Sharp readies high-end phone outside Japan, finally

Sharp is not a major player in the phone industry outside Japan, but it has definitely attracted a sizable group of cult followers. However the company has not been launching any high-end phones since more than 2 years ago (Sharp 903/ SX833/ WX-T91), well this is about to change this year.

Earlier this month FCC has given go-ahead to a model called SX862 (Hong Kong Smartone-Vodafone indexing) which, from the illustration, looks almost identical to the high-end Softbank 920SH AQUOS phone. The phone should house the same WVGA screen and 3.2MP AF camera. It’ll be running on WCDMA as well as tri-band GSM. There are minor differences between the 2 models including the thickness and battery volume.

A few questions remain to be answered. First off Hong Kong uses DMB-T/H for digital TV, a standard that is incompatible with that in Japan, Taiwan and Europe. So it is uncertain whether the tuner itself is ready yet. There are also discussions concerning a WX-T92 (Taiwan FarEastone indexing) which has just gotten its Bluetooth license; we do not know if this could be a Taiwanese version of SX862 with a different DMB tuner. In any case, we’ll keep you posted. —Sam Chan

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