DOREGAMA

Hands-On Toshiba Portege G910 Review
Toshiba Portege G910 Overview
The Toshiba Portege G910 is a smartphone that Toshiba would like you to think of as a mini-laptop. It looks good, with a kind of dull silver and faux-leather exterior, and it's extremely light (just 183g). Lighter, in fact, than the Nokia E90, which I'll be using as a reference point throughout this review. It's also smaller than the E90, but as you'll see later, this isn't necessarily a good thing.

The Toshiba Portege G910's main features
We used to call smartphones PDAs, but since they've added the ability to make calls, they've suddenly become smartphones. Given that the Toshiba G910 has tri-band GMS, HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0, USB and Infra-Red connectivity, I think we can definitely make the case that it's a smartphone, as it should connect to virtually anything!

Also included with the G910 is the following:
internal GPS receiver,
2 megapixel camera with auto-focus,
MP3 player,
video recorder and player,
Windows Pocket Office
800 x 480 pixels (Wide-VGA), 65k colour TFT screen
Biometric fingerprint scanner.
In short, this is one meaty smartphone that should - in theory - be capable of doing pretty much anything. Question is, can it live up to its specification?
Toshiba Portege G910 Review - Exterior
The Portege G910's Keyboard
First up is the keyboard. Open the device, and the QWERTY keys are revealed, together with the large WVGA screen. The keys on the keyboard are big enough, and typing messages is nice and straightforward. However, it does take a bit of getting used to, particularly after using the E90's keyboard. With the E90, each key is smaller, but that provides more space for adding extra keys, such as those for numbers, space, cap-lock and tab - in other words, just like you'd expect from a normal keyboard.

With the G910, though, you only get the QWERTY keys and one or two extras - numbers, colons, semi-colons, dashes, etc., must all be accessed by holding down the function key at the bottom left of the keyboard. I'm sure you'd get used to this after time, but I found it almost claustrophobic.

I had a brief conversation on Instant Messenger, where colons and brackets are rather necessary for emoticons, but having to first of all hunt for the colon key (it's on the D key) and then remember to press the function key while hitting it, did rather make me lose the flow of the conversation somewhat!

Worse, the exclamation mark and question mark are so close to the function key that needs to be pressed to use them, you need fingers as long and as dextrous as a concert-pianist's (or a 12-year old PlayStation-playing yoof!) in order to use them as speedily as you like. Not so bad for emails, perhaps, but annoyingly inconvenient for Instant Messaging.

Eventually I gave up and carried on the conversation on my PC. Like I say, this could be just because I'm not used to the G910's keyboard yet, but even after this limited use, I do find the E90's keyboard to be much easier to use.
The G910's Screen
The G910 comes with a large WVGA tft screen capable of displaying 65,000 colours on its 800 x 480 pixel display. This is a good resolution for a smartphone, as it means that ext can be rendered in pin-sharp detail, even if it's relatively small. It's not quite the average width of a Web page (1,024 pixels wide), which can be a problem when using the Web browser (see below), but for all purposes, it's more than good enough.

Early Motorola Canary and Capri review
Motorola will soon be releasing replacements for the RAZR and SLVR. Currently known as the Motorola Canary and Capri respectively, the new mobile phones are still under development, and haven't even been announced by Motorola yet. That hasn't stopped BengalBoy, though, who not only managed to get his hands on this pair of phones, he's even reviewed them! Way to go BengalBoy!!

More details and pictures of the Motorola Canary and Capri after the jump.


Motorola Canary and Capri review

So what can we expect from the new Motorola phones? Well, a new form factor, case materials and a camera flash, and er...that's about it! Both come with a 2 megapixel camera and video capture at 352×288, and the Capri comes with a real camera flash. The Canary comes with a clamshell form factor whilst the Capri is a new slider design from Motorola.
Disappointingly, all the hardware and internal gubbins are identical to the current generation RAZR and SLVR. This makes reviewing these phones surprisingly easy: simply read a review for a current RAZR or SLVR, and there you have it! Apparently the Capri is 'beefy' and has the better looking keypad, whilst the Canary looks the biz from the outside but its screen is prone to fingerprints.
Rather than seeing these phones as the 'next' RAZR and SLVR, we should really see them as an updated version of the existing models. Motorola have been talking up next year's Motorola SCPL as the real RAZR2, so even Motorola is perhaps seeing the Canary as RAZR 1.5. Disappointing, as the RAZR's really showing its age now; at least a new form factor is better than simply repainting the existing RAZR, I guess, but it does show a chronic lack of imagination from Motorola.

No news on when the Motorola Canary and Capri will be released (or even announced), but it should be later in 2006 (at least it should if Motorola want to sell any of these phones!)

Labels: mobile phones