Be Smart

Out of Toshiba's G-Series Portégé cellphones, the most unusual was the tri-circular G450; intended to only do duty as an occasional handset, its primary purpose was to provide UMTS/HSDPA cellular broadband to a laptop via its built-in USB connectivity.  Crave UK have been playing with one and, for £100 ($194), come away surprisingly impressed.  While standard phone functions are made more tricky with the non-traditional keypad layout, it lacks MMS and a camera, and the screen is a compact three-line affair, what it does do it seems to do pretty well. 





Really, it's the HSDPA option that most people will pick the G450 up for; why choose a normal USB data modem that's only good for surfing the net, when you could have one which also lets you make calls (while surfing in fact) and send trickily-typed text messages.

It'll be available in the UK at the end of March.