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Sharp's edge-to-edge AQUOS S2 is a glimpse at your next phone
Andy Rubin's Essential Phone may have wowed us with its edge-to-edge display recently, but let's not forget that Sharp has been driving this design with many of its previous Android phones -- 28 of them, to be precise. Today, the Japanese brand unveiled its 29th release dubbed AQUOS S2 which, funnily enough, looks rather familiar. From afar, the S2's screen and the Essential Phone's screen share the same front-camera notch at the top, except the former is a smaller 5.5-inch panel with a slightly lower 2,040 x 1,080 resolution. The more notable difference here is how the corners at the top appear to be hastily trimmed, which is a bit of a letdown, but at least you're still getting a nice 135-percent sRGB gamut plus a handy 550-nit brightness.
Sharp's new any-shape displays are coming to cars and a whole lot more
Sharp's been working on its isn't-that-concept-art free-form displays (FFD) for a few years and, well, CES is a good place to show and tell us where they'll eventually end up, you know, in real life. We've just seen some of the more polished prototypes that will form the basis for dash-based displays in cars coming to market by 2017. But while we knew that was the aim, it's only the start. These low-power IGZO displays "don't need edges," so they can be cut into any shape and while there's no touch functionality in the current prototypes, it can be added -- meaning they could be found in mobile devices and (according to reports at least), something from Nintendo. Sharp had a great display where two circles were cut out and used as separate displays, and the "leftover" screen also functioned as part of a larger dash display. Here, take a look:
