SH-02E
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Sharp ships its first phone with an IGZO display on November 29th, ushers in a low-power LCD era
The gray clouds of Sharp's gloomy earnings are about to get a silver lining: NTT DoCoMo is at last launching Sharp's new flagship phone, the breathlessly worded Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E, on November 29th. When it arrives, the SH-02E will be its* first smartphone to carry an IGZO-based display and show us just how well the high-brightness, low-energy invention fares in a 4.9-inch, 720p LCD. There's no known fixed pricing, although it's likely the Android 4.0 device will be sitting at the very top of its Japanese carrier's range through its Snapdragon S4 Pro, 16-megapixel camera and LTE data. Not fully convinced of IGZO's worth? Fujitsu's more conventional Arrows V F-04E is arriving a day earlier with a regular LCD and a Tegra 3, although we'd say that it's worth waiting the extra 24 hours to be a technology vanguard. Update: While the SH-02E was the first phone announced with an IGZO LCD screen, it's been beaten to the market by ASUS' Padfone 2, which is also rocking the new technology.
The first smartphone with a low-power IGZO display: the 4.9-inch Sharp Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E
Japanese mega-operator NTT DoCoMo has just unveiled a interesting addition to its winter line-up: the Sharp Aquos Phone Zeta SH-02E, which is the first production smartphone we've seen with an IGZO display. If you hadn't heard, the indium gallium zinc oxide technology promises higher translucency compared to regular LCDs, which reduces the demand for backlighting and hence means less battery drain -- and you can learn more from our hands-on at IFA. Fortunately, in addition to its new-fangled 4.9-inch 1,280 x 720 panel, the SH-02E boasts a healthy spec sheet in other departments too, including a 16-megapixel camera, 1.5GHz S4 Pro quad-core engine with Adreno 320 graphics, NFC and compatibility with NTT's LTE network. The only slight downer is that it comes with Android 4.0 out of the box, but that's hardly going to be an issue by the time a model with this type of display lands stateside -- assuming it ever does.
