Sharp 903 Preview
Available
now 28th July 2005 Discuss
this handset in our forums
Already creating a buzz in Asia, these
pictures of the upcoming Sharp 903 / Vodafone V903SH
handset found their way into our mailbox. What they
show is a handset very similar in design and size to
the existing Sharp 902 / Vodafone V920SH but with a
3.2 megapixel digital camera and also mini SD memory
instead of the 902's SD memory.
The swivelling screen from the 902 and
other Sharp handsets remains in the Sharp 903, as does
the 240x320 pixel display in 262,000 colours. There
is no external display at all on the Sharp 903 though,
which was a handy feature of the old 902 handset.
Again, this is a Vodafone exlusive 3G
/ GSM phone which will probably be sold worldwide, including
within Europe and Japan, and it will also feature Bluetooth,
video calling and MP3 and video playback.
It's a promising looking handset, and
a useful upgrade to the 902 which was announced 10 months
ago. One weakness with the previous handset though was
the camera - although the 902's one megapixel camera
with optical zoom sounds great, in practice the lens
quality tended to let the handset down rather. Nokia's
new N90
will be highly competitive here, with a 2.0 megapixel
camera but with a Carl Zeiss lens which should lead
to better quality photographs.
Changing from SD cards to mini SD cards
will be an irritation for 902 owners looking to upgrade
to the Sharp 903, however. Since the 902 is a bit of
a "power users" phone, many customers have
invested in high capacity memory cards which would be
useless in the 903.
The Sharp 903 is going to be a big slab
of a phone (rumoured to be 106x50x26mm) but the Nokia
N90 is even bigger. Still, the Nokia N90 is the closest
competitor to the V903SH and it will be interesting
to see them perform head to head.
The thing is this.. previously, Sharp
have always been way ahead of the crowd with
their excellent GX20, GX30 and 902 handsets. The problem
with the Sharp 903 is that it doesn't really show a
significant improvement over the 902 (apart from the
camera upgrade, that is!). Could it be that this is
as far as you can take a traditional format phone? Perhaps
there really are no more features that you can squeeze
into this type of handset.
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Sharp
903 (V903SH) Provisional Specifications
|
Available:
|
Q3
2005
|
Network:
|
UMTS
(3G) + GSM
|
Data:
|
UMTS
(3G) + GPRS
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels, 262,000 colours
|
Camera:
|
3.2
megapixels, 2x optical zoon
|
Size:
|
Large
clamshell 106x50x26mm
/ 150 grams approx
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Infra-red:
|
Yes
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
Not
specified
|
|