Toshiba followed the Windows Mobile crowd with their TG01, giving the super-skinny smartphone a custom GUI that sits on top of the Microsoft OS. The Stripes GUI hasn’t met with quite the degree of welcome that Toshiba maybe expected, however; we’d much rather have this 3D UI that Qualcomm commissioned and was demonstrating back in February.
Video demo after the cut
Toshiba are developing an upscaling system that will improve YouTube video quality when played on the company’s TVs. The unnamed system is currently being worked on in Japan, according to Andy Bass, Toshiba’s UK boss.
A Snapdragon-based Toshiba smartphone has cleared the FCC, but it’s not the TG01 we’re already familiar with. In fact, while Toshiba and the FCC have seemingly used the TG01 for their photoset, the user manual for the device – which is called the Toshiba TM5-E01, though that’s presumed not to be the final product name – suggests it’s considerably thicker and most likely a clamshell handset.
O2 will be the exclusive carrier for the Toshiba TG01 smartphone in Germany, according to a press release today. The TG01 – the launch of which we covered back in February - is the thinnest smartphone to-date, running Windows Mobile on a huge 4.1-inch 800 x 480 touchscreen display.
Toshiba have announced three new Tablet PCs in the company’s Portégé line, all based on the M750 model and offering Intel Core 2 Duo processors, LED backlit displays and standard WiFi a/g/n. The Toshiba Portégé M750-S7211, Portégé M750-S7212 and Portégé M750-S7213 have 2GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB hard-drives (5,400rpm in the case of the S7211, 7,200rpm in the other two versions) and a 12.1-inch XGA display with digital pen input.
Toshiba Japan has announced the first working prototype of a new FeRAM non-volatile RAM, claiming world’s most advanced 128MB chip with combination of performance and density to date that’s capable of an ultra fast read/write speed of 1.6GB per second.
The accomplishment also set a new millstone in non-volatile RAM development by breaking its own record of 32-megabit density and 200-megabit data transfers, pushing performance and density to eight times faster than previous records of any non-volatile RAM.
Toshiba helped us kick off the week with the announcement of their new TG01 Windows Mobile smartphone: on paper it sounds perfect, with a high-res touchscreen, super-skinny body and all the wireless connectivity you could feasibly ask for, as well as being the first device to deliver NVIDIA’s 1GHz Snapdragon chipset. Check out our hands-on photos and video demos, as well as Toshiba’s own GUI demo, and then try and explain to me why I still can’t get as excited about the TG01 as I think I ought to be.
HTC are planning to launch at least one Qualcomm Snapdragon-based mobile device in Q2 2009, according to market sources in Taiwan. The devices are expected hit the market one quarter later than Toshiba’s own Snapdragon-based handset, the TG01, which was announced earlier this week.
The 10-inch Acer Aspire One D150 has cleared the FCC, suggesting a US launch could be imminent. As well as the hardware of the netbook itself – which began showing up for preorder late last week - the FCC have also published the quick-start guide which walks new owners through the ports and connectivity options – WiFi and Bluetooth as standard – of their new machine.
By now you’ve probably seen our live video demo of the Toshiba TG01 from yesterday’s launch – now available in HD, no less – and now it’s the turn of Toshiba themselves to promote what a few more months development will hopefully deliver. The two minute official video shows the custom 3D GUI in action, complete with spinning vertical panes, gestures and that nifty “shake to dismiss” feature.
Official video demo after the cut
SlashGear Japan
