Created: 28 August 2012 · Last edited: 10 September 2026

Sharp and Docomo announced the October 2012 launch of the AQUOS Phone si SH-01E, followed by the December 2012 launch of the limited edition SH-01E Vivienne Westwood. The "si" designation refers to "Stylish", "Smart" and "Innovative", reflecting the phone's compact design and feature-rich specification.

The SH-01E is a high-end smartphone in Docomo's WITH series and features a 4.1-inch QHD display with a resolution of 540 × 960 pixels, using a CG Silicon LCD. The bezels on the left and right sides of the display have been specifically thinned down to make the phone "easy to hold with one hand", resulting in a body just 59 mm wide.

The AQUOS Phone si SH-01E is equipped with a 12.1-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS camera from Sharp's ProPix series, with image stabilisation for still photography, and can also record Full HD video. A 0.3-megapixel CMOS camera is provided on the front.

It is water- and dust-resistant. Other standard features include One Seg, mobile wallet, infrared, Bluetooth 3.0 + EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n. It supports Docomo's Xi (LTE) network in addition to 3G and GSM.

To ensure quality sound reproduction, the SH-01E is equipped with a Dolby Mobile v3 5.1-channel surround sound processing engine.

USB host functionality is also featured.

The phone has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of built-in storage, while the processor is a 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960. Storage can be expanded using microSD/microSDHC/microSDXC memory cards with capacities of up to 64 GB.

This model features a relatively small-capacity battery of 1660 mAh, which we know perfectly well is hardly capable of lasting a day under intensive use.