MWC 2009: Live Report

After the G500 and G900 which we reviewed in the middle of 2007, the electronic giant Toshiba didn’t release any interesting phones. This changes now, after the TG01 was announced. It is a powerful Windows Mobile smartphone, the World’s first to use Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, with 1GHz fast processor. Yeah, now that is a fast WM phone! Opening the start menu, the programs, the contacts, messaging – everything happens instantly! However, the first thing that one notices in the phone is not how fast it reacts, but how big it is. Big is diminutive, it is huge but is very slim (0.39”/9.9mm) and light weight. In addition we do not really blame it for its size, as its display is huge as well – 4.1” unit with WVGA (480x800 pixels) resolution. It has very good sensitivity, pressing and swiping is great.

Toshiba didn’t really give their best to personalize the interface. What is added is a custom home screen and that’s all. Honestly, we are not impressed by it: it doesn’t look easy to use, isn’t pretty and unlike the rest of the system, doesn’t run smooth. So what is good in it? Check out our video hands-on to see what we mean. We like that the Core Player is added though – it is the best video player for Windows Mobile and although it looks ugly, we really like it because it can play DivX, Xvid, MKV and other video files. We really want to test TG01, it has good display and with such processor we guess it may be able to play HD videos! Another key feature is the presence of Flash in the Internet Explorer. We loaded our page and were able to play YouTube videos directly. Unfortunately, the browser lagged, but we guess this will change with final units.

We like how powerful the TG01 is. We hope Toshiba will improve its interface before it comes out and it may turn out to be a great, although big, smart phone.

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