Product Reviews

Toshiba is better known in the UK for laptops than mobiles, but the company's two latest handsets combine phone and computer technology, running the Windows Mobile operating system. The G500 is a compact model with the smartphone edition of Windows Mobile 5, while the G900 is a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone with a touchscreen and stylus.

Both have slide-out keypads. The G500's numeric slider means the handset can stay compact and yet still have a large screen and full-size number keys. The G900, on the other hand, has a full-size qwerty keyboard which slides out from the side of the phone (see top right). This ambitious feature is better in some ways than others. The keys are large and raised in the centre, so it's hard to hit the wrong one, but the top row of keys is too close to the edge of the screen, which gets in the way of your thumbs. The keypad's special characters are highlighted in green, and can be hard to see.

Both phones feel well made, but the shiny plastic backs aren't particularly comfortable to hold and can get slippery. The G500's keys are made of a cheap-feeling plastic, and we found the G900's slide-out keyboard didn't lock shut properly and wobbled about on its spring. Both screens are bright and easy to read, though, and the G900's is particularly impressive. While most Windows Mobile phones, including the G500, have 320x240 pixels, the G900's screen is a full three inches across with 800x480 resolution.

You'd hope this large display would be

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ideal for web browsing; smartphones with smaller screens have to reformat web pages to fit. Unfortunately, the Pocket Internet Explorer browser makes a hash of things. Text is sharp and clear, but Explorer doesn't seem to know what to do with the extra pixels and messes up the formatting, even when the phone is set to Desktop mode, which is meant to make pages appear exactly as they do on a PC. The browser works reasonably well on the G500, but we still prefer the third-party Opera browser for Windows Mobile. Both phones have wireless networking, which works in WiFi hotspots or via your home or office wireless network, plus 3G data for fast web browsing over the cellphone network in other locations.

Both phones have integrated email. You can write messages on the G900 using the qwerty keyboard, or use the on-screen virtual keyboard or handwriting recognition with the touchscreen stylus. The G500 makes do with the number pad and predictive text. Both phones can connect to POP3 or IMAP4 email servers, so you can collect email from your usual accounts, and email can be delivered to the handset if your office uses a Microsoft Exchange server with Direct Push. The integrated Picsel Viewer program lets you view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents and PDF files, zooming out for an overview and then gradually back in to see the detail. The G900 also has Word and Excel Mobile, so you can edit documents.

Both phones are adept at playing back audio and video. Video files are best in Windows Media Video (WMV) format, but encoded at low bitrates for smooth playback. Windows Media Player does a fair job of organising music files, letting you sort them by artist, album or genre. The headphones supplied with both handsets are made of hard plastic and quite uncomfortable. They have decent treble and bass, but little mid-range. Fortunately, a supplied adaptor lets you use your own. The phones' 2-megapixel cameras have fixed-focus lenses and struggle with exposure in bright conditions, but they pick up a reasonable degree of detail and reproduce colours accurately.