Most phone makers have embraced the notch in the past year or so. Even Samsung is rumored to be planning to launch phones with camera cut-outs in the display next year.

But you know what we haven’t seen yet? A phone with two notches.

Now notch-lovers in Japan can get their fill though. Sharp’s new Aquos R2 compact is a phone with cut-outs in the top and bottom of the display.

I mean, a bug sort of made some Pixel 3 XL phones look like they had one for a while, and ZTE kind of had one in the works, but the company has had a rough year and it’s unclear what happened to that phone.

But as for real phones with dual notches, the Aquos R2 compact appears to be the first.

The top notch wraps around the phone’s front-facing camera, while the bottom notch makes room for a fingerprint sensor. Sure, putting the sensor on the side or back of the phone would have probably made for an even bigger screen. But then there’d be nothing particularly remarkable about this phone and I probably wouldn’t be writing about it… for better or worse.

Actually that’s not entirely true — the Aquos R2 compact also has a 120 Hz screen refresh rate, making it one of only a handful of smartphones with that feature.

Going with dual notches and slim top and bottom bezels allowed Sharp to fit a 5.2 inch display into a phone that’s a tiny bit thinner and lighter than its predecessor: the original Sharp Aquos R compact had a 4.9 inch display, a top notch, and a big bottom bezel, yet it measured 1mm taller and 2mm wider than the new model.

The phone’s overall spec sheet doesn’t look too bad. The Sharp Aquos R2 compact has a 2280 x 1080 pixel display with HDR10 support, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage.

It has a microSD card slot, a 2,500 mAh battery and a USB Type-C port. There’s a 22.6MP camera on the back of the phone and an 8Mp camera on the front. And the phone ships with Android 9.0 Pie software and features a waterproof (IP68) design.

via GSM Arena

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13 replies on “Sharp Aquos R2 compact is the first phone with two notches”

  1. Why stop there? Let’s go FOUR NOTCHES. Not only that, put 20 cameras on the back. But jokes on y’all, half of them are dummies and are actually fingerprint sensors made to look like cameras. And you need to touch all 10 to unlock your phone.
    Actually, know what? LET’S PUT NOTCHES ON THE CAMERAS, TOO. That’ll make Japanese phones special again, right? …Right?

  2. To be honest, if the Notch Top was a third’s-length like the OnePlus 6, and it housed the front-camera and a speaker its fine. Now you mirror that, and have a second front-camera and second loudspeaker, in a third’s-length Notch Bottom.

    And its symmetrical and a lot less annoying. And it means you can pick up a call from either orientation.

    Now to really drive it home, the screen inside should be 16:9, so that you aren’t wasting Physical Dimensions.
    Hence, a 9:16+notch ratio, which rounds to a 17:9 display with cut-outs.
    That’s how you do notches properly (with purpose).

    Add proper IP68 waterproofing, durable material (not glass/plastic), headphone jack, and a large battery…. and you have yourself a winner. If you also position the USB-C and Headphone jack on the horizontal side, to make it a symmetrical “gaming” phone, with the Hardware buttons symmetrical on the other side, and the rear-cameras flanking the sides, and other ergonomics….well, then you have The Next Big Thing.

    1. This might not meet all your demands but it is waterproof and it also has the headphone jack (check gsmarena).

      1. Yeah, I don’t hate this phone, it’s much better than many out there.

        I just think, with all those Billions, how come the entire industry is lacking in design and practicality. Almost like their products would fail if they don’t copy the other OEMs/Apple.

        I’m only excited about the ASUS RoG Phone for 2018.

  3. We need notches on the long edges too. Then we can call it the clover phone

  4. I am holding out for a phone with 4 notches. I know in my heart that Apple will eventually have the courage to “invent” one.

  5. Personally I would love this phone. It’s a good size (not too small but not so big that one handed operation is problematic) and good hardware. The bottom notch just seems to be a question off aesthetics (navigation buttons reside above it and most apps won’t take advantage of it) but as many notched phone users will tell you you just things it out. The SoC is good and the camera sounds good (though no secondary camera).

    IF this became available outside of Japan (without a ridiculous markup) is definitely consider it.
    The battery is small but hopefully the smaller screen size/resolution would help compensate.

  6. Doesn’t that just make it twice as bad?

    They should also sell an adapter that requires another adapter to use headphones.

Comments are closed.