Last month, it emerged that Sharp is preparing to launch a pair of nearly bezel-less smartphones, featuring displays that cover most of the front of each handset, and extending into the curved corners of the two devices. Those phones are rumored to be launching this month, but one of them has apparently been caught on camera in a rather familiar pose.
A photo posted on Weibo shows a close-up of one of the two handsets - known as FS8016 and FS8010 - being held upside-down. The unusual composition of the image appears to have been a deliberate choice, given how similar it is to a teaser photo of the Essential Phone released two months before Android co-founder Andy Rubin officially announced that device.
That certainly seems appropriate, given that the Sharp device shares an obvious similarity with the Essential Phone. The image of the new Sharp phone appears to show a cutout at the top of the display - presumably to accommodate the front-facing camera - exactly the same as on the Essential Phone.
Sharp"s new handsets will reportedly feature a "new design structure", which will enable them to withstand a drop from 1.5 meters onto a hard surface. In addition to a rear fingerprint sensor, both models are expected to have 5.5-inch displays with 2040x1080px resolution, along with 12MP rear and 8MP front cameras, and 64GB of storage.
The two variants will come with Android 7.1.1 Nougat, but are said to differ in their other key specs, with the top model featuring a Snapdragon 660 processor and 6GB of RAM. The latest image also hints at dual-SIM support on at least one model.
Source: Weibo via The Android Soul