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Toshiba is back with the TG01 – a phone that it hopes will propel it to the forefront of the smartphone market, jostling the iPhone 3GS and HTC Hero out the way in the process.

It plans to do this by creating the largest, thinnest and fastest mobile in the industry, but will that be enough to create an instant hit for Tosh? Let’s take a look through the phone’s inner workings with the Toshiba TG01 review.

The main things that Toshiba is keen to point out are the fact it has the fastest processor around, in the shape of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz processor, and it’s also among the thinnest at under a centimetre. It’s running Windows Mobile 6.1, and all the signs point to a free upgrade when version 6.5 hits in a few months’ time.

But the first thing to note about this phone is the screen. Let’s not beat around the bush here; it’s massive at 4.1 inches. What’s more curious is that Toshiba decided not to stop there – there’s up to two centimetres more border around that screen to extend the phone to a frankly insane 129 x 70 x 9.9 mm chassis size.

In the hand, these dimensions just feel odd. It’s a phone that exceeds anything you’ll have felt before as the screen is the largest seen on a 3G phone. Where the screen extended to the edges of the phone, it could have been a lot more ergonomic, but as it stands, it just feels… very strange.

But thankfully, the gigantic dimensions are somewhat balanced by the light 129g weight and 9.9mm depth, meaning it feels a lot lighter than it looks. It’s also (bizarrely) one of the most pocketable phones, as long as you have deep pockets, so perhaps the chassis size isn’t as much to worry about.

The button layout on the sides of the phone is a little weird, with the power and volume controls down the left hand edge and the camera and micro-USB socket (covered by a hard-to-close flap) on the right.

The front of the device, right at the bottom, features three touch sensitive offerings – the home and back buttons, and the touch sensitive bar that used for dragging up the Free Pad, in a similar way to the Palm Pre and its gesture zone, and for zooming in and out of web pages.

The call and terminate buttons are placed on the touchscreen itself, as well as the softkey options too, and are slightly to small to press easily on the go, although if you stop and make you’re hitting the right place it’s no big deal.

The back of the TG01, featuring the 3.2MP camera without flash at the top, is made of matte plastic, which dare we say it, feels a little flimsy and doesn’t quite fits as snugly to the main chassis as we would have liked, with quite a bit of give.

Overall, the lightness and size of the phone are the first things you notice when picking it up. The buttons are nicely flush to the chassis, and are easy-ish to find and press while still maintaining the minimalist design. It’s not going to be a phone to every customer’s taste, but at least Tosh, having come up with this design, has implemented it well.

Turning the phone on takes quite some time, especially the first time you switch it on. Apart from displaying a Toshiba logo, the TG01 appears to have frozen, and most people who buy it will probably go through a brief period of worry that they have broken it.

The screen, a WVGA resistive effort, is only reasonably responsive, although viewing anything on the screen is clear and pin sharp. Swiping through menus or tapping on a certain icon is a bit of a hit and miss experience however, and certainly not up there in the iPhone 3GS or Palm Pre leagues.

At the top of the phone is an LED designed to let you know when the phone is low on battery (red), a call or text has arrived (blue) and when the phone is in sleep mode (green).

The latter is thoroughly annoying, winking away at you when the phone screen is off, and is rather reminiscent of a Simpsons scene when Homer invents an alarm that goes off in a cacophony every five minutes to let people know everything’s alright.

Thankfully, this can be turned off, where other phones (such as early N-Series Nokias) refused to let you do this, meaning you wanted to break them more and more as the contract wore on.

The power button allows the phone to be turned off (obviously) but also re-activates the screen when turned off and sleep mode is activated (which we can recognise thanks to the green flashing light).

However, for some inexplicable reason the length of time needed to press the power button to exit sleep mode can vary from less than a second to two or three, with no reason for the delay, which is a very annoying situation when you constantly want to check your phone.

We were a little bit confused by the processing speed and the way Toshiba has demonstrated it in the phone. When flipping the phone on its side, there’s a second or two’s wait until it re-orientates itself, and then the whole phone is available in landscape mode, which is pretty awesome.

But the question is: how often would you use a phone exclusively in landscape unless you were to buy a dock (and we’re not sure if they’re available) and connect up a keyboard, using it as a mini PC? It’s a well-executed touch though, and in fairness other screens twist round a lot quicker within phone, although nowhere near as fast as others (especially those from the Android range.)

In the box

Toshiba has provided a whole host of different bits and pieces in the box for the TG01, even including two CDs (Syncing software and User Guide).

There’s a Micro USB charger and 3.5mm headphone adaptor, some instantly upgradeable headphones, and connection lead for the PC and a microUSB to USB adaptor.

Toshiba, despite claims it won’t be needed, has still popped a stylus in the box, and to help boost the TG01 claims of being a media phone, the UK version also gets an 8GB microSD card as well as a normal SD card converter to play said media on other devices too.

Toshiba has elected to stick the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS on the TG01 in a bid to improve functionality and help bridge the gap once more between business and pleasure smartphones. The constant criticism of WinMo 6.1 is its sheer unwillingness to play nice with fingers on touchscreen efforts, but with a 4.1-inch screen to play with we had high hopes of ditching the stylus.

Bad news – you can’t. HTC has almost done a disservice to the Windows Mobile community by skinning it so well on the likes of the HTC Touch Diamond 2 or the HTC Touch Pro2, with the TouchFLO 3D system, that many people might have forgotten how hard it can be to navigate around the Windows Mobile 6.1 on a touchscreen.

But it all comes screaming back when you start poking around the inner workings of the Toshiba TG01.

Toshiba knows the limitations of Windows Mobile 6.1 (as well as the many benefits) so has stuck a 3D strip skin on top. This means eight ’stripes’ on the homescreen covering areas like Applications, Settings and Media, with each able to be flicked up to show a list of icons in that category.

These can be easily customised, as well as re-arranging the order of the stripes, by pressing Menu option at the bottom of the home screen. However, adding icons is a bit of a laborious task, as you need to assign them to different columns and hitting the little thumbnails with a finger is pretty hard, highlighting once again how the TG01 is certainly not a phone for thumb use.

The UK version also features an Orange homescreen too, which looks a lot like the TouchWiz interface on the Samsung range, with a range of widgets down the side (with a similar level of customisation, although they’re more menu shortcuts than widgets that provide a standalone service, like weather updates on the homescreen).

And so begins the problem with using Windows Mobile 6.1 on the Toshiba TG01. It simply does not work smoothly by any stretch of the imagination. What’s more irritating is that during the launch we were told by Toshiba that the normal Windows Mobile 6.1 interface was hidden around two to three menu levels down, which is just a lie.

SMS heads straight there, the calendar is the bog-standard variety, and contacts have that nasty Windows Mobile blocky effect. Even picking programs is a WinMo affair, so where Toshiba have hidden the three layers of skinning is beyond us.

And then you have the problem of even using the OS with a finger (we were also told the TG01 was designed not to be used with stylus is most cases). It’s so difficult to hit links and icons most of the time that even if you loathe the iPhone and all that it stands for, you’ll be wishing you had one in your hand with its easy-to-use swishy touch interface, where you rarely hit the wrong thing on the screen with your clumsy pokings.

SIZE COMPARISON: The Toshiba TG01 compared to an iPhone 3G

It’s so clear that this phone needs Windows Mobile 6.5 on it, and thankfully we hear that it will be available as a free download ’soon’. Some people say the new interface is nothing more than a finger-friendly refresh of the current iteration – but trust us, that’s something that’s sorely needed on phones like this one.

But although Windows Mobile 6.1 is dreadful for the finger, it still brings a lot of functionality to the table. Once you get your head around the navigation and put your favourite icons on the homescreen or the start menu (tiny and hard to press as they may be) the whole thing does run at a superb pace, thanks to the 1GHz Snapdragon processor.

The Orange homescreen is easy to use and looks nice with the cross-head style menu interface, and the stripe system (with the Gadget Zone at the top, giving quick access to information such as new messages and calendar tasks) is fun to play with and a novel idea.

But when you start interacting with the phone on a day to day basis, it simply does not get any more quick to use as you begin to learn the functions – you can only get used to the fact everything is a little bit more difficult to do.

Calling on the Toshiba TG01 is an interesting experience, especially if you don’t have a Bluetooth headset. Call quality is good, although the main thing you have to deal with is the fact you’ve got a huge block of mobile phone pressed to the side of your head, which feels very strange.

The sound is decent enough, and pairing it up with a Bluetooth headset is pretty easy. However, callers sometimes found it hard to hear what we were saying on occasion, although not noticeably so compared to other mobile phones. It was just a little unexpected considering the length of the Toshiba TG01, although it was better than the likes of the iPhone 3GS.

Talking of which, the network reception wasn’t the greatest on the TG01 either, although again it wasn’t that much of a problem. It seemed to struggle to find 3G connectivity, easily defaulting to GPRS too frequently, but is still once again better than the iPhone (at least in the UK) which seems to sometimes be allergic to high speed connectivity.

Calling up the keypad is easy, as you simply need to press the on-screen call button (although once again you’re thrown into Windows Mobile 6.1, with a small and hard to grab drag bar to scroll through the quick contact list).

Hiding the keypad brings up the contact list, although you’ll probably find it easier to use this section should you go through the contacts icon on the homescreen, where the whole list can be accessed through letter groups so you can hop down the list with greater ease.

However, once again the names are small and Windows Mobile 6.1-ified, with simple options (call or text) available having highlighted a name. When adding a contact there’s also the standard editing tools available, such as assigning a picture or a ringtone and a whole host of data fields (we particularly liked the ability to add a Government ID to a contact – crucial).

One cool thing about Windows Mobile contact list is the integration with Google Maps, or more specifically, Latitude. Once installed on the device, there’s an option to Locate in Google Maps, so if you want to quickly find your friend, it’ll fire up the map software.

EXPANDABLE STORAGE: The Toshiba TG01 has a microSD slot above the battery

The problem with the Windows Mobile interface for interacting with contacts is the fact it’s so sparse. Where other phones provide a similar range of contact functionality, the whole thing is presented in a much nicer way, with a much easier way of scrolling through (for instance on the iPhone even though the letters are small you can hit the right area of the list, and the touch response is nice an accurate).

It’s not to say the TG01 necessarily fails in providing easy access to contacts, it just doesn’t excel and leaves you feeling rather flat.

There’s also no forward facing camera (we assume this is because the slim frame is the priority) which we’re not sure is really a bad thing. Not only does the iPhone 3GS not have such a feature

One of the benefits of Windows Mobile is the ease of which messaging is integrated, which is partly why it’s been such a favourite of businesses everywhere, with Microsoft Exchange easily accessed.

Thankfully it’s the same on the TG01, although the interface is very sparse. While activating the Exchange server can be a veritable nightmare should you not be a qualified IT professional, a quick stab around on the internet will yield the right details needed.

We tried to integrate a Google account with the phone, and it was surprisingly easy. The only difficulty came when adding in the domain, as while Exchange will happily search for the settings when you add in your email address, there are still few fields to fill in, and it took some trawling through Google’s help pages to find them.

However, once the problem was surmounted the information flowed easily. There was a weird moment when we thought emails weren’t turning up until we looked at the phone to see that new emails had been received, the phone just wasn’t set to notify when this had happened.

So a quick trawl through four menus later, we were able to poke at the small boxes asking whether we wanted to play a sound and activate vibrate for a new email.

Once again, and we know we keep saying it, the intuition of the Windows Mobile 6.1 is almost non-existent. Whereas other phones will give you such settings straight from the email inbox, the Toshiba TG01 will make you search through a number of settings before letting you actually edit such a simple function.

And unfortunately, messaging isn’t much easier. Writing a new text message is a laborious process (we know we’ve used that word before, but it’s honestly the best way to describe a number of the functions on the TG01) as instead of heading into Messaging and selecting New Message (although there is a shortcut in the Orange homescreen) you have to enter messaging select SMS/MMS, hit Menu, New, New SMS, Menu again, Add Recipient, find said recipient, and then begin typing.

The on-screen keyboard, thanks to a resistive effort possibly, isn’t as accurate as you’d like it to be, especially in portrait mode. You often find yourself resorting to one fingernail to tap out a text, which pales in comparison to the speed at which we can fire off a text with the full QWERTY on the HTC Touch Pro 2.

To be fair, you don’t get a touchscreen phone if you’re after a physical keyboard experience, but the landscape option wasn’t much better, with very little fluency in on screen typing achieved after a long, long time of trying.

The other text input options were laughable at best. The Windows Mobile on screen keyboard is ridiculously small, and the handwriting recognition (which seems cool as you can write anywhere on the screen) is just woefully inaccurate, with us not even managing to write a simple six letter word. (Perhaps it’s because that word was Google).

Overall messaging is functional, but something you really have to get used to. And the second you pick up a friend’s smartphone, such as an Android effort, you’ll realise just how easy it can be.

We’ll warn you now – the Toshiba TG01 uses Internet Explorer Mobile 6, and while this is dubbed a desktop experience on a mobile phone, even the inclusion of Flash Player doesn’t help it achieve such a promise.

The first problem is that despite a speedy loading time (thanks to HSDPA connection and the Snapdragon processor) web pages sometimes lag when you’re trying to scroll around them.

The problem with Internet Explorer Mobile is not just that it’s a bit unintuitive when it comes to the mobile experience (compared to the desktop) it’s that the whole program hasn’t moved on in the face of competition from Opera and Safari.

For instance you need to head into the settings once more (WinMo… grr) and change the default from mobile version to full desktop, as there’s no point in having a screen this large and a processor that powerful if you’re simply going to run a website that can be produced on the screen of a handset like the INQ1.

Browsing to a webpage is fairly quick, as stated before. But when trying to read text, the phone will only let you zoom in so far (using the odd touch strip at the bottom, which judders about rather randomly when doing so).

This means that not only will the screen never lock onto text, it won’t let you get close enough to read it comfortably. When you compare this to the recently released HTC Hero, which will reformat text no matter how close you get to fit the screen, it seems a real shame.

One of the things Toshiba is also crowing about with the TG01 is the addition of Flash on board, and heading over to YouTube shows that this is indeed the case.

However, taking said video fullscreen (the screen doesn’t adequately show it in the browser) and the whole thing grinds to a confused halt. When you imagine the likes of the Archos Internet Tablet range, admittedly not a smartphone, have had Flash integrated with both fullscreen and browser playback for movies, you wonder why a more powerful device can’t do the same with aplomb.

And heading to other sites working with Flash was also a letdown, with a number of times the browser telling us we either didn’t have the latest version of Flash, or the content wasn’t working. Hardly the same as a desktop experience in our eyes.

YOUTUBE FAIL: We couldn’t get YouTube to enter fullscreen on the intermet browser

We tried to fix the problem by adding Opera Mini, but the phone wasn’t really excited by that notion either. While it was improved in the day to day visiting of websites, it still didn’t have the zip and excitement of other mobile browsers.

We’re just waiting for the day Firefox Mobile / Fennec officially arrives for these types of phones, and then we’re going to see a whole new side of WinMo internet browsing.

The camera on the Toshiba TG01 is a 3.2MP effort with no flash to speak of, thanks to the efforts to keep the frame slim. Usually in these cases there are a plethora of photography options onboard, but that’s not the case with the TG01.

There’s the standard photography mode, with a variety of resolution options on offer. There’s also timer mode, for those self-involved snaps, and burst mode, which takes nine shots to apparently capture ‘fast-moving objects’ according to the user guide.

Bizarrely without a flash there’s no night mode to speak of, so the phone simply won’t be any use in low light (although if you’re buying this for the camera plastered to the back we’d have to wonder why).

There’s autofocus on board, activated by the small button at the bottom, although the green square to indicate focus achieved is in the corner rather than the centre which make you believe you can set the focal point. But you can’t.

The video recorder records to either 3GP or MP4 in either QVGA or VGA quality, which is pretty nice and more than enough for a phone of this build. However, pressing the button to start video makes a cacophony of noise (although you can change this in the maze of the settings menu) and takes a few seconds to start up after being pressed – not something we’d expect with a processor of this power.

Even starting the camera using the dedicated button on the side takes a while, which we simply can’t work out. Surely we don’t need to hold it down for around four seconds to activate the camera? Why can’t it just be one? The phone should be locked in the pocket, and there’s very little chance of accidentally starting the program up.

How our Toshiba TG01 camera compares to a fancy Olympus SP-565UZ:

Finally, we get to the media section – surely one of the reasons Toshiba made a phone so big. Well, the good news is that video is definitely watchable on this device – the bad news is it’s not great.

Video

There are bizarrely three different options on the Toshiba TG01 for watching video, with Windows Media Player, Coreplayer and Video Player. Why the need for three is unknown, and it’s very confusing.

We generally chose to use Coreplayer, as it was the most wide-ranging in terms of functionality and certainly the easiest to use. It was a little picky in terms of opening files, as you had to hit the tiny black arrow to open the menu options, and then you have to navigate to the file itself within the phone’s structure.

Heading into fullscreen video mode wasn’t straightforward either, with a number of taps needed on the thumbnail-sized image to blow it up to fill the display (it also pauses it for some reason as well on occasion).

Video was also very dark unless you turned off the auto-brightness options in the settings, with the phone deciding that unless you were in the lightest room in the world you wouldn’t need the full power of the LED backlight.

Not only that, but the glossy screen is not conducive to video watching, unless you want to hold the phone at an angle that catches only a blank ceiling or similar. Otherwise you’ll be forced to part watch yourself looking at a video for the entire duration, and this gets even worse in bright light.

We compared the video playback on the Toshiba TG01’s 4.1-inch LCD screen to that of the Samsung i8910HD’s 3.7-inch OLED effort, and the difference was startling. The OLED, even with auto-dimming switched on, gave a greater contrast ratio, brighter colours and more vivid shapes.

The TG01, by comparison, had a large amount of artefacting going on, especially in the darker areas, and for a phone with such high processing power with a top-level WVGA screen we expected a lot better. And especially given the fact Toshiba says it’s added in its REGZA TV technology, which would have been so improved had an OLED been plugged in there instead.

We know that would raise the cost, but for nearly £450 you’re in the top end area of phone pricing anyway. It is nice to have a dedicated YouTube client within the Coreplayer, but this isn’t as good as those designed for the likes of the iPhone or the HTC range, and was a little basic graphically too.

Dragging and dropping video to the TG01 was the easiest way of getting content on there (the same applies to music as well) as using Windows Media Player to sync first wanted to convert the files, and then failed while doing so.

Music

Given the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack onboard (understandable again, given the depth of the device) listening to music was never going to feel like a seamless experience, although the addition of Windows Media Player helped things along somewhat.

The problem with fitting a 4.1-inch screen on the TG01 is the thing is both long and wide, and therefore the 3.5cm long headphone adaptor made listening to music while carrying the device in the pocket very difficult. In fact it will almost definitely snap at some point in the phone’s lifetime if you carry it around in the pocket often enough.

However, we paired it up with some Bluetooth headphones, Backbeat 906 from Plantronics, and not only was synchronisation easy, the music sounded even better and removed the problem of the connector. The problem was this ate battery life somewhat, but it was worth it to help improve pocketability.

Music quality is good however, although organising a playlist was a little tricky. However, it does bring the basic experience of WMP to the phone, and those familiar with the interface will be navigating around it in no time. However, the options are a little small, so it’s best to use the stylus here.

One big sticking point – if you put the phone in sleep mode to conserve the battery and make sure you don’t hit any keys when in the pocket, the music stops playing. This means you’re forced to lock the phone by holding the up key for three seconds, which is irritating on the go.

Gaming

It’s the first time we’ve come across 3D gaming on a VGA screen, and although we’ve got the normal Solitaire and Bubble Breaker, this time we’re treated to a Need For Speed Undercover demo on the phone as well.

If you imagine a game built for a Windows 98 PC and then ported onto a phone, this would be it. That’s fine, except we played the exact same game on the iPhone and that had graphics to rival a PS2.

Left and right, instead of using the accelerometer, were activated by pressing buttons on the screen, and the blocky graphics were massively uninspiring.

Perhaps there will be better games to make use of the hardware in the future (the Monopoly demo on board wasn’t too bad) but the early efforts aren’t good.

The built in applications on the Toshiba TG01 are of a decent quality, with the usual Windows Mobile suspects all present and correct.

Orange Maps is included on the phone, and after a few times of trying to install it we finally managed to get it up and running. While we liked some of the features on it (such as being able to save our location and search for specific things nearby like restaurants) the graphical layout of the maps was a bit basic, and within a few minutes we were downloading Google Maps, which ran like a dream.

There’s nothing wrong with Orange Maps, we just prefer the familiarity of the Google’s effort.

There’s an interesting way to view your photos in PhotoBase, which basically tiles them all out for you, and makes good use of the processor by allowing you to flick through with minimal lag, which makes us wonder why other parts of the TG01 aren’t similarly enabled.

ActiveSync was also a nice touch (apart from the problems connecting to the Google server, which was more Google’s fault than the TG01’s) and our calendar, contacts and mail was quickly populated by our online Google information.

Video Editing is also possible on the TG01 too, which is a nice thing to see when you’ve got 1GHz of grunt to work with.

While we’ve yet to be convinced of the point of onboard video editing suites for mobile phones, this is one of the better efforts once you’ve poked around the screens to see what you’re able to do. Outputting video and saving it to the memory card was quick, and the effects were pretty good too, with video storyboards and photo interpolation fun to play with.

The application set can also be well supplemented with the plethora of WinMo applications available online, so there’s also a lot of scope for the future to increase the power of the TG01.

Battery life on the TG01 is only middling, which is mostly down (once again) to the efforts to make the device thinner. This has resulted in only a 1000mAh battery being used, which is around 20 per cent to 50 per cent smaller than other smartphones on the market.

The processor obviously takes up a fair whack of battery life, and although you can turn it down to conserve, that kind of takes away from the point of the handset in a way.

Obviously powering the giant touchscreen is difficult too, and once we factored in a good session of internet browsing (which took longer after we kept hitting the wrong section) as well as full brightness video viewing, the battery was nearly empty after around seven to eight hours use.

This is a little shorter than we’re used to, and while we’re obviously going to test the phone to extremes, there will be days when you find you need to keep checking on different things, and you’ll be needing you charger with you in these instances.

BATTERY LIFE: The 1000mAh battery is a little underpowered

Most of the time you’ll get to the end of the day to charge up overnight, which we find necessary with most smartphones, but still the battery life seemed a little short here (and that’s without exhausting it on the media front.)

Organiser

The organisation functions on a WinMo device are famous already, and the same Outlook-style interfaces and ability are present on the Toshiba TG01.

The calendar is obviously functional with easy viewing of all your appointments, although it lacks the gloss and attractiveness of the Palm Pre with the collapsible sections for when your day is without event (you know who you are, you boring types).

Tasks are also easy to add, and although there’s only three viewable on the homescreen, it’s still nice to be able to check them off quickly, although for some reason you can’t interact with the task menu from the ‘Gadget Zone’ (we don’t think we’ll ever be OK with that name).

To be honest, you could spend ages setting up the TG01 to help you sort out your life – from Google and Outlook to the calculator and SIM management software, there’s a lot on here to help you out.

It’s all very basic-looking thanks to beauty of WinMo 6.1, but there’s a lot to come from the 6.5 upgrade (we hope… dear God, do we hope) and the fact the options are there now is a very good sign that the TG01 combined with Windows Mobile 6.5 will be a much more sleek and powerful beast.

The connectivity options on the TG01 are plentiful as you’d expect. To list them quickly, we’ve got Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, which works beautifully with our Backbeat 906’s.

Wi-Fi is also easy to connect up to once you’ve managed to work your way around the plethora of menu options, and seems to automatically connect when the network is detected. However, it’s hard to know what’s working at any one time, as both the HSDPA icon and the Wi-Fi logo flicker about when using the internet, so we have to assume we’re browsing over the latter.

Either way, it’s a fast experience, and if you’ve got an unlimited data plan it doesn’t really matter, so we give internet connection a big thumbs up.

GPS was also a nice touch, with both Orange Maps and Google Maps finding the signal from a satellite in double quick time (and often indoors too), after the horror show of being forced to wait ages with the HTC range. The phone did want to default to a-GPS all too often (which meant a location radius of around 2km) but a little bit of gentle cajoling sorted that out.

As said before, network coverage was slightly patchy; although we’re not sure whether that’s a phone or a network problem. Other countries have been fairly complimentary about the signal reception, so we’ll have to go with the latter on this occasion.

PC connection

Connecting things up to the PC was a pretty good experience as well. Despite initial problems with setting up the Getting Started software on the PC (our version of flash needed to be updated for some reason) the experience was easy, with the phone installing itself and being detected quickly.

The menu may have been a little bit basic, but for most people it’s more than enough. All the majority of people want to do is back up contacts and messages on the PC, perhaps siphon media off the phone, and adjust the phone’s settings.

Well, all those options are present and correct, and while the software isn’t as interactive as that from the likes of Samsung, it’s still nice to look at and simply works (apart from using Windows Media Player to get content on the phone, but it’s much better to simply access the phone in mass storage mode.)

Internet tethering was also was easy to set up from the phone itself, and we found that surfing the net using the phone was a nice experience, albeit a rather large dongle. We preferred to do the latter by Bluetooth in fact, and while it was a bit hit and miss at times in terms of maintaining a connection, the whole thing worked on the whole.

As you can gather, the Toshiba TG01 is a phone that has a few problems to say the least. It’s not the worst phone of the year, but for it to be even thought of as a front runner, it certainly needs a huge amount of work.

We liked

Once you get past the problems of Windows Mobile 6.1 (and that takes a while) the power of the phone is great. Internet connectivity is fast, the phone runs smoothly in most cases, and the whole thing can re-orientate itself to work in landscape mode.

The 8GB card in the box is a nice present from Orange, and the TG01 is very, very pocket friendly given its size (we constantly had to check we actually still had it with us, which we didn’t expect).

It’s not the ugliest device we’ve ever seen either, and for a different phone with business functionality, there are worse.

We disliked

But the problems far outweigh the positives. Speaking to a couple of people playing with the device, they feel the same way – the Windows Mobile 6.1 interface ruins the TG01.

People can talk until they are blue in the face about the power of the OS, but at the end of the day when you have to poke a small tickbox to do something crucial on the phone five times, you’re going to want to throw the phone out of the window.

The little things really mount up as well, with elements like having to wait two seconds to start video recording and Internet Explorer Mobile not being able to zoom in enough to read text.

We could go on and on about the things we don’t like in the phone, and it’s just such a shame as we had such high hopes for the fastest, thinnest and most grandly-screened smartphone on the market. But at the end of the day the decision to use Windows Mobile 6.1 (which CAN be executed well, just ask HTC) has hampered the phone far too much.

TechRadar verdict

As you’ll have noted, the OS is the thing that we dislike the most in this phone – and if a 1GHz processor can’t iron out the problems, nothing can.

We’ll be happy to revisit the Toshiba TG01 in a few months time when it comes with Windows Mobile 6.5, but right now we’re just very disappointed with a missed opportunity.

Like we said, you soon learn the trick to get around the phone where necessary, but there’s no excuse for the ridiculously hard to use internet browser, the sheer amount of menus you have to plough through to do the simplest things (such as write a message) or watching a video.

We’d like to believe that the next iteration of WinMo will fix most of the problems with its finger-friendly interface, but in all honesty we’re not that hopeful.

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