Toshiba announce Portege G500 and G900 smartphones

Two new models as Tosh tries to break smartphone market

13 February 2007 18:13 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Toshiba has unveiled two it is to enter the smartphone market with two new devices it has launched at 3GSM in Barcelona.

The two new models are the Windows Mobile powered, Portege G500 and Portege G900.

Both new devices will offer fingerprint recognition to access the devices. The finger print sensor can also be used to navigate the phone’s menu and lock these devices.

“By creating these devices with biometric fingerprint authentication, we have developed products that are safe, secure and easy to use. These devices build on our heritage in notebook computing and we believe they will appeal to mobile professionals who want to take advantage of mobile computing and manage the security of their confidential information in a simple and intuitive manner - as proved through recent research”, said Peter Ford, Marketing Director, Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Limited.

The PORTEGE G500 will be a compact “slider” with full wireless push email support and Internet browsing that is able to take advantage of HSDPA and Wi-Fi connections. The phone will sport a 2.3-inch QVGA screen and the promise of excellent battery life.

The PORTEGE G900, which won't be available until early Summer 2007 is a “horizontal format slider" with a 3-inch Wide-VGA screen. The device also incorporates a full QWERTY keyboard, WLAN, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.

The PORTEGE G900 is also one of the first devices that will be using the new version of Window Mobile, Windows Mobile 6 announced earlier this month.

Both devices will feature a 2 megapixel camera and have 64MB of internal memory with the option to expand this further via a miniSD slot on the phone.

The phones promise 260 hours standby and 260 mins talk time for the PROTEGE G500 and 240 hours standby and 240 mins talk time for the PROTEGE G900.