Toshiba plays up video credentials for smartphone debut
Published: 4 February, 2009
READ MORE: Handset
This month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona will see the usual fashion show of new lines from top handset designers, but it will also see more than the usual crop of new entrants to the game. We have already heard of launches by Acer, Garmin, Hyundai and possibly Dell, and now Toshiba is moving across from the laptop world to take advantage of PC/cellphone convergence and the mobile web.
The Japanese firm is launching a Windows Mobile handset, the TG01, running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset, which is geared to mobile internet devices, indicating that the Toshiba product will be positioned as a high performance MID rather than a straight smartphone. Unlike most Windows phones from PC vendors, the TG01 will not be mainly pitched at the enterprise sector, but will take advantage of Toshiba's expertise and brand in television to push a high end consumer media player. The marketing blurb says it will "revolutionize the mobile entertainment world", highlighting its key target application, video.
Like most high end Windows models these days, the TG01 will not run the standard, and still clunky, Windows Mobile user interface, but will instead have a customized UI overlaid. The phone will feature full DivX and Flash compatibility for advanced video performance and versions are expected for major mobile TV standards.
The device is just nine millimetres thick, with a 4.1-inch WVGA touchscreen display, HSPDA connection, Assisted GPS, Wi-Fi and a microSD slot capable of expanding the phone's 512Mb of data to 32Gb. To enhance gaming, it is reported to feature a virtual trackpad on- screen and, instead of an accelerometer, it will have a 'G-sensor' that allows the device to be tilted around a central axis. There is no pricing, carrier or launch date information yet, except that the product will ship in Europe first, this summer.
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