Toshiba Portege G710 review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 15 Aug 2008

Price when reviewed: £190

Supplier: http://www.dixons.co.uk

Reviewed By: Jon Bray

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

User Rating

Windows Mobile smartphones are notoriously hungry for processor power and memory, and handsets that lack fast processors often feel sluggish and frustrating to use. Sadly, the Portege G710 falls into this category.

Its processor is slow at just 260MHz and it has only 64MB of memory to back this up. As a result, launching applications and navigating the system often leaves you staring at a spinning busy symbol and twiddling your thumbs. This isn't the only frustration, either.

Setting up the phone is complicated and fiddly because, unlike many of the other phones, there are no wizards to help. There's no wireless networking or fast mobile data. The Portege G710 is limited to GPRS, so browsing the web is slow. Pocket IE isn't the greatest mobile web browser either, although you can download Opera Mini for free, which offers a much better experience.

The performance issues and niggles over ease of setup are a shame, as in other areas the phone is actually quite good. It's very slim and light, and the rubberised soft-touch plastics make it comfortable to hold. It has a full QWERTY keypad that is good enough to make typing emails and texts a swift, painless process once you've had a bit of practice with it. A glowing white, clickable trackball above the keyboard allows you to scroll up and down through lists and around the phone's various menus with ease, and is much faster than using a directional keypad.

Battery life is reasonable, too, at 16 hours and 55 minutes. The most surprising thing about the G710, however, is that it has built-in GPS, which is unusual in a phone that costs so little.

Despite this, we simply can't ignore the phone's problems. It's unresponsive, doesn't have HSDPA and is fiddly to set up. There are much better handsets here.

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