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Fujitsu's working on another senior-friendly smartphone for Europe
Fujitsu's evidently so impressed with how its luddite-friendly Stylistic S01 smartphone has performed in France, thanks to a deal with local carrier Orange, that it's ready to start plugging a follow-up handset. Only, the company doesn't have a clue on specifics just yet, but we'll award a few points for enthusiasm, we guess. All we know of the Stylistic S02, assuming that'll be the device's name, is that it's "expected" to wield NFC and LTE chips, an "energy-saving display" and a processor of the quad-core variety. Plans are to launch the smartphone aimed at "mature users" in a number of European locations this autumn. Not a lot to talk about, we know, but Fujitsu had to announce something phone-related at MWC. Otherwise, people'll just think it makes tablet concepts with scaly touchscreens.
Fujitsu Stylistic S01 hands-on: a smartphone even grandma can use
Not every smartphone needs to have piles of RAM an inhumanly fast quad-core CPU and a comically large 1080p display. For some niches of the market those things are not only unnecessary, but potentially a huge negative. Fujitsu's Stylistic S01 is one of those phones that eschews high-end specs for practical features aimed at a particular segment of the market -- namely, your grandparents. The four-inch WVGA display and dual-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon would have been par for the course a year or two ago, now they're getting a bit dated. But that's ok, they're serve up the heavily skinned Ice Cream Sandwich here just fine. The UI has large buttons and simplified widgets that are carefully crafted to be easy to manipulate for those with less dexterity in their digits. And, unlike most phones, a glancing touch wont be enough to accidentally launch the camera or maps. While an initial touch wil temporarily select an option, you'll have to actually press just a bit harder than you're accustomed to in order to confirm your selection. In addition to minimizing accidental app launches, it also gets a little bit closer to recreating the tactile sensation of dialing on a physical numeric pad.
