14 DAY TRIAL // Sharp is one of the few Japanese handset makers that have yet to announce their entrance on the European market. Although the company will be present at this year’s Mobile World Congress trade fair, Sharp did not mention any launch events for the European market.
However, Sharp has a strong presence on the Japanese market, and for the moment, this is all that matters. Today, the company announced the upcoming availability of one of Japan’s first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones, the AQUOS 104SH.
According to Sharp, the smartphone will be available in Japan from February 24 for a price that will probably be disclosed at launch. Sharp AQUOS 104SH will be released nationwide via major carrier Softbank.
The folks over at Androinica report that the device will only have 8.9mm thickness and will be available in two color-schemes: Deep Ocean and Rising Sun.
Obviously, the selling point of the smartphone is Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, but the device is packed with nice features overall.
In this regard, another strong point of Sharp’s AQUOS 104SH smartphone is the dual-core TI OMAP 4460 clocked at 1.5 GHz. In addition, it packs 16GB of internal memory, 1GB of RAM, as well as microSD card for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
The phone is waterproof and dustproof, which is not a surprise as these features are already standard in Japan. In fact, these features will become standard for Europe as well since Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC announced similar smartphones will be launched on this market this year.
Furthermore, Sharp AQUOS 104SH features an impressive 12.1-megapixel rear photo snapper, as well as a large 4.5-inch capacitive touchscreen display that supports 1280 x 720 pixels resolution and 16 million colors. Other highlights of the phone include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth supports.