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The TORQ P120 is a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone with GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth and WiFi (802.11b) radios. The black candy bar-style case is very attractive, the screen is nice, and it has a nice 130MB of user-accessible memory in addition to an extra SD slot. To round it out, a 1.3 megapixel camera with light is there for you to capture all those spur of the moment shots.

TORQ P120 on cradle

Summary Specifications

• GSM/GPRS quad-band, Bluetooth 1.2, and 802.11b Wifi radios
• 240 x 320 TFT LCD
• Windows Mobile 5 operating system
• 1.3 megapixel camera with light
• Samsung 400 Mhz processor
• 128 MB Flash ROM, 64 MB SDRAM
• SDIO/SD/MMC card slot
• Cradle with a charging slot for an additional battery
• 1440 mAh lithium-ion rechargeable battery
• Dimensions: 111.7 x 60.7 x 22 mm

Initial Thoughts

The Torq P120 is an attractive device. It's approximately the same width and thickness as a Treo 700w, and more narrow, but thicker than the HP hw6515. The 240 x 320 screen is bright, clear and crisp. During typical operation (at home and in the office), I kept the backlight at about half power. One issue that I had with the screen is that I had to do the screen alignment process more often than I have on other devices. We'll see if this continues as I spend more time with the device.

P120 next to the Treo 700w

Under the HP hw6515

For the initial battery charge, the documentation said to allow 8 hours. However, after plugging in the cradle and slipping the phone in, it didn't take the full 8 hours before the charging status LED turned off. I inserted my T-Mobile SIM card and the phone was ready to go on their GSM network.

One of the first things that I did was to set up a connection to my Exchange server. Setup went without a hitch, but I did have to set up the GPRS modem connection in order to transfer data. After hunting down the settings for T-Mobile, the device connected to the GPRS network and my sync with Exchange went flawlessly.

A Wireless Manager application manages the status of all the radios in the device. You can enable or disable GSM, Bluetooth, and Wireless (WiFi). Once you turn on WiFi, the device automatically detects any networks and asks if you would like to connect. Enter your WEP key and you're off. If the WiFi is enabled and you want to sync with Exchange, the device will use the faster connection to complete the process.

Phone operation was simple and straight forward. The volume was sufficient and audio was clear. The phone is not great for single-handed operation. Even though the P120 has a directional pad, it doesn't seem to be used for much (or mine was not functioning correctly). The reason that I think it may have been malfunctioning is because I could scroll up in Pocket Explorer with the directional pad, but I couldn't scroll down without pressing the down direction extremely hard.

I will have more quantitative analysis of battery life in the full review, but it seems to be excellent. I charged the device up on a Friday and didn't charge it until Sunday evening. The only radio that I had on full time was the GSM radio. Bluetooth was not turned on enough to even think about, and I probably spent a total of 1-2 hours with the WiFi radio enabled.

With stylus partially extracted

Conclusion

The Torq P120 is an attractive, well-equipped device. Here's what I like: Windows Mobile 5, plenty of user-accessible memory, nice viewable screen, and the combination of GSM/Bluetooth/Wifi. The things that I don't like so far: I've had to realign the screen more than with other devices, the directional pad is of questionable quality and ergonomics, and I had to setup the GPRS modem manually (I didn't have to do this on the HP hw6515). Please stay tuned for the full review and if you have any questions as we work on the review, let us know on the forums.