Скачать или смотреть Sharp AQUOS Crystal review - mid-range brains meet striking looks

Pop quiz, hotshot: When's the last time you saw a Sharp phone in the United States? The Sharp FX from years back? Maybe the FX Plus? If you're anything like me, your mind will hearken back to chunky clamshell classics like this one. Long story short, it's been ages since Sharp has had any kind of mobile presence around these parts. That's something the Japanese company is finally ready to change, and it's aiming to do it with a splash. Enter the AQUOS Crystal, one of the most striking phones you'll ever see. It's finally available for $149 on Boost Mobile now and Sprint will get it come October 17th, but we have questions -- so many questions. Has Sharp figured out a way to crack the all-too-fickle US market? Are we looking at a classic case of style over substance?

Summary

The AQUOS Crystal is Sharp's first phone to land in the US in ages, and it's a looker thanks to that amazing screen design. It isn't just handsome, though: The Snapdragon 400 ticking away inside gives it enough oomph to keep up with most people's daily grinds. Alas, if you're not a fan of Sprint, you'll have to look elsewhere for your bezel-less phone fix.

Hardware
Let's just get it out of the way now: The AQUOS Crystal looks fantastic. It's the only phone I've ever tested that prompted random bystanders to either gawk or give it a double take as they walked by. One look is enough to reveal why: Those people were ogling the 5-inch 720p screen sitting up front... and more specifically, the lack of just about anything surrounding it. Squint hard enough and you'll see just the faintest hint of a bezel running around the screen, so small that it may as well not be there. The effect is utterly striking -- it feels like you're holding some sort of J.J. Abramsian Star Trek floating-screen prop in your hand instead of a smartphone you can buy from a store right now.

Display and sound
It'd be pretty stupid of Sharp to use a subpar screen when it removed nearly everything that could possibly distract you from it. Thankfully, it's got the chops to make some impressive displays, and the 5-inch LCD panel it crammed into the Crystal doesn't disappoint. First, the elephant in the room: Yes, the screen only runs at 720p, and no, that's not a bad thing. It's plenty bright when you need it to be and colors are well-saturated, though whites aren't as crisp and blacks aren't as sumptuous as they are on more premium devices. Still, pictures and videos pop when there's no border restraining them -- even poking through your email feels just a little wondrous.

Software
I (like many of you, I suspect) am an Android purist. Shocker, right? Thankfully, Sharp hardly futzed with Google's OS before throwing it on the Crystal: It runs a pretty clean build of Android 4.4.2... that just happens to be festooned with all the extraneous Sprint apps you could think of. Upon first boot, I was greeted by a preloaded AccuWeather widget on the home screen, a Sprint featured-apps widget on another and no fewer than 20 additional apps and bolt-on services that the carrier decided I needed to have. Fortunately, most of those bright yellow Sprint icons are merely pointers to listings in the Google Play store, which means they're easy to dismiss with extreme prejudice.

Camera
Every phone maker is guilty of cutting corners with cameras at least once (especially with mid-range phones for the masses), and Sharp is no different. The main imaging attraction is an 8-megapixel rear camera that mostly churns out soft, grainy, under-saturated shots, even when there's a seemingly sufficient amount of light bathing your subjects. Take it into the great outdoors on a bright day, though, and things start to improve a bit -- you'll be able to pick out just a little more detail in your photos, but the end results are still rarely worth getting worked up over.