Toshiba's e310 is small, light and cheap enough to be competing with Palm OS devices instead of Pocket PCs - Jørgen Sundgot shares his thoughts on the featherweight Pocket PC.
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Toshiba doesn't have much of a track record when it comes to handhelds - in fact, the only handheld the company ever made before the Toshiba e310 was the Toshiba e570, which was fairly well received for its small size and versatile expansion capabilities, despite its one major drawback; poor battery life. The Toshiba e310 is thus to count as a second-generation product, and with it Toshiba pulls off the feat of trumping all other Pocket PC 2002 devices on the market both in terms of price and size.
 | Toshiba's e310 is slim, small and cheap
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So, what's in the box?
As any other handheld with respect for itself, the e310 is accompanied by a slim two-part charger, a nicely weighted USB cradle that allows for one-handed extraction and a cheesy imitated leather case. Also, detailed manuals and a CD containing Microsoft Outlook, ActiveSync and Adobe's Acrobat Reader for Pocket PCs are tucked in there.
The e310 itself feels like a sturdy piece of hardware. Despite sporting fairly common Pocket PC specifications including a 206 MHz Intel StrongARM processor, a 16-bit reflective TFT, 32 MB of RAM and an SDIO capable SD Card expansion slot, the e310 is a mere 1 cm thick and weighs in at only 139 g - a weight which matches that of a Palm m515.
On its left side, the e310 sports the usual voice recording button, and a jog wheel with a push-action function which works great due to a good grip and good tactile feedback. On the bottom of the device there's a battery switch for connecting and disconnecting the main battery of the unit - which is built-in and rechargeable, a charger jack and the connector for its USB cradle. On the right side, there's nothing except for the stylus compartment located on the top. The stylus is of the cheap plastic kind, but fulfills its purpose; a bigger problem is that it's difficult to extract it from its silo since a protrusion on the device similar to that of the stylus head is placed just a few millimeters below.
On top of the device, there's the headphone jack to the far left, followed by the SDIO capable SD Card expansion slot, an Infrared port and the power button which although it looks difficult to use isn't at all. Also, the microphone of the device is placed centered, just in front of the SD Card expansion slot.
The front of the device is graced with a very bright 16-bit reflective TFT display which seems in need of a bit of gamma correction to take the brightness down a couple of notches. Also, enabling ClearType is something that should be avoided - the display is very crisp and clear without it, but when switched on the results are all but good. Placed just below the display is a row of four hardware shortcut buttons, all with good tactile feedback and dimples for them to be quickly pressed with the stylus, and one of the best four-way navipads I've encountered. The navipad has very good tactile feedback, and unlike almost all other navipads it's easy to distinguish between performing an action press and a direction press.
Lastly, in the lower right corner of the front of the device, you'll find the speaker which has a notable crisp and metallic sound to it, and in the upper left corner a four-configuration LED to notify the user of alarms and battery status.
Software-wise, the e310 is similar to all other Pocket PC 2002 devices, and also to the Toshiba Pocket PC e570 model in that it carries the same Home application that acts as a Palm OS-like menu interface towards applications on the device, and the SD Backup application which allows backing up the contents of the handheld to an SD Memory Card.
You get what you pay for
Offerings in the Toshiba e310 have been cut to the bone, as is evident from the lack of additional software beyond the operating system itself, its 32 MB of RAM and single SD Card expansion slot. Its aim is to compete with high-end Palm OS devices such as Sony's high-end models which offer multimedia functionality, and it very much succeeds in doing so - and in terms of raw processing power even outperform these.
Unfortunately, there are a few snags that hold the e310 back such as its non-removable - yet rechargeable - battery, which causes problems seeing as how the battery life of the e310 doesn't anywhere near match up to that of Palm OS handhelds. That's what one gets for trading up to raw processing power though, and a hot potato that's likely to cool down considerably as the Palm OS platform transitions to ARM.
Speed-wise, the e310 is like its predecessor, the Toshiba Pocket PC e570, for some reason notably faster than some other Pocket PC 2002 devices, and its 32 MB of RAM should be sufficient for the entry-level users it's aimed at. The ClearType snafu mentioned previously is of course a drawback, but as with the 32 MB of RAM you get what you're paying for it - $399 USD or so, which is the retail price for the device.
Conclusion
The Toshiba e310 is a solid entry-level device for those who would like a device with no-hassle multimedia support built-in, as well as a processor that's powerful enough to handle most tasks thrown at it. It's still a bit bigger than most high-end Palm OS devices, but those extra features have to go somewhere - and it's competitive in terms of price as well. You don't get much extra software, but compared to Palm OS devices there's a lot of functionality in there already.
- What's positive: Small, light, cheap
- What's negative: Terrible ClearType, non-removable battery
Overall: 
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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