Toshiba K01 � The First Toshiba With AMOLED

toshiba

The recent 2010 Mobile World Congress was a fun showcase of cutting edge technologies in upscale smartphones as well as feature phones that we can expect to see starting next month at the earliest. Capacitive touchscreens, AMOLED displays, gesture control, 8-12 megapixel cameras, WideVGA screen resolution and the latest Bada and Android platforms to mention some, litter the event from the Big five mobile phones as well as from upstarts like Acer, Dell and Asus.

Among the new players, Toshiba continues to wow the audience with sleek monoliths like its TG02 positioned to succeed its well-hyped but disappointing TG01 of last year. Its successor now comes with another nearly identical model but sporting a tactile full-QWERTY keyboard slider in the Toshiba K01.

What’s more, it’s the brand’s first smartphone to use the energy-efficient AMOLED display.

While the rest of its features are nothing new and are simply a mirror of the TG01 released in June last year, the two marginal improvements might work for a market that wants a bit longer battery lives on a handset with one of the largest display for a more satisfying movie watching experience on the road.

Almost Identical

The K01 comes out of the box configured with the lackluster Windows Mobile 6.5.3 and Toshiba claims it can be upgraded to the new Windows Phone 7 Series out soon. How soon that would be is anybody’s guess. Announced in 2008 with a promised launched last year, the new Phone 7 demo OS was featured in the MWC with some really exciting features that can finally put it con a competitive levels as the Android but no definite release date has been announced. It would have great to see Toshiba handset on one.

For sure the KO1 is a capable smartphone like any and its sleek and elegant ergonomic and aesthetic simplicity will captivate markets, though perhaps not as much as others we’ve in the event.

The Toshiba K01 is your basic 3G QWERTY slider on the dual band dual band UMTS with HSDDPA/HSUPA and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G. It comes with local data connectivity options like WiFi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP and USB2.0. There’s also SatNav functionality from its built-in GPS receiver for A-GPS and QuickGPS. It shares the same 1Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU used in the TG02/TG01 with the same 512 MB ROM and 256 MB RAM with microSD expandability for up to 32 GB.

What really sets this model apart is its 4.1-inch display with wide VGA and 65k colors, auto rotate accelerometer and shake control. Never mind that it uses AMOLED and capacitive touchscreen technologies but the size alone is its main advantage and selling point. There’s the usual accelerometer for auto rotate viewing and shake control.

There’s a par for the course imaging feature that remains the same as the TG01 last year. You get a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera and possibly geo tagging with its GPS facility. Good thing you get the same 30fpx VGA vide recording. You also get a front secondary VGA camera you support 3G video calls. With the same 1,000 mAh Li-Ion battery, we expect its energy-saving AMOLED display to deliver more generous talk times exceeding that on the similarly powered TG02. But data is wanting in this area.