While the world awaits the debut of the SHARP AQUOS S3, the Japanese company has announced the launch of the SHARP AQUOS S3 mini in China. The mid-ranger, which closely resembles the Essential Phone PH-1, joins the recent wave of devices with notched fullscreen display but surprisingly packs a single rear camera and the fingerprint sensor (0.1 second unlock time) sits below the screen.
The SHARP AQUOS S3 mini has a 5.5-inch (2040 x 1080 pixels) Full HD+ LCD display with 2.5D curved glass, 87.5% screen-to-body ratio, 550 nits brightness and 135% sRGB color coverage. It measures 142.7 x 73 x 7.8 mm, weights 140 grams and power is supplied by a 3,020mAh battery.
In the camera department, the smartphone comes equipped with a rear facing 16MP f/2.0 camera with PDAF and LED flash, along with a front facing 20MP f/2.0 camera with AI portrait selfies and Face Unlock support for unlocking the phone in 0.1 second by scanning 1024 facial points.
Internally, the SHARP AQUOS S3 mini relies on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 630 octa-core mobile platform paired with 6GB of RAM and 64GB built-in storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD). It also has a USB Type-C 2.0 port with OTG and boot Android 7.1 Nougat OS with Smile UX, basically the same interface as last year’s SHARP AQUOS S2.
In terms of pricing and availability, the AQUOS S3 mini will be available in China via JD.com priced at CNY 1,599 (USD 252) and will arrive in Black, Blue and Gold colour options. There is no word on availability in its home country and outside China.
