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This phone has a huge 1" camera sensor and it's from a manufacturer you probably forgot existed
Sharp's Aquos R6 flagship boasts impressive specs and a jaw-dropping Leica camera
At the moment the arms race in mobile phone cameras is all about the number of them, with two, three, or four rear lenses and sensors being commonplace. Sharp is bucking that trend with the Aquos R6, which features just one massive rear camera bump. It's a 20.2 megapixel sensor with a massive surface area of one square inch, f/1.9 lens made by Leica, and it's paired to a phone that's no slouch in other departments, either.
Sharp has been making strides in the bezel-elimination race for years. In 2014, it released the Aquos Crystal, which had practically no bezels at all on three sides of the display (and a huge one on the fourth). Then, in August 2017, the company beat Apple and even Essential to the punch with the first commercially available notched-display smartphone. Now, Sharp is continuing to try new things with the Aquos R2 Compact, which has not one, but two display cutouts.
If there ever was a market that could do with more competition, it's the OLED smartphone display industry. Samsung has long ruled the roost with its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, with LG and Sony several paces behind. There are other, less visible players in the market, of course, but overall it's a relatively small group, considering the panels are now a hallmark of premium handsets. A new competitor has entered the market as of today, however. Japan's Sharp has announced that it will offer OLED panels in its new smartphones this year starting with the AQUOS Zero, and also plans to sell displays to other manufacturers.
Over in Japan, Sharp has taken the wraps off of its newest flagship. Dubbed the Aquos R, it features some top-tier specs with a lot of hype around the display technology and included artificial intelligence. The choice of the letter 'R' has a four-fold meaning around which the phone's marketing will be unified: Reality, Response, Reliability, and Robotics.
If you own a Sharp Aquos Crystal on Sprint, you've got an update on the way. According to Sprint, there are quite a few bug fixes as well as some new bloatware added, such as Sprint's new premium caller ID service that lets you see a caller's name as well as their phone number, and integration with Yahoo's Communications Suite.