14 DAY TRIAL // Japan is a very unique place. Think about all the creepy commercials, anime obsession and weird visual-kei bands and you’ll certainly get the idea.
But Japan is also a trend setter. It appears consumers in the country have started losing interest in smartphones and have been flocking to clamshell phones instead.
Catering to the needs of the customers located in the country, Sharp has recently launched a new clamshell model that comes with an interesting feature, as reported by GSM Dome.
The device is actually a mix between a flip phone and a smartphone.
The Aquos K SHF31 handset arrives with a 3.4-inch display with 540 x 960 pixel resolution and runs on a Snapdragon 400 chipset fitted with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD card slot to 32GB).
The flipper lives off a 1,410 mAh battery and runs Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box. It is also offered with LTE. While the Aquos K doesn't sound like a big deal, it does come with a rather unique feature.
The device has physical buttons which allow for touch control (dual control keyboard). That means users can swipe over the keyboard so that they can control the display instead of having to reach and smudge the display all the time.
For example, swiping quickly leftwards over the keys deletes the previous word, while if you slide your thumb over them will advance the cursor in the same direction.
What’s more interesting is that, as far as we know, only the BlackBerry Passport has this feature, but it seems this characteristic has the potential of becoming the norm, at least in some markets.
