Content
- Equipment and design
- Software
- cameras
- Performance and Benchmarks
- findings
The Japanese have very strange preferences when it comes to smartphones. The top sellers there are iPhone SE and iPhone 12/13 mini; they account for more than a quarter of all smartphones sold in the country, and in total Apple controls about half of the market. On the other hand, imported Android devices are almost never in demand, although due to very low prices, some OPPO Reno and Galaxy A have become quite popular in Japan. The largest Android manufacturer in Japan is Sharp, and its Aquos Sense line of mid-budget smartphones is the best-selling in the country. These budgets diverge better than all the Xperias put together! At the end of last year, Sharp released a new generation – and thanks to J-Phone.ru we got it for a test. The device turned out to be very original, so let’s go!
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Specifications Sharp Aquos Sense 6 |
|---|---|
| Network | 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G |
| Firmware | Android 11 with Aquos Home |
| Screen | 6.1″, 2432×1080 dots, 20.3:9, IGZO OLED, 10bit, 1300nits, 13,000,000:1 |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 690, 12 nm CPU: 2 x A77 x 2 GHz + 6 x A55 GPU: Adreno 619L |
| RAM | 4/6 GB |
| ROM | 64/128 GB |
| SIM and memory card | nano-SIM + e-SIM + microSD |
| Camera | Triple Primary: 48MP, f/1.8, 26mm, 2160p@30fps video recording Wide: 8 MP, f/2.4, 15mm, 1080p@30fps video recording Telephoto: 8MP, f/2.4, 53mm, 1080p@30fps video recording |
| Selfie | Waterdrop notch, 8MP, 26mm, 1080p@30fps video recording |
| Battery | 4570 mAh |
| Charger | USB Type-C |
| Wireless interfaces | WiFi 5 Bluetooth 5.1 A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS |
| NFC | There is |
| Biometrics | Fingerprint scanner (on screen) |
| Sound | 3.5mm headphone jack |
| Protection | IP68 MIL-STD-810H (drops from 1.2 m, etc.) Treatment with alcohol-containing sanitizers |
| Dimensions and weight | 152 x 70 x 7.9mm 156 g |
Equipment and design
A small gray box immediately hints at a not very rich bundle, but here even an experienced one will be surprised: the kit includes the smartphone itself, documentation and an OTG adapter. Everything. I don’t mind removing chargers and cables from the box – everyone really has them at home – but the adapter in such a kit looks like an outright mockery. And it lies in a separate bag with a warning label: “Beware of accidental swallowing.” Om-nom-nom, what a delicious adapter.
The smartphone does not need a SIM needle, since the tray is removed with your fingers. And the case, it seems to me, is also not needed due to the unusual design of the phone for 2022. First, it is all-metal! Both the ends and the back are made of aluminum, and we pretty much missed this. I went through all sorts of catalogs and was horrified: Aquos Sense is the only line of all-metal smartphones left in the world. Secondly, the ends here are not convex or even flat, but concave. Thanks to this, when falling, it is the metal that takes the hit, and the inside of the phone does not suffer. So Sharp, in addition to the standard IP68 water protection for Japan, promises resistance to drops from a height of 1.2 m. And at the same time, resistance to alcohol-containing sanitizers.
How does this body shape affect ergonomics? Surprisingly good: the palm and fingers are literally pressed into the concave ends, and the grip is very strong. The small width of the phone is also beneficial – only 70 mm. But I can’t praise the location of the buttons: if the lock key is at a convenient level, then the volume rocker is already very high, and it’s inconvenient to use it. But between them they inserted a tiny button that calls the Google Assistant. Well, why is she to me?
At the bottom you can see a multimedia speaker (there is no stereo here), a USB Type-C port, a 3.5 mm headphone hole and a microphone. The elements are not exactly neatly aligned, the microphone turned out to be almost on the back. The second microphone, located on the upper end, is located in the same way. Why Sharp?!
Now about the screen. Sharp uses a proprietary 6.1″ IGZO OLED-matrix, and in terms of its characteristics it surpasses what we are used to seeing in budget smartphones: 10 bits (i.e. 1 billion colors), peak brightness of 1300 nits, contrast ratio of 13,000,000 : 1. I can’t say anything about the colors and brightness, but the contrast is really amazing – the black color is very deep, the white is also of high quality. It feels like they didn’t save on the panel. The resolution is good: 2432×1080 pixels (20.3: 9). Almost Sony – sausage, but not really.
The screen also has problems, in particular, calibration. Of all the screen modes, only in “standard quality” the colors are more or less realistic. By default, there are “dynamic” colors, and they make my eyes bleed; “Natural” color reproduction is too warm in practice. There is also a separate Hakkiri View mode, which makes the picture excessively yellow; Sharp says that this mode is more convenient to use maps and, in principle, to read, and, oddly enough, this is true. And other shortcomings – a very high PWM (better than the Aquos R6, but not much) and the lack of increased hertz (60 Hz screen + 120 Hz touch). There is no film on the screen initially, but thanks to the flat glass, sticking it should be a breeze.
I forgot to tell you about the colors, but there is nothing unusual here: silver, black, orange and gray-blue. The fingerprint scanner is built into the screen; works reliably, but slowly. The saddest thing is that for some reason it is not available from the off screen. You must first press the lock button, and only then you can unlock the phone. Some stupidity.
Software
The Sharp Aquos Sense 6 comes pre-loaded with Android 11 and comes with the proprietary Aquos Home interface, which doesn’t look much different from pure Android, but offers a lot of interesting extras. In addition to Aquos Home, you also get an app bundle from the carrier selling the smartphone. We have a smartphone for au on our test, and it installs quite a bit of its junk. If you get a phone from DoCoMo, it will be worse. Since this is a device for Japan, there are no problems with Google services. There is a Russian language, but the quality of the translation is mediocre.
Most of the interesting features of the Aquos Home firmware are summarized in one application – Aquos Tricks. Unfortunately, it is the one translated into Russian that is the worst (in some places it is Spanish, not Russian), but much is understandable. For example, there is Bright Keep: the ability to turn off automatic screen shutdown for a specific application in one click. Or “Smart Charging”: the phone charges only with the screen off, and with it on it works directly from the mains. There are also settings for Roboqul – a docking station that automatically rotates the phone so that it always looks at you. Unfortunately, some of the Aquos Tricks literally don’t work: I was never able to take a screenshot in Clip Now mode, use autoscroll, or open the camera by double-pressing the power button.
Another cool feature is hidden in the power button menu and is called Think if it might be a malfunction? This is a detailed 23-point self-diagnostic service that allows you to detect and check malfunctions in your smartphone. A cool feature that I would like to see in less reliable phones.
cameras
Sharp Aquos Sense 6 is equipped with a triple camera without plugs: 48-megapixel main module, 8-megapixel wide and 8-megapixel telephoto camera with 2x zoom. There is no OIS, autofocus is implemented in the main camera and telephoto. Sharp does not cover the camera sensors used, but does not hide information from the eyes of curious users: the main camera is based on the OmniVision OV48B (1/2″, 0.8 microns), and all the rest, even the front camera, are OV8856 (1/4 “, 1.12 µm). The omnivision quartet doesn’t bode well, but let’s not jump to conclusions.
Before the photo examples, I would like to say a few words about the camera application. It has a lot of cool features like manual mode for video shooting or a dozen different grid options for building a composition to choose from. But there are also enough problems: for example, there is some kind of post-processing of the photo, which takes several seconds and during which there is no indication, the viewfinder works, and the camera interface does not respond to anything. When you want to take a series of shots, it’s frankly infuriating. And the same grid options do not work when the wide-angle camera is activated. Why is this at all? Okay, let’s look at the pictures:
The wide-angle and zoom cameras are expectedly weak, but they cope with their main duties: the wide angle allows you to take landscapes, and the telephoto lens improves the detail of shots taken with the approach. The main camera produces a decent result; I especially liked the deliberately calm and natural color rendering. Sharping is minimal (although it’s Sharp, badum-shh), the desire to turn up the contrast is also not felt. There is good HDR, but sometimes the phone needs help with exposure to unlock its potential. The night mode turns on automatically and cannot be turned off in any way, and the shooting result is unusual – beautiful, but without detail. Surprisingly, widescreen and telephoto sometimes make very cool shots in this mode. In general, you should not expect something outstanding from the Sense 6 camera, but this is a decent mid-range solution with its own approach to shooting.
But the 8-megapixel front camera is exactly the same as the telephoto and shirik. Well, there is none. Good for video calls.
Video can be recorded in 2160p@30fps or 1080p@60fps on the main camera or in 1080p@30fps on any other cameras, you cannot switch between cameras while shooting. There is electronic stabilization; optical, as I already wrote, no. The videos on the main camera are very good, but otherwise the video capabilities of the smartphone leave much to be desired. At night, I advise you to turn off the stabilization, because the ghosting from the EIS is very strong. And do not turn on 60 fps: the video flickers. In general, there are problems here and there; manual mode does not allow you to solve all of them. Well, at least it’s good that they were allowed to shoot videos not only wide, but Sharp at one time had such quirks. And, I repeat, the result with good lighting on the main camera is good.
By the way, there is still such a cool trick with the video: when you shoot, the phone automatically takes photos of the “most interesting moments”. Without any censorship, I attach all the photos of the most interesting moments of the video that the phone made during the week of use. I think this will show the level of work of this chip better than any words.
Performance and Benchmarks
Sharp’s main mistake when creating Aquos Sense 6 is the choice of chipset. The previous generation used Snapdragon 720G, which was pretty cool, and you could expect that the Snapdragon 750G would be put in the “six”, for example. But the company opted for the Snapdragon 690, thus offering no performance improvement at all. Add to that the classic Japanese approach of “saving battery power even in heavy tasks and never letting the phone get warm” and you get a rather sad result. First, benchmarks.
Well, throttling is actually not as strong as one would expect from a Japanese smartphone. Apparently the Snapdragon 690 itself is pretty cold. Well, the device is really weakly heated – even though the case is metal, under load it feels nothing more than warm. As for gaming abilities, they are very unremarkable. Simple games like Brawl Stars or Standoff 2 can be played without problems, but Genshin Impact lags even at the lowest settings. In PUBG, lags are unavoidable simply because the game does not support normal refresh rates – well, except on a “very low” graphics, which is not fun to play with. There is no increased hertz in this smartphone, but the touch constantly threshes at 140 Hz, which is higher than the 120 Hz declared by the manufacturer.
The battery capacity is 4570 mAh – not that much, but Sharp promises a week without recharging. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but a 60-Hz OLED screen on an IGZO substrate, weak hardware and Japanese optimization are capable of much. I managed to spend three days on a single charge with 8.5 hours of screen – generally speaking, the result is excellent. But it’s a little short of a week 🙂 Synthetic tests showed the following figures: minus 13% for two hours of video and minus 16% for an hour in Shadowgun Legends. It is pointless to measure the charging speed in the absence of a complete charger, but Sharp does not promise anything modern: the site indicates that a full charge takes 2.5 hours.
The smartphone supports Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1 and NFC. I didn’t have any problems connecting to 4G, although according to the characteristics, the set of supported LTE bands is quite small, and Band 7 and Band 20, which are common in Russia, are not on the list. There is only one SIM card slot, as I wrote, but the smartphone supports a second SIM card in the form of an e-SIM.
findings
The official price of Sharp Aquos Sense 6 from DoCoMo is 57,024 yen, that is, 29,900 rubles at the exchange rate. J-Phone in Russia sells it based on the real exchange rate, that is, for 40,000 rubles. And such pricing, of course, raises questions, because in terms of hardware it does not pull this money at all. Yes, there are three useful cameras (and not two, as usual), a very bright and high-contrast screen, decent battery life and a cool, unusual design for 2022 – but all this is not worth the money that Sharp asks. At the same time, if you want a curiosity smartphone and are willing to spend a little more than would be reasonable, then Aquos Sense 6 is a cool idea. He literally screams that “not like everyone else”, and at the same time he can be used without problems in Russia. So why not?
By the way, not so long ago, Sharp released Aquos Sense 6s, an improved version of Aquos Sense 6 based on the Snapdragon 695 chipset instead of 690. Nothing else has changed, and the price has even become lower – only 40,470 yen (21,200 rubles at the exchange rate). This model already looks much more interesting on paper, but who knows what surprises Sharp has in store there.
(5% discount with code word Mobiltelefon)
© Oleg Lazarev. mobile phone
Used photos J-Phone.ru
