Reviews and tests | Toshiba G910 Preview

Just a few years ago the Toshiba company was a notable player on the Windows Mobile market. Once the massive platform reorientation occurred, heading the company towards the telecom market, the company failed to adjust their profile to the new reality. Quitting the niche seemed to be a better option. After a few years have passed, Toshiba strikes back with their G500 smartphone, G900 PDA and a lot of promises to expand their telecom product family further and further. The Japanese manufacturers didn't break their word, and by the beginning of this year a number of very notable Toshiba devices were announced. The first of them to enter retail sale is G910, priced 560.

The fingerprint scanner stands among Toshiba's newest features. Not a breakthrough for the Windows Mobile market, though it's still rarely seen in modern handheld mobile devices. This feature already occurred in G500 and G900, and G910 keeps to the tradition. This doesn't make up for a full-fledged selling point, but still a pleasant addition to a business-aimed model. The business side, obviously, prevails among the functions provided by the new product. Here comes a QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi and the rest of features usually associated with the business class (a standard ensured by Eseries and originally established by Series 80 of Nokia phones). The multimedia side doesn't suffer from the business focus, save for the lack of radio.

Supported networks:	GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS 850/1900/2100, HSDPA, GPRS/EDGE
Operating system:	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
CPU:	Qualcomm MSM 7200, 400 Mhz
Memory:	256 Mb ROM, 128 Mb RAM; microSD slot, no card bundled
Display	Touchscreen, 3", Wide-VGA (800x480), 65K
Connectivity:	USB1.1, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, supports A2DP, Wi-Fi, GPS
Camera:	2 Mp (up to 1600x1200), auto-focusing
Battery:	1320 mAh
Dimensions:	117 x 64 x 19.8 mm
Weight:	183 g
Guiding price:	560 euro (21 000 руб.)

The appearance of G810 is especially remarkable for the plastic pieces disguised as leather. Hardly anything but an extra bit of variety, this nevertheless gives the handset a fresh and original look, invoking associations with Samsung design solutions. The glossy coating covering the rest of the surface also looks good, being of a high quality and not too prone to greasing, quite resistant to physical wear. The high quality of assembly and materials can be easily felt on touch. We found no loose parts, the casing produced but a barely hearable screech on squeezing..

The horizontal slider form factor is quite uncharacteristic of the WM platform, the only analog coming in mind being an ASUS device which will only start selling in May. Besides it's going to be a regular smartphone, not a fully functional PDA an obvious niche solution, a good proof for this statement being the sales volume of Nokia E90 Communicator, despite of the brand's enormous popularity. If we put aside the software platform differences, it is the closest counterpart to our model in question. By the release date the prices of the two will most likely keep on the same level because Nokia had their business flagship's price seriously cut due to the low demand.

The exterior screen of G910, unlike E90 or M910W, is quite small; the active area is but a 20x8 mm square. On top of that, it's just a simple monochrome matrix, only offering a basic level of functionality. The default indicators are time, battery charge, etc. Pressing left brings the contacts menu, pressing right brings call log, schedule, messaging menu, profile menu. The dial button activates an on-screen keyboard. Competitive products like M930W, let alone E90, offer many more possibilities above this basic functionality. The strong side of G910's exterior screen is its high resistance to sunlight, beating any existing TFT screen.

Another improvement seen in G910 is the addition of two columns of touch icons acting as shortcuts to the most frequently used features and applications four of them on either side of the screen. These are Contacts, Messages, Browser, Calendar, Schedule, Back, File Manager and Player. This feature considerably improves the ergonomics of the menu navigation system, saving a lot of button clicks. Each of the icons is large enough to pose no inconvenience to the user. A mechanical counterpart of this feature has been seen around for a good number of times, for instance with the recent ASUS P527. Unfortunately, in our case there is no way to reassign the associated applications the shortcuts are hardcoded into the firmware.

While folded, the PDA suffers from the unavailability of an adequate exterior screen, the small monochrome display hardly going for an excuse. Also, in this state the control options are rather limited for the user. For instance, the single-positioned camera button (despite its auto-focusing support!) becomes inaccessible due to its illogical positioning on the interior panel. So the sole option is to always keep the PDA unfolded while shooting. The camera lens also shares a somewhat awkward position, placed at the back of the main half, so it's quite easy to block it accidentally with the hand. The headset slot is of the brand-specific, irregular type allowing for no third party headphones. The interface slot is separated from the audio socket, utilizing the miniUSB standard. It allows for background battery recharging during phone-to-PC connection, but the Mass Storage mode is not supported. The storage expansion realized via a microSD slot with hot swapping support. Unfortunately, no memory card is included into the sales package.

The device has 256 Mb of ROM and 128 Mb of RAM, the latter being a very generous addition, considering that an Internet Explorer page window usually eats up about 4-5 Mb of memory or 15-20 Mb of memory for four page windows if you use a multi-window browser extension. Windows Mobile itself takes 25 Mb of RAM. 64 Mb would always do, but 128 Mb delivers you of the need to watch over the number of simultaneously running applications. Understanding the importance of multitasking and end user's comfort, Toshiba makes a rule of equipping their PDAs with 128 Mb or RAM, following HTC's good tradition.

G910 uses a Quallcomm MSM 7200 400 Mhz CPU just the same type of CPU with HTC TyTN II (which is in fact an indirect competitor to G910, along with E-TEN glofiish M800). Not the best performing solution around, but quite enough for most applications. CPU optimization works worse than the rival's, resulting in a 25% loss in SPB Benchmark as compared to TyTN II. However we experienced no personal discomfort during our application tests. Even heavyweight videos ran quite smoothly, so the overall performance isn't a downside at all.

As it has already been mentioned, the camera ergonomics stays on a low level, though the camera itself is quite a decent addition to the PDA a 2 Mp, auto-focusing unit. Other companies' flagship PDAs come with more powerful cameras, though it's important to keep in mind that G910 stands among the market's most affordable flagship PDAs. A LED flash of an average power accompanies the camera, proving useful on a rare occasion. The maximum resolution for photos is 1600x1200, quality floating just above the 'satisfactory' mark while videos are rather poor. Also, the camera unit is engaged in an OCR application which besides handling business cards is capable of generic text recognition, proving a useful ally on the paperwork front. This is a unique feature previously unseen in any other handset.

Toshiba's return to the Windows Mobile market effectively stood for an Asian invasion of hi-end screens previously unknown on the European and American markets. G910 uses a 3'' WVGA matrix for a primary screen, which is nowhere near to any of the competing offers. The large diagonal promises G910 a vast popularity with the movie lovers, allowing even for widescreen films to be watched in full comfort. The brightness and view angles are nearly impeccable, the color palette looks very deep for 65K.

The only part of the connectivity side of G910 prone to possible reproach is the mentioned lack of an FM unit, the rest of features are quite numerous. EDGE and 3G are supported as well as 3G networking (HSDPA included). Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 are also in. The availability of GPS is a serious improvement from G900, which was often criticized for the lack thereof. The quality of incoming is signal is improved by the gpsOneXTRA technology. Only USB 1.1 is supported, which is quite disappointing.

The new model is powered by a 1320 mAh battery, displaying average lifetime records. No charge saving optimizations are in, like CPU frequency drop in idle state or anything like that. As a result, a heavy duty cycle wastes the battery about as quick as it would the battery of a TyTN II, but on minimal duty the HTC device lives much longer.

As a result, we get a rather worthy sequel to G900. Not completely deprived of downsides, naturally, but still a very interesting complex solution.. The model is reasonably priced and comes with a rich stuffing. In the QWERTY market segment this makes a nice offer, Toshiba becoming a notable WM market player, strengthening the positions previously conquered by G900. As seen from a higher scale, this success is honestly a very meek contribution to the whole platform scene, since QWERTY PDAs usually sport very average sales, about five or six times as low as the sales volume of candy bar handsets. G810 is seen as the key model in the further advancement of the product line.