Tech Phone

Orange announced that it will offer the TG01 across the UK starting tomorrow, July 10, for free on select plans. Already on sale with Orange France, the UK version of the handset will be priced from free with a £39.15 ($63) 24-month contract with unlimited on-device browsing.
Orange’s Toshiba TG01 is the first phone using Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and it pairs it with a huge 4.1-inch QVGA touchscreen running an Orange-customized version of Toshiba’s own UI. Underneath there’s Windows Mobile 6.1 together with WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS.Part of Orange’s Signature Series, Toshiba TG01 features quick links and shortcuts to Orange TV & Video, Orange Maps and Orange World.

Orange announced that it will offer the TG01 across the UK starting tomorrow, July 10, for free on select plans. Already on sale with Orange France, the UK version of the handset will be priced from free with a £39.15 ($63) 24-month contract with unlimited on-device browsing.
Orange’s Toshiba TG01 is the first phone using Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor, and it pairs it with a huge 4.1-inch QVGA touchscreen running an Orange-customized version of Toshiba’s own UI. Underneath there’s Windows Mobile 6.1 together with WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS.Part of Orange’s Signature Series, Toshiba TG01 features quick links and shortcuts to Orange TV & Video, Orange Maps and Orange World.

Toshiba’s Biblio is touted as an e-book reader. Instead of an electronic paper display like ones found in established e-book readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle, the biblio makes do with a traditional 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen with an extra-long 480×960 resolution. The advantage here is that the Biblio can render crisp color images rather than grayscale, but the e-ink display is more battery friendly and is said to cause less eye strain.

It features 7GB of user-accessible storage on board for books, and also has a slide-out dynamic keyboard that can display a numeric pad in the portrait orientation or full QWERTY in landscape. Books and other content can be downloaded thanks to a Wi-Fi connection. Opera Mobile 9.5 browser is preloaded onto the handset, which includes YouTube and Flash support, as well as AJAX scripting. Moreover it has a 5.1Mpix camera module, and an electronic dictionary module.

Sadly, there’s no word on pricing or availability for the device.

Two giant carriers Spain’s Telefónica and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo will debut Toshiba TG01 Windows Mobile Phone in Japanese and Spanish market starting June 2009, respectively. The Japanese version, called PRO T-01A, will arrive sometime in June, while Spain will get the TG01 in July. This high-end smartphone offers a huge 4.1-inch WVGA touchscreen display, a Qualcomm 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, Windows Mobile 6.1 OS (upgradeable to 6.5), 3.15MP camera with autofocus,a 3D user interface, Wi-Fi, GPS and a microSD card slot. Pricing info is still unknown at the moment. In addition, both companies are also planning to collaborate for developing “possible services and applications for open OS handsets.”

was going to get a couple of equally powerful siblings to join it in the market; the TG02 and the TG03. Well, now, thanks to Handspreca Mobile, we have some pics of these two new wonder-phones.

Not only that, but we have some new specs to ogle over, especially on the Toshiba TG03, since it looks… hmmm, what’s phrase… proper mint!

However, let’s look at the TG02, first, since it looks basically the same as the Toshiba TG01. Same Snapdragon processor, same 4.1 inch screen, same camera… BUT, the TG02’s also water-resistant. It looks like it manages that by having a rubberised shell (at least, if the blue bit round the screen is rubber), and let’s face it, water-resistance on a 9.9mm thick phone that’s more powerful than any other Windows Mobile device on Earth is pretty damn cool…

However, it’s with the Toshiba TG03 that things get more exciting. It’s still got the Snapdragon processor, it’s still got the 4.1 inch screen, but the camera’s been upped to 5 megapixels. Oh, and although that image that’s popped up of it is clearly a render and not a photo, if they keep that apparently metal-cased design, it looks stunning.

The best bit, though, is video, since it has two things that really make it stand out (if this rumour is accurate): video streaming from a PC it’s connected to, and best of all, Dolby 5.1 sound built in.

You’d never guess Toshiba make top-end TVs as well, would ya…

-Toshiba P10, S10 pocket camcorders

Toshiba TG01, probably one of the nicest Windows Mobile smartphones of 2009, will be exclusively launched in Germany by O2.

This way, O2 will offer an excellent alternative to the iPhone 3G, which can be bought by German customers only via T-Mobile. In fact, Toshiba’s handset outruns the iPhone in about all the departments, and it’s even thinner, being only 9.9 millimeters thick.

O2 Germany will sell the TG01 starting this summer (no exact release date was given), for a price that will be announced later this year.

As a reminder, the features of Toshiba TG01 include:

• 4.1 inch TFT touchscreen display with 480 x 800 pixels
• Accelerometer
• Quad-band GSM and HSDPA connectivity
• GPS
• Wi-Fi
• Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD2850 processor at 1 GHz
• 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM
• 3.2MP camera with autofocus

For a better look at it, you can check out our Toshiba TG01 video preview from MWC 2009.

Details about the availability of TG01 in other countries are currently missing, but the handset will probably be on sale across Europe in the next few months.

This year’s Toshiba flagship – TG01 was one of the more impressive phones presented at MWC Barcelona.

There were no other new Toshiba handsets there, so I assumed that there won’t be any other handset launched soon.

And when I saw saw some Toshiba device pass through FCC today, I assumed that this was TG01.

Heck, the pictures included in FCC application are Toshiba TG01:

But the user manual says that the handset approved by FCC isn’t TG01. According to the manual it’s Toshiba TM5-E01 (which is probably it’s FCC code and not the real model number).

And the specs described there tell the story of a very different smartphone . The dimensions are wrong (117x 64×19.8mm instead of 129 x 70 x 9.9 mm), display size is wrong (3” instead of 4.1”) and Toshiba TM5 has the secondary 0.8” 96×39px black and white OLED LCD, so it’s probably a clamshell.

These details make me be believe that Toshiba indeed has another 1GHz Snapdragon based Touchscreen phone in the works, only this time in a clamshell form factor. And they have submitted the wrong set of pictures to the FCC.

Full specifications of Toshiba TM5 – E01 include:

• Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900), UMTS2100 connectivity
• QSD8250 CPU, 256 MB of RAM, 512MB ROM
• Windows Mobile 6 Professional OS
• 3” 800×480 WVGA 65K color touchscreen display
• 0.8” 96×39 B&W OLED LCD
• Camera (unknown resolution)
• Built-in Wi-Fi
• A-GPS
• Bluetooth 2.0 +EDRm miniUSB
• microSD memory card slot
• Dimensions: 117x 64×19.8mm
• Weight: 183g

That’s about it for now. We’ll be looking for more info on this new Toshiba handset, so stay tuned.

O2 Germany announced they will be the exclusive carrier for the upcoming 1Ghz Toshiba TG01. It will also be one of the thinnest phones at only 9.9 thickness. In case you missed the specifications earlier, the TG01 will have a 4.1-inch touch screen display, a Toshiba-developed 3D user interface, HSDPA, HSUPA, EDGE, GPS and A-GPS

The TG01 packs amongst other features, gesture control. Incoming calls can be by shaking the phone are accepted. Between open applications, the user navigates through the TG01 tilt left or right. The complete control is achieved with only one hand.

O2 Germany will out the Toshiba TG01 sometime this summer. For a better look at it, you can check out our Toshiba TG01 video preview from MWC 2009

Qualcomm has finally made it to market with its heralded system-on-chip Snapdragon chipset. The Toshiba (OTCPK: TOSBF) TG01 has just been announced as the iPhone-trumping Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone packing a 1Ghz Snapdragon QSD2850 in an impressively slim and stylishly curved 9.9mm-thick package. The Toshiba TG01 features a 4.1-inch WVGA resistive (pressure-sensitive) touchscreen display with 800 x 480 resolution that should give even the monster-display on the HTC Touch HD. And, with a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900Mhz) GSM radio, 3G (HSPA) data connectivity, WiFi, microSDHC card slot (up to 32GB) and A-GPS rounding out the feature set, the Toshiba TG01 proves to be a real powerhouse of a smartphone.

The Toshiba TG01's Snapdragon chipset, with a dual-core processor that crams a 1Ghz ARM core next to a 600Mhz DSP core, should make quick work of near-HD video encoding and playback. The display features the color matching, dynamic gamma correction and LCD backlight control technologies that we're used to seeing in Toshiba's HDTVs, lending to the TG01's multimedia prowess.

The TG01 employs a customized GUI (graphical user interface) that rides atop Windows Mobile 6.1 much like HTC's TouchFLO 3D UI. The TG01's home-brew UI is intended for one-handed use and relies heavily on the same sideways-sliding finger inputs that have been so popular with the iPhone OS and HTC TouchFLO 3D UI. Unfortunately, the resistive touchscreen gets low marks from Slashgear for its gaming potential, or lack thereof.

The Toshiba TG01 should give Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) some serious competition for the multimedia throne that the iPhone has so deftly captured. The blazing 1Ghz processor complemented with 600Mhz of dedicated DSP processing power endows the TG01 with laptop-like computing power that will likely have the folks in Cupertino rethinking their iPhone strategy.

We'll be looking forward to getting some face-time with the Toshiba TG01 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, stay tuned!

Take a look at the video for a look at the Toshiba TG01's GUI in action.

Toshiba isn't a newbie when it comes to making mobile phones though its availability is just limited to Japan only. However, that is about to change as 2009 is the year they're finally joining the globally mobile phone market with the launching of the Toshiba TG01 touchscreen phone.

The Toshiba TG01 is the first phone to feature a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor which will no doubt help make it one of the speedier phones in the market. It also boasts of a large 4.1-inch WVGA touchscreen (the largest to date) display, WiFi, HSDPA, GPS, and runs Windows Mobile 3.1 with a Toshiba 3D user interface. It will come with a camera though no specific details were disclosed just yet as to its megapixel rating. Measuring it at a mere 9.9mm in thickness, this has got to be the slimmest touchscreen phone to date.

Here's a video of the Toshiba TG01 live in action:

We'll probably get more details as to how much, when it will be released, and what other goodies it'll come with at the World Mobile Congress where it will most likely make an appearance. Nonetheless, this early on, the Toshiba TG01 phone looks to be quite promising, and if priced just right, this has the makings of a future best-seller.