Mobile Phone Review

We haven’t seen a handset from Sharp in a little while, but the Sharp GX33 is the latest handset to hit Europe from this Japanese giant. Looking a little like last year’s GX40, the GX33 is a fairly compact clamshell phone. This particular handset is aimed at the value end of the market.And here is the problem - although we anticipate that the Sharp GX33 will offer very good value for money, it’s rather too basic to be that exciting. The GX33 has a 1.9" 176x220 pixel display, VGA resolution digital camera, Bluetooth, a web browser and email client and really not much else. There’s no expandable memory, and the GX33 also doesn’t have a multimedia player. At 87 grams, the GX33 is quite light and it comes it quite a pleasing design overall. In our experience, Sharp mobile phones are always well built and easy to use, so it looks like an appealing choice if you don’t want to spend too much.

Sharp can certainly manage something more exciting than this. Remember, this is the company that gave us the first European megapixel phone, the GX30, in 2004. Later that year, Sharp announced the groundbreaking 902, easily the most sophisticated 3G phone on the market at the time. They then improved on this in 2005 with the Sharp 903, which is still available in several markets. When the 902 and 903 were launched, they were way ahead of the competition in terms of features. And although Sharp has continued to innovate in their home market of Japan, the European market has been stuck with some rather lacklustre devices such as this.

The Sharp GX33 is exclusive to Vodafone, and is due to be in stores in the very near future.

Available now(in Japan)The Vodafone 905SH is a 3G phone with a digital TV receiver, aimed at the Japanese market. Roughly comparable to the Nokia N92 and Samsung SGH-P900 & P910 in terms of capabilities, the Vodafone 905SH supports the ISDB-T digital TV standard which is currently only used in Japan. Made exclusively for Vodafone KK by Sharp, the 905SH will never reach other territories in this form because of its reliance on ISDB-T, however there are some interesting technologies that we hope will make it out of Japan.

The display on the Vodafone 905SH is a little unusual - it’s a 400x240 pixel display with a 2.6" (66mm) diagonal display in 260,000 colours. The display uses technology from Sharp’s Aquous range of LCD TVs to help with the picture quality and also giving the 905SH a wide viewing angle. As well as ISDB-T digital transmissions, the 905SH can receive analogue TV signals and FM radio too.

Apart from the wide rotating screen and prominent TV antenna, the Vodafone 905SH is pretty much a typical 3G phone when it comes to physical and technical characteristics, at 105x45x27mm in size, 143 grams weight, 3 hours talktime and 15 days standby time, miniSD expandable memory, a 2 megapixel main camera, Bluetooth and all the other features you’d expect to find in a 3G phone of this type. It’s a little heavier than the 124 gram Samsung P900/P910.. but then it has a larger screen, and it’s substantially lighter than the Nokia N92,. but then that has a greater colour depth and WiFi. These comparisons are pretty academic though, as the Samsung and Nokia handsets use an incompatible digital TV format.

Despite the limited market appeal of the Vodafone 905SH, this is an impressive handset as it draws on the strengths of Sharp as a handset and TV manufacturer, along with Vodafone’s 3G network to come up with something really quite clever.

Due for release in June 2006, the Vodafone 905SH should be available in Black, White and Aquamarine colours.