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By John Chan, CNET Asia
Aug 20, 2007

The Toshiba Portege brand is one used for the company's line of ultraportable business notebooks. Now it extends to some mobile devices as well, including the Portege G900. Like the notebooks, this device is targeted at the business crowd, with security features put in specially to appeal to them.

	The G900's keyboard exposed (Click for larger image)

In Asia Pacific, the G900 can currently be officially found only in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Other countries in this region will have to wait for the official word from the Japanese company for its availability. For those who do not wish to wait, online sources are shipping internationally, though you most likely will have to pay a premium going that route. Official pricing is as yet unavailable, but it costs about US$900 in the UK, where it is already launched.

Design
Slider designs on handhelds are hardly ever slim. This is immediately apparent on the G900, which has a thickness of 21.5mm. This is very similar to the Dopod 838 Pro, another popular handheld model which has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Not only is it thick, the Toshiba is quite heavy, too, at 196g. Comparatively, the 838 Pro is about 10 percent lighter at 176g. So if you ever thought that Dopod's feature-packed slider was too chunky, the G900 certainly won't be your cup of tea.

Size and weight aside, this PDA-phone has a plastic finish throughout. Aside from the black trimming around the front and keyboard, the entire device is silver in color. While the front of the G900 looks fine, the rear battery cover has a slightly glossy finish which feels somewhat greasy to the touch, especially if you have sweaty palms.

Shortcut buttons aren't lacking on the G900. On the front alone, there are keys that bring you straight to essential applications like the browser, your inbox and contacts. One of them is also an OK key to conveniently get out of applications. On the right of the device is just one shortcut key to the camera application and a volume control rocker.

When held in portrait mode, the screen slides to the right to expose the QWERTY keypad. The display then automatically changes to landscape format for use with the keypad. A total of 41 keys can be found on the keyboard, two of which are softkeys found beyond the extreme left and right sides of the neatly laid-out keys. Each key is raised in the center, which makes them well-defined even though there is no spacing between keys. The tactile feedback upon depression of the keys is sufficient, and we found the keyboard quite effective on the whole.

A single USB connector on the bottom is used for charging and syncing. On the left are the other ports including a 2.5mm headset mini-jack and a miniSD card slot.

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