Hands on: Toshiba TG02 review

Toshiba TG02
Toshiba's latest Windows Phone runs Windows Mobile 6.5

It's been a big couple of days for Windows Phones, but Windows Mobile 6.5 is still alive and kicking – at least until the Autumn, anyway.

Toshiba has dropped the successor to the TG01 at Mobile World Congress and it's a beefy handset in terms of specs.

The 4.1-inch WVGA touchscreen seems massive when you watch something on the screen, but the phone itself remains pocketable (just).

Touch is now capacitive rather than resistive as on the TG01.

Toshiba tg02

Toshiba tg02

Despite the beef on board, the handset is pretty thin at just 9.9mm. The finish is certainly more impressive than the TG01.

Toshiba tg02

Toshiba tg02

The camera is unfortunately only 3.2 megapixels, however.

Toshiba tg02

Here's the main port - we're never sure about handsets that use these flappy things. After all, surely pushing and pulling a phone out of your pocket all day can't end well for them. The TG02 also doesn't have a headphone jack, which is a bit of a miss these days.

Toshiba tg02

One of our favourite features is the newly designed 3D menu system, which you can rotate around and get an overview of each screen on the handsets.

Toshiba tg02

Toshiba tg02

The phone we played with was pretty quick. There's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz chip inside and you could speedily navigate around the screens.

Toshiba tg02

However, those little Windows Mobile niggles still came to the surface pretty quickly and our demo model also had a problem sorting out its orientation after we moved between screens. Hopefully this will be sorted out but that might take a little bit of Windows Phone 7 loving to achieve. Mind you, it wasn't clear if the TG02 packs the WinMo 6.5.3 update over bog-standard 6.5.

Toshiba tg02

Toshiba tg02

Contributor

Dan (Twitter, Google+) is TechRadar's Former Deputy Editor and is now in charge at our sister site T3.com. Covering all things computing, internet and mobile he's a seasoned regular at major tech shows such as CES, IFA and Mobile World Congress. Dan has also been a tech expert for many outlets including BBC Radio 4, 5Live and the World Service, The Sun and ITV News.