[TG01 General] patc:
Well I said when I had the time I would write a review comparing the HTC Touch HD and Toshiba TG01. I got the TG01 as an insurance replacement for the HD, so was not a purchasing choice, but I liked the sound of the spec and agreed to the swap (they had no HDs in stock!). Sorry the review's not exactly comprehensive and is a bit all over the place, but is an immediate reaction having owned the TG01 for a couple of weeks and just a list of things which spring to mind!

The Toshiba is big. If you're used to bigger smartphones (Which I was with the HD) then it will still feel big. It's not thick though, it's decidedly thinner than the HD (slim enough to slip through the gaps in my decking it seems... but I caught it in time!), and does slip into an average trouser pocket without poking too much from the top. However, its sheer size makes it hard to use with one hand. The screen is a great size though, and is lovely and clear. It has a built in light sensor also to help with battery life so you may think the screen's a bit dull to start with - go outside and try again or switch the option off and you'll see how vibrant it is.

The hard buttons are laid out slightly differently and aren't too bad - with the HD I did suffer from turning on the phone by accident in my pocket quite often as that button is located on the top of the phone. On the Toshiba, it's on the side and it hasn't activated itself yet. The HD had touch sensitive buttons (as does the TG01) on the screen side at the bottom for 'Home' and 'Back', which are useful... though they don't give the reassuring 'mini vibration' feedback that you got with the HD - I'm guessing that could be rectified in software though.

Battery life - the TG01, quite frankly, sucks in this department. It goes down 3 bars during an average day of a few texts and small amount of calls, maybe a bit of data and needs charging each night. I also think when the charge cycle finishes, it fails to provide power to the phone through the adapter. I could be wrong, but when I charged it at 10pm one night, by 11am the next day it decided it had run out of battery already. The HD could go at least two days with the same amount of use.

The camera on the TG01, although only 3MP (compared to the HD's 5MP) feels less jerky, and it appears better quality than the HD, despite the max resolution. The autofocus works well, though there is a considerable gap between the shutter press and the picture being taken - I'd say almost a full second. The HD was quicker, but not considerably so. Video on the TG01 can be taken at 640x480 and at 30fps - something the HD would really struggle with. And it plays back well, I'm actually impressed with that! I can imagine the next generation will all be 720p, which is exciting.

The software makes all the difference between the phones. I shudder to think how awful the TG01 would have been with the original Windows Mobile 6.1 OS running. Thankfully the one I have is running 6.5 and makes things a little nicer. However, HTC really have trumped this phone with their Touchflow system which is so intuitive and nice to use... in comparison to the basic MS offerings. The keyboard on the TG01 (though made 'better' by Toshiba) is hard to use... easier than the built in Windows one, but still makes producing texts and emails a slow arduous chore. Somehow the HTC one was just better - probably to do with the differences in the type of touchscreen they use (I believe this one is resistive and the HD was capacitive... correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not a fan of predictive text but the TG01 does have it and it seems pretty good.

My TG01 is Orange branded, but it's just a case of switching the Today screen theme to Windows Default to get rid of their horrible attempt... then you get the usual WM6.5 options, which scroll smoothly up and down, and left and right... putting all that processor power to good use. The start menu is better than before - treating everything like 'Apps'... so you can move your most used ones to the top and have everything you want within a couple of clicks, which is good.

The TG01 feels faster and indeed it should, given the 1GHz processor which is a step up from the HD's older, slower one. Running Slingplayer is nice and zippy, though still a little choppy but you can't have everything. It's certainly more responsive flicking through channels and suchlike.

I'd say use Opera for your web browser, not IE because it's definitely suited to this phone - lovely to use with a great start screen for 9 of your favourite websites... and runs so quickly and smoothly, I don't think the HD could cope as well.

The Gyroscope is a little funky on the TG01. Many times I have to shake it up and down to get it to go into portrait mode having picked it up. Although I have calibrated it to try and fix it, quite often it thinks I want to see things sideways when I don't. A gentle twist 90 degrees and back normally fixes it but I can't help shake it when it doesn't! Never had that problem with the HD - but I'm not sure if this is WM6.5 creating problems that didn't exist in the Touchflow environment on top of 6.1.

I still can't get a 'Comm Manager' which rivals that on the HD, on the TG01. All I want to do is momentarily turn off the data connection - not disable it permanently or anything, and the HD had that really easily accessible. The TG01, as mentioned previously, just has 'Phone', 'Bluetooth' and 'Wifi'... turning off 'Phone' is the only way to stop the data connection. This I want to do in the situation where I'm on Wifi but for some reason the phone continues to use the 3G connection... so is annoying!

Next, until I found an option in the TG01 to disable the screen from coming on whenever it was touched, I was having a nightmare in phone calls with blips and beeps in my ear... presumably my cheek trying to go through my calendar etc. That really should have been off by default. It still happens too, even with the option off, when I cradle the phone between my neck and ear... so now I have to hold it, and be careful not to press the side button with my hand too!

The sound quality of phone calls on the TG01 is pretty bad in my ear compared to the HD - anything 'loud' - even with the speaker turned down - gets distorted. But it's useable.

Now to my current bugbear. The TG01 can't travel at speed and do anything useful. I'm writing this on a train, in Notepad. I have taken this particular train journey (Sheffield to London St Pancras and back) several times with the HD and enjoyed being able to use the internet throughout most of the journey. The TG01 can't even hold onto a network at speed for more than a few seconds at best, so tethering is out of the question and, yesterday, trying to call my bank took 18 attempts to get to the bit where I could hear my balance, I'm not joking. It is bluntly speaking, rubbish.

Unless Orange have moved every mast along the way so they're hardly ever in range, I'm putting this one down to the phone. I mean, we were still in North London at the start of this journey when it lost the signal and it hasn't regained it yet. I'm hoping to upload this review when we're stood still in Leicester, but even then it takes forever for the phone to find the network...

So... yes, you can imagine I'm overall less than impressed with the TG01.

But then it is a cheaper phone, and it is definitely a case of "If you never had an HD, you'd never know". Because overall, it's a good, and fairly amazing piece of technology. But I'd take back an HD tomorrow if offered I'm afraid.

I've decided now I'm going to the dark side anyway and waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4/HD, sorry to say!

Hope this was useful anyway. Any questions, I'll be pleased to answer!