As we've regularly seen, smartphone photography has yielded some impressive results given the limitations associated with relatively small sensor size. Now Sharp is set to bump image quality up a notch by squeezing a 1-inch CMOS sensor into its latest handset.
Though every bit a flagship phone, the highlight here is the single rear camera. Sharp has been working with imaging titan Leica on the development of the Aquos R6's camera system since March 2020, which has included the design of the sensor and lens, as well as quality control for imagery.
The launch announcement says that the 20-MP 1-inch CMOS image sensor and seven-element Summicron f/1.9 lens was "co-engineered" by the two companies, which probably means that Leica isn't involved in actual manufacturing – in the same way that Huawei's co-engineered cameras were made by a Chinese supplier and not Leica.
That said, Sharp is promising low distortion from wide-angle to telephoto (there's no optical zoom here though), with a wide dynamic range and reduced noise – even for low-light photography – and electronic image stabilization.
Elsewhere, the handset features a 6.6-inch WUXGA (1,260 x 2,730-dot) Pro IGZO OLED display with a refresh rate of up to 240 Hz, a very high brightness of 2,000 nits, and 20 million:1 contrast. Interestingly, the display will automatically reduce the refresh rate to as low as 1 Hz depending on displayed content, to squeeze even more per-charge life out of the 5,000-mAh battery.
It's built around Snapdragon 888 octacore processing brains with 5G cooked in, and rocks 12 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. Sharp also makes use of Qualcomm's 3D Sonic Max fingerprint recognition technology, which offers a larger scan area and allows for advanced security measures – including being able to register two fingerprints simultaneously. There's Wi-Fi 6 onboard too, and the R6 runs Android 11.
The Aquos R6 is due for release towards the middle of next month, and will be exclusive to the Japanese market.
Source: Sharp Japan
