Toshiba apparently just couldn't resist showing off its new high-end Windows Mobile smartphone in advance of this month's Mobile World Congress. The company's "TG01" (left) is thinner than Apple's Phone, offers a 4.1-inch touchscreen, and has a 1GHz processor, according to reports.
While no official word of the TG01 has yet appeared on any Toshiba website, the device received a surprise unveiling this morning at a London press conference, where company executives reportedly showed off a pair of pre-production prototypes, one white and one black, as shown below. The TG01 will be the world's-fastest smartphone, and will "revolutionize the mobile entertainment world," the company is said to have claimed.
Toshiba's TG01 comes in white and black, with a 4.1-inch display (Click to enlarge)
The TG01 is apparently one of the first smartphones to use Qualcomm's "Snapdragon" QSD8250 chipset, which provides the device with an ARM CPU clocked at 1GHz, plus a 600MHz DSP (digital signal processor). The platform offers an integral GPS receiver, day-long battery life, HD video playback, and support for cameras up to 12 megapixels, according to Qualcomm. (For more information, see our previous coverage, here.)
While the TG01 "only" has a 3.2-megapixel camera, the phone does reportedly support all of Snapdragon's other high-end capabilities, including HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) connectivity, WiFi, and Bluetooth. Toshiba didn't say how much memory the TG01 will come with, but the device will include a microSD slot capable of accepting up to 32GB of storage, reports say.
Touted as leveraging Toshiba's HDTV technologies, including color matching, dynamic gamma correction, and LCD backlight control, the TG01's 4.1-inch touchscreen display packs 800 x 480 pixels. The device has a screen larger than Apple's iPhone and -- at just 0.38 inches -- is called "significantly" thinner.
The TG01's case reportedly features soft-touch plastic and touch-sensitive controls. Meantime, the device apparently offers a custom user interface atop the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. Thanks to a built-in accelerometer, the phone can respond to gestures -- calls may be answered or ended by shaking the phone, for example.
According to a report by the SlashGear website, the TG01 offers a virtual trackpad that can appear onscreen, and allows users to switch applications by tilting the phone from right to left. Settings menus allow further customization, such as lowering the Snapdragon's clock speed to maximize battery life.
Toshiba's TG01 (click to play) Source: SlashGear
Further information
To see further information on Toshiba's TG01, including an additional video and additional pictures, see the SlashGear website, here and here.
Another set of photos can be found at the Pocket-Lint website, here.
Toshiba will apparently provide further details on the TG01 at the Mobile World Congress show, scheduled from Feb. 16 to Feb. 19 in Barcelona. The device will be available during summer 2009, reports say.
