Keepin' it real fake, part CLXXXVII: the Toshiba TG01 doesn't deserve this kind of love

Toshiba definitely made some waves at MWC with the Snapdragon-powered TG01, but you'll have to wait a while to get the real thing -- or you can front like you're VIP with the Venus JXD318 here, which cops all the style with none of the substance. You'll have to keep your friends at a distance (and possibly a little drunk) to keep the illusion alive, however: Venus didn't see fit to clone Tosh's stripes UI, instead going with the sadly-ubiquitous "wannabe iPhone" look, and the whole thing is controlled by those five tiny side buttons, since it's not a touchscreen. That's a pretty weak effort, overall -- come on, KIRFers, you can do better.

[Via PMP Today]

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 5th 2009 4:05PM]

Are those fingernails really necessary?

[ctgaffney Posted Mar 5th 2009 6:26PM]

no, but she is

[dvsbstrd Posted Mar 5th 2009 4:26PM]

Those are the ugliest goddamn fingernails I've seen since the weeks leading up to and following my senior prom.

[aznofazns Posted Mar 5th 2009 6:11PM]

Must have been Cruella De Vil...

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 5th 2009 4:28PM]

Also, why is she holding it up and staring at the back of the thing? It's like she's taking a picture but pointing the device the wrong way.

[plexusXXX Posted Mar 5th 2009 4:33PM]

Maybe the nails in the ad want to emphasize that with nails like these you can handle the five side buttons of the Venus but not an iPhone's capacitive screen.
Moreover the Tosh TG01 is just a plain slab of glass , just like my htc touch HD or dozens of other touch phones; to say that one is copied from the other is akin to say that washing machine or tyre manufacturers copy each other style.
Stop this idiocy.

[loocas Posted Mar 5th 2009 5:57PM]

HIDEOUS!

Oh, and the "device" is terrible as well...

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 5th 2009 6:42PM]

I thought every kirf had to be a touchscreen. Come on china, you can do better then that.

[DaRockwilder Posted Mar 5th 2009 7:00PM]

The OEM's are partialy to blame, they announce something and we have to wait for months until it is released. These KIRFers just fill in the gap... but this KIRF in particular could be so much better, oh well let us wait for the next one...

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 7th 2009 12:38AM]

I'm not gonna lie. I honestly don't think this device looks anything like the Toshiba TG01. The borders are different, the UI is different, hell, the only similarity I can see is that generic iphone-esque look just about every smartphone in the market copies and the white outer shell. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if the writers at Engadget apply the kind of "everything China makes is a copy of something else" logic to everything that's designed in China they see?

And would it kill anyone to report a genuine designed and made in China device every now and then? It's not like there aren't companies like Changhong, DEC Zhongheng, TCL, and Vcall that make their own products that don't look like anything else. Surely those are better than the shanzhai products (probably) manufactured in tiny village workshops run by 3 desperate electrical engineers?

Come on Engadget.

[jdripper Posted Mar 6th 2009 4:02AM]

I bought a JXD device a couple of years ago, it's still going strong.
I'll admit the build quality made it look cheap and the interface was horrible (same buttons on the edges a this one). But the screen quality was very very nice, and it played back most video formats thrown at it.
I used it just for video playback and was quite happy with it.

[chengdude Posted Mar 6th 2009 6:17AM]

JXD is legit; anyway, you'd be otherwise hard-pressed to find a shanzhai manufacturer with an English-language website:

http://www.jxd.cc/en/product_view.asp?id=303

The real question is why is Engadget comparing a cutting-edge mobile phone with an MP4 player??

[hmmwv Posted Mar 6th 2009 11:18AM]

I think there must be some sort of misunderstanding on Engadget's part, this thing looks nothing like the TG01 except for exterior color, and more importantly, it's not even a phone, but rather a PMP.

[superhobo Posted Mar 6th 2009 3:29PM]

Doesn't look like the Toshiba.
UI doesn't look like the iphone, more like SE.