Great expectations precede great disappointments.
And, “on paper at least,” as IT Pro are quick to point out,“the TG01 has all the makings of a smartphone winner.”
Indeed, agree Knowyourmobile, “if success was based purely on how many specs you could fit into a piece of hardware, Toshiba would be grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat.”
Techradar “had such high hopes for the fastest, thinnest and most grandly-screened smartphone on the market.” Nor were they alone. T3 also “had big expectations.”
“On first impressions,” Mobile Choice enthuse, “the TG01 is a lovely machine that while on the large side, has an incredible, high-design aesthetic.” Cnet agree “the TG01 is a beautiful phone,” explaining: “it's quite wide and long at 70mm by 130mm, but it fits easily in a back pocket and it's only 10mm thick.”
The “design is a classy affair,” IT Pro agrees. “A bruiser of a phone,” says iGizmo; “a real pocket hog” according to Pocket-lint, “that,” Techradar adds, “exceeds anything you'll have felt before as the screen is the largest seen on a 3G phone.”
“It’s got a 4.1-inch (800x480 pixel) touchscreen,”Knowyourmobile proclaims, “1GHz Snapdragon processor, microSD slot (up to 32GB), 1000 Li-Ion mAh battery, 3.2-megapixel camera, GPRS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, weighs 129g” – and that means, says Pocket-lint, “on paper it has more processing power at its disposal than any current rivals.”
Yet, confesses Mobile Choice, “it falls short of expectations on almost every front.”
Of course, as Knowyourmobile charitably accepts, “it’s not easy to get things right first time.”
In other words “it’s at this point that the TG01’s Achilles’ heel makes its presence felt,” as iGizmo explains, “and it’s a familiar culprit: Windows Mobile – Microsoft’s notoriously touch-unfriendly OS.”
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As a result “that straining, snarling, beast of a processor seems to have been muzzled and sedated,” continues Pocket-lint. Quite simply “the Windows Mobile 6.1 interface ruins the TG01,” despairs Techradar. It’s “an operating system that should have been put to sleep years ago,” exclaims Cnet, and one, according to T3, that “should never be used with touchscreens.”
In wishing “Toshiba had taken a punt on Android instead,” Cnet speaks for just about everybody.
And that’s a pity because, as Mobile Choice notes, “that 4.1-inch display did stand up to the quality of fellow high-res handsets like the Samsungi8910 HD or LG’s Viewty Smart.”
Indeed, says Knowyourmobile, “the large screen certainly has the wow factor and makes viewing video and pictures a joy.” IT Pro concurs, describing the screen as “marvellous for looking at photos or viewing video, web pages and email.”
Yet, as Techradar wonders, “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.”
Fortunately, Pocket-lint interjected, when “browsing the Internet you start to realise just what a great screen is on offer here, with images looking really impressive.”
But, cautions Techradar, “we'll warn you now – the Toshiba TG01 uses Internet Explorer,” considered by Mobile Choice to be “a very mediocre mobile browser.”
The resistive touchscreen again causes complaint, with Cnet concluding “the on-screen Qwerty keyboard really suffers as a result of the touchscreen's lack of sensitivity, as well as some poor choices concerning the placement of buttons.”
Mobile Choice describe the keyboard as “inefficient,” adding “it’s incredibly slow and fails to keep up with speedy typing, so texting and emailing is extremely frustrating,” while Pocket-lint feel “small irritants like having to switch to a different screen for numbers or special characters make data entry slower than practical.”
The 3.2-megapixel camera that iGizmo thinks “no better than average” has, according to T3, “fewer options than a back-alley burger van.” Techradar even go so far as to suggest that “if you're buying this for the camera plastered to the back we'd have to wonder why.”
Knowyourmobile, IT Pro and Techradar say “calls were of average-to-good quality”, “quite good” and “good” respectively. But “battery life”, opines Techradar, “is only middling.” “It's a charge everyday device,” as far as Pocket-lint is concerned.
The lack of 3.5mm headphone jack, which some might think the least of this phone’s problems, “is the straw that broke our camel’s back” advises Mobile Choice. “Music quality is good however,” as Techradar acknowledges.
The trouble is, and regardless of everything else, “it feels like,” to quote Pocket-lint, “the operating system here just puts the brakes on things.” Because, as iGizmo confesses, “Windows Mobile makes it impossible to recommend.”
“The Toshiba TG01 is a phone that has a few problems to say the least,” adds Techradar, and “falls far below today’s smartphone standards” according to Mobile Choice. Knowyourmobile agree it’s “not going to set the smartphone world on fire” while somewhat more graphically Cnet suggest “like a fit but dumb date, its drawbacks far outweigh its looks.”
Nor is there much hope that Windows Mobile 6.5 will make any significant difference. “From what we've already seen, don't hold your breath,” is the advice of Pocket-lint.
iGizmo “can’t help but wonder if Toshiba is regretting not allying itself with Google’s Android platform, which has key momentum right now and has been shown to work with the Snapdragon chipset.”
Conversely we on Reviews>Reviewed have already asked whether in condemning the TG01, the experts have effectively consigned Windows Mobile to the scrapheap of history.
Either way, it seems Toshiba sadly have missed an opportunity.