Hands-on with the odd Toshiba G450

Toshiba isn't well known for its mobile phones, but it does make them. Newest among these enigmatic devices is the G450: A mobile-cum-iPod-cum-HSDPA modem. Come read why you should be interested.

The G450 is a quirky-looking device. Its keys are spread across two separate button clusters and the screen is only big enough to accommodate three lines of text--so it's pretty difficult to use at first. That's if you use it at all--it lacks many modern phone features, such as a camera, MMS, or email, but it has plenty of other tricks that make it worthwhile.

Firstly, it's small and highly portable. It comes with 160MB of free storage to dump MP3 music on. It'll even work as a high-speed broadband modem if you connect it to your laptop--for speeds of up to 3.6mbps. Plus it'll happily send and receive calls while you're connected to the Internet.

OK, so it's not the most feature-rich handset in the world, but we reckon its quirkiness works in its favor. It's easy to imagine everyone from youngsters to fashion-conscious WAG wannabes trying to get hold of one, and come the end of March, it can be yours SIM-free for 100 of our English pounds.

Via Crave UK

Color me Centro

Palminfocenter uncovered this image of a series of five GSM Centros all in different colors on a training site for Palm retailers. When the company first announced this model for the European market during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the color shown was the matte black one. AT&T in the US also recently announced its version, which is the one on the far right--the white one with green numeric keys.

With an Asia-Pacific launch imminent, which color do you think we will get? The dark blue one in the center, the white one with a partially gray keypad or the striking red one? Let us know which one you'd like to see here, or if you honestly couldn't care less.

Things you don't read: The fine print

If you haven't already heard, several online forums were abuzz last week regarding a Small Claims Tribunal's ruling against Nokia in Singapore. After a tussle that lasted about three months, the court ruled in favor of Ms Tan who goes by the moniker of "xiaoyun", for a sum of S$778, due to a faulty phone she purchased last year. Although that's just the condensed version of the whole fiasco, it raised important issues about the terms and conditions of limited warranties which most people hardly ever read.

According to Nokia, the replacement of faulty products due to defective materials, design and workmanship isn't obligatory and is viewed on a case-by-case basis. Samsung and Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, will replace a product covered under its limited warranty if the said device is found to be irreparable.

For Nokia and Samsung, the warranty period is valid for 12 months at the time of purchase by the first end-user of the mobile device, and six months for accessories and consumables such as the battery and charger. Likewise for Sony Ericsson, although it said that the accessories which come with the purchase of a new handset are covered for one year.

Although Ms Tan's encounter was an unfortunate case, it makes us wonder if phone-makers should enforce one-to-one exchanges if a product is found to be faulty (due to manufacturing defects) within a certain period of time after purchase. What say you?

Picture credit: Nokia

Concept mobile Internet search device way cool

If this concept Internet search device by designer Mac Funamizu takes off, we'll probably see many people up in arms protesting about privacy invasion.

It's like having Wikipedia wherever you go, but way cooler and more advanced. The artist's impression is for the said portable device to have a touchscreen panel, built-in camera, scanner, Wi-Fi connectivity, Google Maps and Google Search capabilities, etc.

The screen will probably double as the camera viewfinder, so it's like looking through a piece of transparent glass. And when you point it at an object, the device will be able to show you more details about it--such as the name of an insect, a car model, or food on the table--on the screen. We suppose at this point of time it will use the onboard Wi-Fi to grab information off the Web.

A concept like this isn't new. We've written about it before, but Funamizu's rendition takes it up a few notches. While it's great to have information at our fingertips, it's not so fun if someone were to point the device at us.

Ya know, we prefer to remain anonymous.

Via Tuvie.com

iPhone clones roundup

The sheer number of new mobile phones out there doesn't allow us to include every single one in our extensive database, let alone review all of them. As you'd probably expect, knock-offs of iPhones are especially low priority in our "to review" list. That's not to say they aren't interesting though, in a "should I get one for my boss because I hate him" kind of way.

Well, the people at The Red Ferret Journal have an interesting roundup of five iPhone clones. And as the comments and scores from the author show, none of them really come close to the iPhone. Is anyone actually surprised at the results? Maybe the planned Meizu M8 will buck that trend, that is, if it ever sees the light of day.

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