IPhone owners might soon be able to use their handsets as modems for their computers, but Toshiba's G450 takes exactly the opposite approach. The little device is a 3G modem first, and a cellphone second. On top of that, Toshiba has squeezed in USB storage and an MP3 player.
Rather than placing the G450 as a regular phone, Toshiba seems to be selling it as a feature-added modem and emergency phone replacement. One look at those two dials tells you that text messaging is all but impossible, but according to the chaps at Into Mobile, in other areas the dongle acquits itself admirably.
The £140 ($205) device is only available in parts of Europe. It uses HSDPA for its connection, so it will keep connected to the internet if a call comes in, and can fall back to EDGE if 3G isn't available.
The worst part seems to be the rather poor storage -- just 160MB. This is certainly rather pathetic for use as a thumb drive, and for storing MP3s it is next to useless. Still, as a modem with benefits, it's not too bad, even is it does cost as much as a US iPhone.
Product page [Toshiba via Into Mobile via Engadget]
