Toshiba G450: Ugly But Brilliant

This is sheer brilliance, almost. Monday, Toshiba announced the G450, an innovative new handset that can’t quite decide whether it is a USB Modem, mobile phone, or MP3 player. The new handset sports a pair of circular keypads and a small OLED display, providing the phone and MP3 player interfaces. There’s no camera and the screen is miniscule, but what’s awesome about this little thing is that it sports a built-in USB plug, so that it can plug directly into a laptop and function as a high-speed HSDPA modem. Sheer genius, and why hasn’t anyone else done this?

USB plugs aren’t that difficult to implement. You can get USB flash drives as thin as a credit card nowadays, and I think we’ve gotten past the notion of ‘how small can we build a phone’, so that’s not an issue, either. Even more convenient is that the G450 charges via the USB plug (*cough* Nokia, are you listening?*cough*), so while you’re using the modem functionality, you’re also getting a nice little top-up.

Sure it’s ugly, and the phone functions don’t seem to be incredibly easy to use, but that’s beside the point. The important thing is that this is the first mobile phone (that I’m aware of) to have a regular USB plug built-in, for the ultimate convenience. I wonder who’ll be next to incorporate this design?