Sharp GX30

Sharp GX30The Sharp GX30 is the heir to the reasonably successful GX line that started with the GX10. Sharp built on the GX10 to give us the GX20 and GX22, two handsets that offered displays unmatched by anything else on the market, and also offered the best quality VGA camera to be found at the time. Now Sharp is trying to up the ante by introducing the GX30. Think of it as a GX22 with a 1 megapixel camera and Bluetooth. Sounds good, doesn't it?

The shape of things

The GX30 looks much like the earlier models in Sharp's GX line. It is not particularly small, and weighs just shy of 111g. The body and design are relatively simple, but still attractive. It is accented with a chrome strip around the outer edge of the upper half of the folder, and with a chrome mirror that surrounds the camera lens and the speaker. The mirror allows you to line up self-portraits while still looking like a normal part of the design aesthetic. Sandwiched between the mirror and the external sub-display is the LED assist light. The camera's macro mode slider switch is on the right side of the upper half of the folder.

The remainder of the exterior surfaces are relatively simple. The left side of the base has a rocker control for volume, the right side houses the audio/headset jack. Next to the 2.5mm jack is the cover for the SD memory card slot. The memory card cover is attached by a rubber hinge. The hinge seems long enough to not get too stressed by repeated opening and closing. The bottom of the phone is where you will find the power/cable port. A gray plastic cover keeps that hidden when not in use, and the cover is also attached to the phone so that you can't lose it. You'll find a stub antenna on the top left of the handset (next to the IR port), and a typical battery compartment cover on the back. Nothing too crazy.

On the inside, we find a rather nice and spacious keypad. In fact, I'm really quite fond of all of the controls on the interior of the phone. The d-pad is very easy to use and not prone to false movements when using the center button to select things. The softkeys are located above the start and end call buttons, and a dedicated camera button is located below the d-pad. I'm a bit surprised that the camera button is not located on the outside of the handset, though.

Lights, camera, action!

The GX30's big appeal for most people is going to be its multimedia capabilities. It can do most everything: 262k color display, 32 voice polyphonics, video clip recording, 858x1144 resolution photos, an MP3 player, and even a SD/MMC memory card slot to augment the 6MB of internally available storage. That's a lot of oompf for one device.

Let's start off with the display. The GX30's 262k color, 240x320 resolution display is the best available in a mobile phone today. It is so impressive that you really have to see it to believe it. In fact, the lines and details on the images are so fine that even my Canon EOS 10d has trouble dealing with them, so when you look at the screen shots in the gallery at the end of this story, remember that the actual display is far better in person - if you can believe that.

While the GX30 has a fairly typical 32 voice polyphonic system, it is its large external speaker that makes the difference. The speaker's grill is located next to the camera lens on the top half of the folder, which is far better than being located on the back of the phone, as is common. Sadly, the speaker doesn't get used to its full potential since the GX30 has no hands free speakerphone support, which is a real shame.

The high point of the GX30 for many will be the new megapixel camera. The camera can shoot at 5 different resolutions: 858x1144, 768x1024, 480x640, 240x320, and 120x160. There are two quality settings, normal and fine (all samples were shot with fine in this story). The camera has a self-timer that can be quite useful when you consider that the GX30's hinge allows you to position the folder at just about any angle you wish, allowing for easy table top photography. Image brightness can be adjusted with the d-pad controller, as can the zoom amount. Sharp is to be commended for implementing a digital zoom that makes sense. You can not zoom at the two highest resolution modes, but you can at the rest. The zoom is real when used this way, no pixel resampling and associated loss of detail. Sharp makes full use of the large sensor size here.

 

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