The TG01 has not arrived on the smartphone market without a few weighty arguments in its favour: first touch phone with a 4.1 inch resistive screen and a 1 GHz processor for more processing power. This doesn’t make it any the less thin.

Using Windows Mobile 6.1 and with all the features now standard for this type of device, the TG01 does nevertheless stand out from the crowd. When you look at it, you immediately start measuring it up for internet use and large format videos... for multimedia use. So does the TG01 come through on the promise? Has Toshiba managed to render Windows Mobile 6.1 unobtrusive?

An unusual but balanced physique

Atypical is certainly an adjective that well describes the TG01. "Enormous!", "What is this slab?!" and "I love how thin it is!", are also some remarks you might hear in its vicinity. Although you can’t say that it’s compact, because of its girth, it is extremely thin and you have to admit it does handle nicely. Its weight (just 129g) for such a large phone also contributes to the balanced feel.


A slightly overdeveloped touch screen

When the TG01 was shown off for the first time in Barcelona, the product manager partly justified the 1 GHz processor by saying that the in-house layer of software would marry Windows Mobile very smoothly to give great fluidity and that together they would ensure against any crashing or slowdowns. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Far from it.


The Toshiba dressing (supposed to offer users an interface that is nicer on the eye than Windows Mobile 6.1 – remember this OS is not at all adapted to touch screens and is rather heavy for the machine) is very, very  light.

The extra software layer shows itself in the form of several panels, each of which handles a different universe (multimedia, messaging, tools…). Once the application has been chosen, you find yourself, guess where? Yup, you got it… in the old Microsoft interface with its entirely out-of-date functionality that is very far from the current competition offer (cf the HTC interface developed for the Diamond 2, for example). This makes use of the stylus – that we would love to consign to history – almost unavoidable.

With an accelerometer (portrait to landscape, shake the phone to answer a call), the phone sometimes decides to move from one display to another all on its own! Add to this the odd crash: untimely quitting of an application, impossible to open another one or screen freezing due to lack of memory (!). What should we make of these blips, these moments of tiredness to which the TG01 is subject from time to time?

What’s going on with the famous ultra-powerful Snapdragon processor then (around twice the processing power of the competition)? Applications load very fast. But the processor does everything, all on its own, and perhaps that’s the problem. This might well be the reason for all the bugs we’ve noted above. Fast processing is great but not enough on its own.

Here’s a presentation of the TG01 on video, note the extremely long start-up…


The screen, with an 800 x 480 pixel resolution, isn’t great as a display. The angles of vision are slight and the contrast not very flattering. We are light years from the AMOLED screen (that you’ll see on the latest Samsung HDs and the Jet) and even compared to other LCDs (the HTC Touch HD), the TG01 leaves something to be desired. Moreover, you’ll have to forget about the automatic backlighting feature: it makes the whole device bug (the brightness of the screen is totally random).

How about the multimedia functionality?

With such a large screen (with an 800x480 resolution) you’d expect navigating on the web to result in a nice experience. And this is so. Internet Explorer comes as standard with several levels of zoom and Flash support. Note that on several occasions we got an error message telling us that Flash wouldn’t work.


IE is not the most convincing web navigator for mobiles – the design functionality is not ideal – but you’ll be able to install Opera 9.5 no problem (without Flash support). All the same, the internet experience on the Samsung Player HD was more convincing.

As a camera, the TG01 is equipped with a 3.2 Mpixel sensor. This is ok if you’ve nothing else to hand. The images aren’t bad – fine for internet posting – but other aspects are problematic. Focussing isn’t fast and menu navigation far too slow. If you’ve got big fingers, you’ll need the stylus.




The TG01 records video in mp4 format (3 Gp). The TG01 uses the Windows Media Player and also has the CorePlayer, with which you can view DivXs.



Audio is not exceptional on the TG01, pretty much in the current average. It is also delivered with mediocre headphones and doesn’t have a standard jack but comes with an adaptor. Unfortunately, the quality of this out ain’t what it could be either.

Lastly, battery life, announced as excellent thanks to the 1000 mAh battery built in to such a thin device, is nothing miraculous. It gives a good day of standard use (mails, phone, music, 3G+ internet), which is, we’re sure you’ll agree, the minimum.

In conclusion, what stays with you are, above all, all the bugs that the TG01 suffers. In spite of the mouthwatering tech spec, this smartphone doesn’t come through with the goods. Sure, we can hold out hope, as version 6.5 of Windows Mobile should bring a true touch interface that is nice to look at and practical. In the meantime however, for a general public multimedia device, we’re a long way off what you’d call easy-to-use. Only technophiles, broken in to Windows Mobile use, will appreciate (maybe!) this unusual telephone.