KDDI Toshiba IS02 (Aka TG02) Hits Japan In June

It's not just Sharp's new IS01 that's arriving in Japan sometime this year; carrier KDDI has also announced that it will be offering the Toshiba TG02 as the KDDI Toshiba IS02.  First launched at Mobile World Congress last month, the IS02 is a Windows Mobile 6.5.3 smartphone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 4.1-inch OLED touchscreen; unlike the GSM/UMTS versions demonstrated in Barcelona, however, the KDDI phone will have EVDO Rev.A.

There's also a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, WiFi b/g and Bluetooth.  It'll be interesting to see whether this CDMA version makes it over to North America any faster than its GSM equivalent.

It's not all good news, however.  Akihabara went hands-on with the IS02 (which goes by the name K01 in the US) and found the experience to be distinctly sub-par.  The phone turned out to be unstable and sluggish, and were yet to be optimized for speed.  It seems Toshiba weren't quite ready for KDDI's launch; hopefully the production devices will do better.

Toshiba TG02 demo:

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