Between sessions here at Mobilebeat 2009 in San Francisco I wandered over to the Qualcomm table. Lookie what I found, the Snapdragon-powered Toshiba TG01 which just went on sale over in the Europe. I'd heard tell of the TG01's mythical powers and that 1GHz processor lurking beneath its touchscreen, but I hadn't before gotten the chance to handle the device myself.
Wow. Thin and fast and wow.
I'm not sold - the TG01 I played with was running Windows Mobile 6.5 and you know how I feel about WinMo (or, if you don't, I hate it). Toshiba's custom UI add-ons for WinMo can't compete with HTC's excellent TouchFlo 3D UI - not even close - so I can't really say that the TG01 provides the best overall WinMo experience on the market today. But ...
For "pure" Windows Mobile experience, the TG01 really impressed me. Granted, I only got to play with the phone for a few minutes, but it's super thin, super fast, and super sexy. Launching apps and moving between media files in photo and music libraries was super quick, and the phone felt great in the hand. I shot a few minutes of video of TG01 in action, and hope to have it online later today or tonight (after the conference).
Qualcomm has made public their plans to work with various partners on both smartphones and "smartbooks" (netbook-like laptops), and a company rep told me that they're working with partners to launch mobile devices running more than one software platform.
A Snapdragon-powered Android phone? If it looks and acts like TG01, sign me up, thanks.
While there are no plans for Toshiba to launch the TG01 in the US just yet, it's not outside the realm of possibility. Meantime, here are specs for you to drool over:
