Toshiba TS10 review

Toshiba is a newcomer to the UK mobile phone market, having only recently brought out three new handsets. The TS10 is a budget clamshell that's available on Vodafone prepay.

The phone looks different to most clamshell handsets. Instead of being small and round, the phone is long and almost as slim as Motorola's RAZR. The outside is covered with strange dimples, but the phone looks expensive and feels solidly made, aside from a wobbly flip. A monochrome external display shows the date and time, as well as the name of incoming callers.

The phone feels huge with the flip open, but it is comfortable to hold. Despite the large size of the upper section of the flip, the screen is small at just 1.8". The display is colourful and bright, and quite impressive for a budget handset. The TS10 also has a great keypad. The round keys are well spaced and easy to press, a pleasant change from the fiddly and cramped keypads of many current handsets. Unfortunately, the keypad is too long, making one-handed texting difficult as you have to stretch to the two soft keys at the top to add punctuation or scroll through predictive text options.

The TS10 has a simple and logical interface. The main menu screen has nine icons for the phone's main functions and the submenus are organised into lists. The only confusing aspect is that the icons are slightly misleading and some of the phrases used to describe functions are a bit odd. The contacts menu is represented by what looks like a pair of shorts, and the phone's profiles are called phone modes. It doesn't take long to get used to, but it seems strange that Toshiba doesn't use the same terminology as other handset manufacturers.

However, the TS10 gets the basics right. The predictive texting interface works well and the keys to insert a space or a punctuation mark are in the same places as on Nokia's handsets. It's a shame the phone doesn't choose an apostrophe automatically when pressing the punctuation key before an 's', as this slows down texting considerably. Call quality is reasonable, though a bit muffled.

As the TS10 is a budget handset, it has a limited set of features. There are basic calendar functions, a calculator and stopwatch and a WAP browser to connect to the Vodafone Live! service. The camera has a low 640x480 resolution, but as there's no way to transfer pictures to a PC, you can't use the phone as a digital camera replacement.

This is a stylish handset and is good value. It has a decent screen, and once you are used to the terminology quirks in the interface it is easy to use. The mobile phone market may be crowded, but the TS10 manages to stand out.