 3GB RAM. On-board storage is 16GB, which can be further increased via microSD card (up to 200GB). For photography, it gets 13-megapixel rear camera with LED flash, OIS, f/1.9 aperture and 5-megapixel wide-angle front facing camera. Connectivity duties are handled by 4G LTE, WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS w/ GLONASS. It is fueled by 2810mAh battery, runs Android Marshmallow and is IP68 rated for dust and water resistance.

In Japan, the Sharp Aquos Mini (SH-03H) is available via Raukten Mobile for a two year contract at JPY 2016 ($20) per month. The market price is JPY 44800 ($436 | Rs. 30,000). Unfortunately the release will be limited to Japan.

Via