- URBANO PROGRESSO

“This model is called the Urbano Progresso. One big feature is a capability called the Smart Sonic Receiver. This communicates the other person’s voice through sound and vibration by shaking the whole display. This enables you to hear even if the handset isn’t aligned with your ear. You can shut out sounds from your surroundings by covering your ear with it, so you can hear clearly even in a noisy place.”

“The frame has a shiny finish, while the rear has a textured finish. So this model feels very comfortable in the hand.”

“This model comes with a new widget called Daily Steps. This is an app that works with a pedometer. It also detects automatically if you’re riding a bicycle, or in a car or train, so you can log your activity. This lets you understand your daily behavior pattern at a glance, such as what time of day you walked, drove, or took the train.”

- ARROWS Z ISW13F

“The Arrows Z is the first Japanese model with a quad-core CPU. It gives you visuals as good as those on a home game console, and it can easily handle a high CPU load from image processing.”

“On the rear, there’s a smart fingerprint sensor with an On/Off switch. If you press it while the screen is off, the screen comes on, and if you stroke the fingerprint sensor, the screen unlocks. This is our original NX! Mail, and if you start up Privacy Mode using the fingerprint sensor, mail that wasn’t displayed appears at the top. If you hold your finger down, this mode is released, and the mail goes back to not being displayed. The sensor can also be used as a trigger for this kind of secret capability.”

“The screen is still bright, even though I haven’t touched it for a while. With an ordinary smartphone, the screen fades after about 15 seconds, but this model has an On While Held feature. This keeps the screen bright as long as it judges that the user is looking at it.”

“I think everyone’s experienced this, but if you use your phone while lying down, the screen tends to rotate in a way you don’t intend. But with this model, if you shake it quickly, it returns to vertical. This feature is called Shake Back, and it’s a part of our human-centric way of thinking, you don’t need to set it, because it automatically works in an optimal way.”

- AQUOS PHONE SERIE ISW16SH

“This is the Aquos Phone Serie. It has a 4.6-inch screen, in a body of the size that’s often used for a 4.3-inch screen. So we’ve achieved a design with a very thin bezel.”

“This is the world’s first model with both NFC and FeliCa, which are both short-range communication technologies. And because this is an Android 4.0 model, it can use Android Beam, so two NFC handsets can exchange data if you place one against the other.”

“We wanted to provide a UI that’s easy to understand. So this UI was co-developed by Sharp and Frog Design. One feature is, it has three sheets for apps, widgets, and shortcuts. So with this UI, you use different sheets for different purposes.”

“For text entry, you can switch to the keyboard by sliding. Also, you can switch to speech entry by flicking downward. So with this model, you can change the text entry mode smoothly, in vertical and horizontal modes.”