Created: 13 October 2017 · Last edited: 21 September 2026

FIH Mobile Limited, a subsidiary of Foxconn, have decided that the Sharp brand is apparently theirs to play with, and the result is a number of low-end smartphones aimed at Asian markets. One of these is the Sharp R1 (FS8014), a budget handset introduced in Indonesia in September 2017. And while the name may say Sharp, the phone has considerably more Foxconn in it than anything resembling Sharp's own smartphone engineering.

The Sharp R1 features a 5.2-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 px (HD), covered by 2.5D glass. Sharp FIH Mobile calls the display a "Natural Aqua Screen", because apparently even a budget IPS panel needs a marketing name.

The R1 is equipped with a single rear camera using a 13-megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor with aperture f/2.2, autofocus and HDR. The front-facing camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels. The rear camera can record Full HD video at 30 fps.

This smartphone is powered by a MediaTek MT6737 processor having four cores, each clocked at 1.25 GHz. The amount of RAM is 3 GB and the amount of on-board storage (ROM) is 32 GB. A microSD card slot is also provided, with support for cards of up to 32 GB according to the Indonesian launch specifications.

This smartphone supports radio frequencies in the LTE (incl. VoLTE), 3G, and GSM bands. The phone supports dual-SIM card operation.

Supported are Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi b/g/n at 2.4 GHz. The R1 also has GPS, a fingerprint scanner and a microSD card slot, so at least Foxconn has not forgotten all the basics.

The battery capacity is 4000 mAh. Read that again – four thousand mili-Amper-hours! For a cheap 5.2-inch phone, that's actually rather respectable.

The Sharp R1 runs Android 7.0 Nougat.

The phone comes in Gray and Gold and is offered in Indonesia for Rp1,799,000. It is available through Lazada starting 12 October 2017.

And if all of this sounds vaguely familiar, that's because the R1S (FS8028) follows essentially the same recipe a few months later. The R1S gets a larger 5.5-inch display, a faster octa-core processor, a dual rear camera and an even more ridiculous 5000 mAh battery. In other words, Foxconn takes the R1, makes it bigger, faster and fatter, and calls the result an upgrade. Fair enough.