Sharp Aquos Crystal: 5-inch bezel-less smartphone with Harman Kardon speakers

Sharp has launched the Aquos Crystal smartphone that sports an exquisite 5-inch 720p, edge-to-edge display. The phone is almost bezel-less, which gives a large screen without being too wide. The phone is available through Sprint for $239 ( Rs 15,000) without a contract.   The phone aims to bring Sharp’s TV technology to smartphones to give the same picture clarity and sharpness. What’s also striking about the phone is the fact that there’s no apparent earpiece sitting on top of the screen. Sharp claims it uses a Direct Wave receiver to transmit sound, which helps make phone calls sound clearer. Even the front camera is oddly placed at the bottom of the screen, though we’re not sure if that makes it any more useful. The rest of the phone is made of plastic and has a dimpled back cover, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S5 .   [caption id=“attachment_229953” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Did someone say edge-to-edge?[/caption]   The Aquos Crystal comes with Harman Kardon speaker technology for better music playback with or without headphones. There’s an 8Mp camera and a 1.2MP front camera for self-shots. Sharp has also packed plenty of camera features including Framing Advisor to help compose your shots, Night Catch that improves photos you take in the dark by brightening both subject and background. Note that these are built-in camera applications and don’t necessarily determine the quality of photos taken with the camera.   The Aquos Crystal is powered by a Snapdragon 400 SoC with a 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, and has 1.5GB RAM and 8GB of internal memory. You can expand the storage up to 128GB. It runs on a 2,040mAh, Li-ion battery, which claims a battery time of up to 13 hours. There’s 4G LTE support as well.