Created: 14 May 2015 · Last edited: 17 September 2026

Summer 2015: KDDI's AU have also rolled out a new smart device, and by the looks of it, it gives Docomo's SH-03G some strong competition.

The Aquos Serie SHV32 comes with a 5-inch Full HD IGZO screen and new generation backlighiting "for subtle colour representation" dubbed as S-PureLED. The device is also part of the EDGEST series characterised by extremely thin bezel on the sides.

The camera is a step forward from SH-01G's world's first "professional single focus digital camera" GR certified by RICOH: it can now deliver super slow video playback (1/70 of normal speed) thanks to its high-speed sensor that can capture 210 shots (FWVGA) or 120 shots (FHD) per second but then is capable of converting these to 2,100 shots (FWVGA) using frame interpolation technology, achieving the world's best speed (as of May 2015). The camera is otherwise the familiar 13.1 megapixels, has two-level optical image stabilisation, Night Catch II + BrightEye f/1.9 aperture lens for low-light shooting, wide-angle, in-camera wide angle for splicing multiple shots into one, 4K2K video capture, Framing Advisor, Background Blur (post-shooting), 360°-degree panorama shooting, continuous shooting, translation finder – and a simplified camera UI.

The inner camera is 2.1 megapixels, wide-angle.

To power all this, Sharp are relying on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 (MSM8994) and it's four 2 GHz cores and four 1.5 Ghz cores, Adreno 430 GPU, 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of ROM (expandable to 128 GB).

The Aquos Serie SHV32 supports advanced LTE and WiMAX 2+ for up to 225 Mbps download speeds. There is support for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1, infrared, NFC + Osaifu Keitai, both OneSeg and FullSeg, and AU's Global Passport roaming functionality, which includes LTE, GSM, and UMTS frequencies. Supported are:

LTE: 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 1.7 GHz, 2.0 GHz
3G (W-CDMA): 850 MHz, 2.0 GHz
GSM: 1.9 GHz, 1.8 GHz, 900 MHz

Now that even AU phones can be officially unlocked, it is possible to use this beauty outside of Japan.

The SHV32 was originally released with Android 5.0, later upgraded to 7.0.

The Aquos Serie SHV32 is waterproof but not dust-proof. It measures 70 × 132 × 9.6 mm (thickest part: about 9.9 mm), and weighs 134 grams. It is available in white, green, and pink.

Design-wise, Sharp have added a distinctive rimming that drops around the corners for a "smooth sophistication".

I bought the SHV32 for my wife and she loved it for quite a few years. The only issue with it is its 3G frequency range didn't fully overlap the Bulgarian range, so it would occasionally switch to 2G.