3. TG01: Touch and Tap, Swipe the Stripe

The TG01 has a resistive screen like all Windows Mobile devices do, rather than the iPhone’s capacitive screen, so that you can write characters on screen with a stylus as well as tap on the on-screen keyboard (particularly important for Asian markets). The Windows Mobile touch-screen interface was originally designed for a stylus rather than fingers and gestures and it still works very well this way.

But to keep the TG01 so slim, Toshiba hasn’t made space for an internal stylus. Instead, you get a stylus with a lanyard, except that there’s nowhere to attach it to the TG01, so you have to keep it in your pocket or find a case you can clip it onto.

The large touch keyboard is certainly easier to use than the usual tiny Windows Mobile on-screen keyboard, but the highlight when you touch a key is confined to the key itself—many devices (like the iPhone and BlackBerry Storm) make the highlight bigger or displace it so you can see what key you've hit even if your finger is covering it. The keyboard can feel unresponsive as well, especially in portrait mode. Even in landscape view, the space bar is the size of a single key.

Touch controls vary between applications. Toshiba’s unusual front-screen interface gives you "stripe" options, like Phone, Applications, Settings, Files, Tools, Media, and Messaging with thumbnail icons that you can customize. You can swipe happily to move between stripes, pull a stripe up to show more icons, bring up gadgets like your calendar and to-do list, or add shortcuts. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the Free Pad, which gives you finger-sized cursor controls and buttons for Start and OK, which are handy if you remember to open the pad in the first place. It’s worth watching the short Help video to make sure you find all the features, while the stripe interface is more powerful than it looks and not that obvious.

You can swipe to scroll through pictures in the PhotoBase app, Web pages in Internet Explorer Mobile, or your entire address book, but you can’t swipe to scroll down through a long email message, which just selects the text. The zoom bar doesn’t work in all apps either, so you don’t always get the benefit of the big screen.

Resistive screens can give you excellent finger-touch as well as accurate response to a stylus as HTC has mastered this on all its recent models. Unfortunately, the TG01 isn’t always as responsive as it should be and the gestures don’t work in enough of the built-in apps for a consistent experience.