When is the last time you lusted after a Toshiba? Their laptops are nice enough, but they're not drool-inducing, and they're not really known for sexy in the mobile phone arena, either.  Until now.

Early this morning Toshiba launched the TG01, what could be the first viable salvo across the iPhone’s bow. Toshiba reps, in fact, went so far as to call the TG01, "faster, slimmer and better than the iPhone." When it launches this summer, the TG01 will be the first smartphone built on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform.

Snapdragon has some awe inspiring specs, and should be more than enough to run Windows Mobile 6.1 ... or WM 6.5 should it launch by then:

• 1GHz CPU
• 600MHz DSP
•  Support for Linux® and Windows Mobile®
• WWAN, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity
• Seventh-generation gpsOne® engine for Standalone-GPS and Assisted-GPS modes, as well as gpsOneXTRATM Assistance
•  High definition video decode (720P)
•  3D graphics with up to 22M triangles/sec and 133M 3D pixels/sec
• High resolution XGA display support
• 12-megapixel camera
• Support for multiple video codecs
• Audio codecs: (AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, FR, EFR, HR, WB-AMR, G.729a, G.711 , AAC stereo encode)
• Support for Broadcast TV (MediaFLOTM , DVB-H and ISDB-T)

A 1GHz CPU? Are we talking about a phone or a netbook here?  One of Snapdragon’s other benefits is that it allows for phones to be super-slim: The TG01 is 9.9-mm thin, to be exact.

As is all the rage these days, Toshiba created a custom skin to run on top of WindowsMobile - I’m going to call it “Stripes." With its huge 4.1 inch screen & the custom Stripes GUI, the TG01 looks downright touchable - not a claim most Win-Mo handsets can make.

The TG01 launches this summer on a yet unknown carrier.

---