Wireless News

Out of Toshiba’s G-Series Portégé cellphones, the most unusual was the tri-circular G450; intended to only do duty as an occasional handset, its primary purpose was to provide UMTS/HSDPA cellular broadband to a laptop via its built-in USB connectivity. Crave UK have been playing with one and, for £100 ($194), come away surprisingly impressed. While standard phone functions are made more tricky with the non-traditional keypad layout, it lacks MMS and a camera, and the screen is a compact three-line affair, what it does do it seems to do pretty well.

Really, it’s the HSDPA option that most people will pick the G450 up for; why choose a normal USB data modem that’s only good for surfing the net, when you could have one which also lets you make calls (while surfing in fact) and send trickily-typed text messages.

It’ll be available in the UK at the end of March.

Toshiba has added a new mobile to its G-series line. It’s called the Toshiba Portege G810 and it’s a WinMo smartphone that seems to be headed to Europe only, and not even then until the second quarter.

It has the whole mobile Office suite on it so you can work on the go, it has PUSH email support for quick updates from your corporate address. It has HSDPA and HSUPA, a 3MP cam that can capture both pics and vids with, and a 2.83” QVGA screen to view both on.

It’s a touch screen with an enhanced UI for that purpose, it has integrated GPS and aGPS for navigation and all of this along with an FM Radio, GSM/GPRS/EDGE chipset, Bluetooth, WiFi, and microSD card slot fits into a 14mm thin package. There is a 400MHz Qualcomm processor inside, 256MB of ROM, and 128MB of RAM and a battery that should net you 200 hours of standby and 4 hours of talk time. Sadly, there is no price or availability for this device yet.

Yes, the Vodafone VDA GPS is a smartphone, and yes it there’s Windows Mobile 6 standard on it, as well as WiFi, quad-band, also as the name indicated GPS is also a feature of the VDA, and a definite NO to touchscreen.

The price and available is still unknown and as far as whether Vodafone will offer the VDA to other parts of Europe is still yet to be seen. There’s a big chance that Vodafone and/or Toshiba will be showing of the G710 at Mobile World Congress. I’ll be sure to get some hands-on time for ya’ll.

Some info and pictures of Toshiba Portege G910 and G920 communicators have leaked to the Internet from the FCC materials. The products feature a side opening mechanism, a 3” touchscreen WVGA display and a QWERTY-keyboard.

The Portege G910 and G920 are based on Windows Mobile 6 Professional and work under GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz and UMTS/HSDPA networks. There is also a Bluetooth 2.0 interface, a Wi-Fi b/g module, a 2-megapixel camera and a frontal camera for video calls, and a Li-Ion 1320 mAh battery, says the source. On the top cover we see a navigation wheel, call buttons and a small display.