HTC Titan review: Huge is the new big

Introduction

One big scary smartphone, the HTC Titan. Visible from space. Oh well, a little exaggeration won't hurt. But as far as we can tell, they certainly wanted it big enough to see from Finland.

Microsoft have a thing going on up north that they want to explore. But old-time partners HTC won't take the cold shoulder. They are honoring their part of the agreement and making a big statement.

The size of the Titan aside, the message HTC are sending is loud and clear. Nokia will be instrumental in shaping the future, essential to fulfilling the vision of a third ecosystem. But here we are, delivering here and now.

HTC Titan

The Titan is among the first WP7 Mango phones to make it to the market. It’s the biggest too – and likely to stay this way for quite a while. And although it feels good to think HTC were keen to show to newly-fledged allies Nokia what’s what, the size of the phone is more than just muscle flexing.

Many upgraders will be looking at the Titan and the bigger screen is the right thing to show them. Otherwise the doubters would’ve been right to ask: why Titan and not a Mango-running HD7. But the display is not the only upgrade over last year’s Windows Phone flagship.

Key features:

• Massive 4.7" 16M-color S-LCD capacitive touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Dual-band 3G with HSDPA 14.4 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps
• Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS
• 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon CPU, Adreno 205 GPU 512MB RAM
• 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash, 28mm wide-angle lens, F2.2 aperture and BSI sensor
• Hardware camera button
• 720p video recording @30fps
• Ample 16GB of built-in storage
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Standard microUSB port (charging)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Stereo Bluetooth 2.1
• Mobile Office document viewer/editor
• Social network integration and cloud services
• Built-in A-GPS receiver
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Comes with HTC Hub and exclusive HTC apps

Main disadvantages:

• A bit on the gigantic side
• Screen size stretches the resolution a little thin
• Non-expandable storage
• No mass storage
• Zune only file management and sync
• No Flash (nor Silverlight) support in the browser
• No native video calls
• No DivX/XviD video support (automatic transcoding provided by Zune)

We already let a spoiler slip in our recent shootout. The Titan is an impressive cameraphone. It falls short in the video recording department but the lack of Full HD video is a platform limitation. Dual-core support is yet to come to Windows Phone 7. The HTC Titan is no slowpoke though on its 1.5 GHZ processor.

It’s got the typically solid HTC build too. The phone sure looks a handful but not as scary as some may think. The Metro UI plays its part here too. The Windows Phone 7 interface is good-looking and offers a novel software experience. The first generation didn’t quite get everything right but the Mango update is a big step forward.

Mango has enabled multitasking and improved the overall experience, while HTC are lending some of their custom add-ons to a package with already solid Office and Organizer credentials and deep social network integration.

The HTC Titan is a quick ticking smartphone – responsive and well connected. It’s a capable cameraphone too, well above the usual HTC standards. Plus, the OS is out of its teens and ready to be taken seriously.

HTC Titan live shots

The Titan should be the phone to solidify HTC’s reputation as a Windows Phone partner and help Microsoft make a transition from strictly-business to media-centric and social.