Toshiba Portege G500 Review

Toshiba is a great name in electronics, but isn’t big player on the cellphone market, at least not yet. The manufacturer has a few phones which has been offered on the Asian market, but hasn’t had much success in either Europe or North America, where the situation is very different. It won’t be overstatement if we say that Japanese and South Korean phones have nothing in common with the ones we are using, and that their market is different than the one here.

In February, the manufacturer clearly stated its ambition to take a piece of the European market, by introducing the newly created smartphones from the Portege series, a brand name of one of the portable computer lines. This way Toshiba uses one of the lines many customers are accustomed to, to advertise its phones as pocket-computers with phone capabilities built-in. The first two announced models have similar idea behind them, but are targeted to slightly different groups: both use Windows Mobile but the one is a version for non-touch screens, while the other is bigger and have touch-sensitive display.

The phone we are currently reviewing is the G500, which is the smaller model. It has pocket size, but the advanced functionality of a Windows Mobile Smarphone. Its key features include WiFi support, HSDPA 3G data, large QVGA display and fingerprint sensor.

The retail box includes the phone itself, a charger with detachable cable, stereo headset and miniUSB cable for PC synchronization.