Android Sharp IS03 with Retina Display, hands-on

[CEATEC 2010] Sharp was exposing its IS03 Android phone that has the particularity of using an IPS 960×640 display, also known as “Retina Display” on the iPhone 4. The telephone itself looks like an iPhone 3GS, except that it seems to have a pretty good camera (9.6 Megapixel CCD with image stabilization) and associated microphone. Underneath the surface, you can find a One-Seg TV tuner, which is used only in Japan and possibly in a few nearby countries – definitely not in the USA though.

The phone’s build quality is average. It’s not really different from many other Android phones out there. At the bottom, the Android buttons are using yet another display, which is very low-resolution. It’s a little confusing at first because one might think that the buttons are part of the IPS high-res screen. Anyhow, the performance of the handset (UI, responsiveness…) was clearly not out of this world. In Short, the screen and the cameras are cool, while the rest of the phone is plain-Android-vanilla. As it is the case with most KDDI (a local carrier) phones, this one won’t hit the USA anytime soon.