Toshiba
TG01

When the TG01 was announced it was considered a huge, verging on ridiculously large phone, albeit noted for its thinness at just 9.9 mm thick. In the launch press release, Toshiba described it as “featuring an enormous 4.1-inch wide-VGA (800×480) touch-screen display”. Toshiba was also keen to underline the fact that it was using “advanced picture-definition technologies taken directly from the company’s acclaimed range of LCD TVs”. The device marked the emergence of a segment of smartphones akin to what was known at the time as mobile Internet devices (MIDs). At that point this product category had struggled to achieve a clear definition and large-screen phones had generated little interest. The iPhone had gone some way to legitimising the concept of a larger touch-screen device, but Apple's device was still very much regarded as a phone, whereas it was felt that going beyond a 3.5-inch screen pushed the concept to the limit. In fact, Toshiba had tested a variety of different screen sizes with mock-up devices including 5-inch and 6-inch variants. However, at the time, a device with a screen of this size was considered awkward and the company concluded that a four-inch screen was the biggest that would be acceptable to consumers. The TG01 was the first phone to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and the first phone to have a 1GHz processor. This enabled “a ground-breaking, super slim device that [was] immensely powerful”. At the time, most mobile phone makers were competing on the basis of the size of the phone’s memory and the number of pixels supported by the camera. Toshiba wanted to shift the focus towards the size of the screen and the phone’s processing power. In both regards it can be considered as a trendsetter. The phone featured Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional which included Internet Explorer Mobile and Outlook Mobile as well as contacts and calendar capabilities. An updated version featuring Windows Mobile 6.5 was launched in September 2009. Toshiba created a custom-built three-dimensional user interface on top of Microsoft’s platform which supported gesture-navigation between different applications. Also, by using an accelerometer various capabilities were added such as answering a call with a simple shake or switching between open applications by tilting the device to the left or right. The TG01 was available in two colours: deep black and vivid white. Toshiba had high hopes for the TG01 describing it as “quite simply the next step in cutting edge mobile technology that will enable us to deliver mobile content at unprecedented levels of speed and quality, and will help to firmly establish Toshiba in EMEA as a leading partner for network operators that want to deliver value-added services and convergence.” Microsoft was Toshiba’s first customer for the TG01. The US software giant purchased 1000 preproduction units at $1000 each. Microsoft used the TG01 as the hardware platform to develop Windows Phone. Unfortunately for Toshiba the Windows Phone software was never been made available on TG01 and the phone remained stuck with Windows Mobile. Toshiba also never managed to migrate its smartphone to Google’s Android platform. Arguably Toshiba was ahead of its time with a large touch-screen smartphone. Phones with screens of more than 6-inches are now commonplace but at the time it was difficult to persuade customers to embrace such a big device. Sadly for Toshiba it struggled to establish itself in Europe and eventually exited the mobile phone business, selling it to Fujitsu in 2011. One notable piece of trivia related to this phone is that its codename, Tsunagi, means connected in Japanese.