Toshiba jumped head first into the mobile phone marketplace when it launched its Windows Mobile-powered TG01 smartphone, one of the first handsets to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor. The TG01 had a short lifespan and was superseded by another Windows Mobile offering, the TG02, early this year. Now in September, we have yet another Toshiba offering, the TG03, spotted at the Global Certification Forum with quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and tri-band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (800/850/2100 MHz).
Similar to the HTC Trophy, the TG03 was spotted in a roadmap leak last year and was presumed to be another Windows Mobile handset. The TG03 never materialized and its recent re-appearance at the GCF suggests that it may have been scrapped and re-incarnated as a Windows Phone 7 handset.While we have seen Windows Phone 7 offerings from LG, Samsung, HTC, and Dell, this is the first WP7 handset to be rumored for the Japanese electronics giant.
Before you get excited for another Windows Phone handset, I should mention that Toshiba has not been named as a launch partner for Windows Phone 7. Despite not being singled out as a preferred partner, Toshiba, like Acer, may be prepping a WP7 handset for launch sometime after the first wave of handsets hit. A post-launch release would allow Toshiba the freedom to develop a WP7 handset without being considered a “launch” partner.
Being on the second string is not necessarily a bad position, this slight delay may allow the handset manufacturer to drop in something fancy like a dual-core processor, instead of the 1GHz Qualcomm that is present in seemingly every leaked Windows Phone 7 handset to date.
[Via The Unwired]