Mobiles2day – Mobile Industry News

Market today is full of different touchscreen phones, everyday new ones come out with better features and cheaper price. One of the attractive deals today in UK market is Toshiba’s TG01. Phone has impressive set of hardware specs, most eye catching being huge 4.1 inch touch sensitive display.

Have a quick glance at specs:

General: 2G Network     GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network     HSDPA 2100
Size: 129 x 70 x 9.9 mm
Weight: 129 g

Display: TFT resistive touchscreen, 256K colors (65K effective)

480 x 800 pixels, 4.1 inches
- Touch-sensitive navigation controls
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
- 3D user interface
- Shake control
Sound:     Alert types     Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic, MP3 ringtones
Speakerphone: Yes
Phonebook: Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records: Practically unlimited
Internal Memory: 256 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
Card slot: microSD, up to 16GB
Data: GPRS     Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
EDGE     Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G     HSDPA, HSUPA
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
Bluetooth: Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
USB: Yes, microUSB
Camera: 3.15 MP, 2048×1536 pixels, autofocus
Features: Videocalling
Video:    Yes, VGA@30fps
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor
Messaging: SMS (threaded view), EMS, MMS, Email
Colors: Black, White
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS support
Java: Yes, MIDP 2.0
- Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF viewer)
- MP3/MP4 player
- Facebook and YouTube apps
- Photo editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Organizer
Battery: Standard battery, Li-Ion 1000 mAh
Stand-by: Up to 276 h
Talk time: Up to 5 h

Phone definately has all the top specs you need from a smartphone, to name a few: 1GHZ Snapdragon processor, large memory, 4.1 inch display, GPS, HSDPA and accelerometer. Phone is very slim and easily fits in shirt pocket. You would think that this kind of device would cost you dearly, but currently there is a deal at Orange shops where you can get this on Pay as You Go for only £149.99 with £10 top-up. That is very good value for money, especially if you want to use the device for internet surfing and watching videos on the move.

On the other hand, there are few drawbacks that I think worth mentioning. Device runs on Windows 6.5, although much improved, still not the best mobile operating system. Also screen is resistive touchscreen, which means not very responsive to finger touch, but you will be ok using nails or stylus. Headphone jack is only micro USB, but there is an adapter to 3.5 mm bundled in the box.

Offer for this phone is only available from Orange shops or online, so if you are looking for inexpensive large screen phone, get your Toshiba while stocks last!

To all HTC Touch Diamond owners, there is a ROM update available on HTC website:

Improved Functions and Fixes:

1. When you launch the Camera while the system is working on other programs, the preview screen may become black.

2. When playing a video, sometimes a portion of the video will be cut off a little bit.

3. Fixes Audio playback problem with the speaker. Specific issues: sometimes the music will turn off and on after 10 minutes, or there is a buzzing sound or no sound at all.

4. Fixes the problem of not being able to receive MMS when in standby mode.

5. When launching music via the Music tab on TouchFLO 3D, the sound may intermittently turn off for a second and come back on.

HTC support site gives instructions on how to apply the update. Please remember to backup your data before the update, you will need to re-install additional applications that you might have been using before install.

Skyfire browser which brings mobile web experience very close to desktop-like experience is now available to download for users in UK.

Skyfire was only available to customers in US previously but now you can type in your UK mobile phone number on Skyfire website for over-the-air installs and also you can download the application to your desktop and install to your mobile device. Browser can be installed on devices running Windows mobile or Symbian.

Browsing multimedia rich websites on Skyfire is absolute pleasure, you can watch embedded flash videos or Silverlight content. Websites appear exactly as they would on desktop browser. We have tested popular video sharing websites like Youtube, ESPN and Vimeo, videos play without any problems.

Skyfire browser experience is client-server based, so before you see your website on your mobile device, Skyfire server does some processing of websites before sending them to your phone. Because of this, BBC iPlayer videos do not play, because BBC website identifies you as a non-UK visitor.

Otherwise browser works well, apart from occasional hickups. Download, try it for yourself and share your experience with us!

HD is one of the latest additions by HTC to it’s touch line of handsets. Phone has huge screen and fully touch driven. It is now available from expansys.com. Screen is enormous, 3.8-inch TFT-LCD with 480 x 800 WVGA resolution, which is larger that 3.5 inch screen on iPhone!

Phone is not cheap, as you can see, you will need to dig out £524.99 out of your pocket for this device!

If you want this device subsidized by network carrier, then you will have to wait till Orange starts selling, which is exclusive carrier of this handset.

Recently announced device HTC Touch HD will be available in UK exclusively on Orange network. Press release on Orange website mentions that device will be available early Novermber 2008.

Touch HD is another multimedia focused device that has huge 3.8″ screen and driven by touch interface.Device is powered by Windows mobile 6.1 and has HTC TouchFLO 3D user interface.

The HTC Touch HD is exclusive on the Orange UK network until 2009 from £79.99 on an 18 month, £40 per month contact. Orange offers internet browsing up to mobile internet browsing up to 250Mb per month, which is very low in comparison to 3GB  of data that other providers offer. Orange should revamp it’s data tariff, because there is no point of having this multimedia device with such low data allowance.

Here is quick specification sheet for this handset:

• Size: 115 x 62.8 x 12 mm
• Weight: 146.4 grams/5.164 oz with battery
• Connectivity: Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHzWCDMA / HSPA: 900/2100MHz.
• Software/Operating system: HTC TouchFLO 3D with Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 3.8 inch Wide Screen VGA screen (480 x 800 WVGA)
• Camera: 5.0 megapixel with auto focus – Second Camera: VGA
• Internal memory: 512 MB flash; 288 MB RAM
• Memory card: microSD^TM memory card (SDHC^TM capable)
• WLAN: 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth®: 2.0 with EDR
• GPS: GPS/AGPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSB^TM (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
• Battery: 1350 mAh
• Talk time: WCDMA: Up to 390 minutes*** / GSM: Up to 310 minutes***
• Standby time: WCDMA: Up to 450 hours*** / GSM: Up to 390 hours***
• Chipset: Qualcomm® MSM7201a^TM 528 MHz

Good device consideration is that Touch HD has 3.5mm headphone jack, so you can use your own headphones for the best possible sound quality!

Via Orange Press Release