An interesting story’s popped up on Unwired View, recently, about a new phone that’s been sent through to the FCC (roughly the American equivalent of Ofcom) for approval, from Toshiba. And the pictures they sent through with it are clearly of a Toshiba TG01. There’s just one thing, though…
The spec of the new mystery phone are, in a very definite way, not the specs of the Toshiba TG01…
In fact, looking at those specs reveals some tantalising information. The main touchscreen is significantly smaller, being only 3 inches, instead of 4.1. It’s also considerably thicker than the TG01. Most telling of all, though, is the fact they list a secondary screen, that comes in at 0.8 inches.
And where is the only place you find secondary screens?
Well, not on candybar phones, since they only need one screen. Ditto for slide phones. Which logically leads us to flip phones…
Intriguingly, it’s also listed as being powered by a QSD8250 processor, and although that model number may not mean much… it implies power, since that’s the exact same 1GHz ‘Snapdragon’ processor that you’ll find in the Toshiba TG01. Which means that alongside the TG01, there’s going to be an equally powerful (and I do mean powerful, as after some research, I actually realised the Snapdragon processor is a dual-core chip…) Windows Mobile phone, in a completely different form factor, since it’s more or less a foregone conclusion that a second screen signifies a clamshell-flip-type-thingy.
However, I have an intriguing idea (and this is just my idea, this isn’t even a rumour, so no getting excited). Ok, it may be a flip phone, but what if it’s not a traditional flip phone. Instead of a more old school shape that goes back to the days of the Motorola StarTAC, what if it’s actually a kind of ‘mini-laptop’ shape, like the Nokia E90? When you think about it, it makes a twisted kind of sense. Toshiba have already got the ultimate big screen phone in the TG01, so why not go for a form factor that looks like a laptop, since it will be, essentially, a mini-laptop?
Interesting times, indeed…
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