The Entertainer
Battery life on smartphones varies greatly – indeed, some Android handsets will flounder in much less than a day. Since so much of the battery life is down to the screen, you might imagine that this phone will give up by lunchtime.
Aspects of the BA app include pinning flight particulars to the homescreen
In fact, Windows Phone 7 has always outgunned Android for between-charge life and the latest version WinPho 7.5 (Mango) includes battery-saving settings. These enhancements allow you to manage a day without problems, often a day and a half. For peace of mind, daily charging is still the way to go, but you can leave your charger at home.
HTC has a gift for producing phones that maintain a robust signal and the Titan continues this tradition. Apparently to aid the signal transmission, there are tiny pairs of pinholes at the top and bottom of the phone’s largely metallic back. Reception aside, the audible call quality was good, too.
You can read about the joys of Windows Phone 7 and Mango (v7.5) in various reviews on Reg Hardware so I’ll just say that it’s an intuitive and responsive OS, which shows plenty of potential. Sure, the apps aren’t as numerous as with Apple's iOS but from a taste of what's out there at the moment, they look tremendous.
If you're after functional rather than eye candy, then the British Airways app gives a taste of WinPho 7.5's capabilities. Besides flight info, the app takes advantage of the phone's screen shortcuts function, so you can even have your boarding pass QR code pinned to the homescreen. Not much good if you don't fly BA, but nevertheless, the WinPho 7.5 works well and together with the HTC hardware delivers an impressive user experience.
Entertaining option
Yet the catch for the Titan and its entertainment raison d'être are the restrictions of the platform. Its supersize screen has to follow the 480 x 800 spec and, likewise, there's no storage expansion although 16GB should satisfy most. Also, HDMI out would be a boon on this handset too but appears to be another spec shortcoming, for now, at least.
Verdict
Although it’s not as heavy or as thick as a big phone could be, you’re never going to lose the HTC Titan in a pocket. Still, it’s handsome, speedy and shows off the capabilities Windows Phone 7 OS in its current Mango flavour. Indeed, it appears that the HTC Titan is more of a statement phone, made for those who like to go large. ®
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HTC Titan WinPho 7.5 smartphone
COMMENTS
Only 75%?
There's very few negative comments in this review. So how does it score so much less than the iPhone 4S? Is the screen resolution worth 20%?
Personally, I prefer the Titan hardware over most other phones at the moment but I still think I'm going to end up with the Nokia Lumia 800, its just too damn pretty.
HTC/WDS Repair Centre
I took ownership of the Titan last week. It was a 'gift' from HTC for a 10 month clusterfuck in an attempt to repair an HD7. They took receipt of the first device in December, returned it three times un-repaired, sent two replacement devices with only 8GB of storage, not with the 16GB I sent them and on one occasion sent me two bottles of shampoo instead of a phone.
Only when I did some digging did I find out that the customer services company is actually called WDS, based in Poole. The repair centre however is HTC's.
In the end, I purchased some shares in HTC and started writing to the CEO based in Taiwan, as a shareholder (it seems to hold more weight than being 'just a customer').
This focused WDS' minds considerably and I was then in personal conversation with the WDS/HTC account manager via his mobile. As an agreement to keep the matter out of court for compensation of my wasted time (I had documented EVERYTHING, even phone calls to the minute), it was agreed that I would be sent a brand new Titan upon its release, plus a lot of accessories.
Keep on at them - you'll get there.
Oh, and the Titan is a great phone.
Simples. We didn't *all* laugh at the streak, many of us lusted after it. Nearly grabbed one a couple of weeks ago when they dropped to a more appealing price.
Why does the iphone never lose points?
The negative points were lack of external storage and low resolution. The iphone used to max out at 16 and no one complained. And for all its retina loveliness the iphone still has a tiny screen, hardly worth viewing media on it at all.
@ dotslash
I think most us of know that HTC's new contract service & repair provider leaves something to be desired, but that said back in August they turned around my partner's Desire (broken screen after she dropped it onto a stone kitchen floor) in eight days and the cost was reasonable too.
She was a bit wary of sending it off after reading the Facebook page complaining about HTC repairs but as she said, none of the complaints on Facebook gave anything like a proper detailed breakdown of what exactly the problem was to start with - rather like your post.
I'm on my second HTC (Hero / Desire HD), her indoors is on her first (Desire) and after nearly five years combined use they have been faultless, the Desire/floor incident notwithstanding.
