Toshiba TG01 deals & review

Very few mobiles phones can be assessed as one monster of a phone and the Toshiba TG01 unmistakably fits the description. With a 4.1-inch Wide VGA screen on a 130 x 79 x 9,9mm touchscreen form, its looks deceptively huge up close.

But turn it on its side, better yet, grab hold of it and instantly, the exceptionally slim 9.9mm profile lets you know you are looking at the probably the slimmest touchscreen smartphone on the face of the earth. 

It’s even lighter than many touchscreens out there with smaller screens at a mere 129g. It slimness gets more pronounced relative to its expansive body that houses the largest touchscreen display short of going netbook. If you have a wide shirt pocket, this is certainly one pocketable “monster.”

The TG01 is a 3G phone on the single band UMTS (2100) with HSDA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2.0 Mbps data connectivity for fast speeds and is also a quad band GSM (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) on the 2G network for a worry-free international roaming on GSM with class 10 GPRS/EDGE speeds of up to 236.8 Kbps.

There’s hotspot surfing support with WiFi 802.11b/g for up to 54 Mbps as well as Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0 for wireless and wired local data transfers and syncing. There’s SatNav functionality with its integrated GPS receiver with A-GPS support.

Display and Multimedia

The large display benefits from a TFT LCD resistive touchscreen with Half VGA resolution and 65k effective colors as constrained by its Windows Mobile OS. It has the usual gravity accelerometer sensor for UI auto rotate viewing convenience as well as shake control that allows you to take a call just be shaking it going from one menu item to the next by tilting. 

Its large screen takes advantage of its Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 1 GHz to run cool graphics and CPU-intensive video files. It’s the first in the industry to use the computing prowess of the Snapdragon to run Windows Mobiles and makes the TG01 one of the most powerful business handset in the market.

With its 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera with video calling and VGA recording at a movie grade 30fps, it is all one of the better camera phones out there.

Multimedia functionality starts with the media playback support for MP3/eAAC+ and WMA audio file formats and MP4/H.264/H.263/WMV and DivX/Flash video files. Unfortunately there’s no FM radio in case you run out of media files to play. 

While there’s a speakerphone, there’s also no industry standard 3.5mm headphone jack so you are forced to listen using its proprietary earphones using the microUSB port or go wireless using the stereo A2DP profile support over Bluetooth.

Memory and other Features

You get a generous 256 MB ROM and 256 MB RAM with phonebook capacity for nearly unlimited contact entries and call records. There’s the usual microSD memory expandability for up to 32 GB, enough to store all your multimedia files and even office files before hitting the road. It’s also a socially aware smartphone with Facebook and YouTube apps for instant updates to your favorite SNS online. 

Its standard Li-Ion battery rated at a mere 1,000mAh as most slim battery go can only deliver up to 5 hours of talk time on 2G and 276 hours on standby. It’s no worse than using the Nokia N95 so don’t count on reaching 5 hours when using the more power hungry GPS.