Review: Sharp 910SH phone with 5MP 3x optical zoom CCD camera and VGA screen

The Sharp 910SH houses 2 things that Nokia hasn’t managed yet, a VGA screen and a 5MP camera with 3x optical zoom. While we know for sure that the 910SH will not be released outside Japan, nor will it be able to roam (even on W-CDMA, yes), it is always good to see how claims translate to reality. Do we need such camera and wouldn’t it take ages to safe pictures? The NikkeiBP team has taken the 910SH for a run, and generally liked what they see.

The 2.4″ VGA (640×480) ASV screen is unbeatable in terms of resolution and color, if you want to have an idea of how good the color on ASV screens look, look around for a Sharp 903 which is being sold in Europe. Thanks to the much higher resolution, the full HTML browser and document viewers all look stunning. However the browser is unable to display pages when they go beyond the 500KB mark (per page). Softbank’s new service Live Monitor worked well, it displays news headlines on the standby screens and will update itself every hour or so depending on your settings. NikkeiBP also tried out the S!Town virtual dating space and found it the most user-friendly and best-looking comparing to similar services (our side of the world, Myspace, Friendster, Facebook), you can create your own character and interact with other virtual character, you can even play mini-games with each other, too.

Since Softbank is co-branding with Yahoo, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail services are all incorporated into the phone, and they both worked seamlessly on testing. Lastly, the camera. The 5 megapixels CCD works well in terms of color reproduction, digital noise however is obviously heavier than that on the 903SH, narrowing the advantage of CCD over CMOS (Link to sample pictures below). Videos can be taken at VGA resolution and at 30fps, they turned out smooth. Focusing and saving pictures takes about a quarter of the time on 903SH (according to ITmedia). Also, refresh rate is not a problem even on the VGA viewfinder. The Sharp 910SH measures 50x106x24mm and carries 139g of weight. Sharp fans all over the world will get redeyes for this.

— Sam Chan

Sharp 910SH Review [NikkeiBP] Camera samples [NikkeiBP]