HTC Titan II: The Other LTE Windows Phone is Big, Beautiful, Pricey [REVIEW]
Debuting alongside the
Nokia Lumia 900 on April 8th, the handset is HTC's followup to the original Titan, a massive Windows Phone the company debuted in late 2011.
[More from
Mashable:
Nokia and Microsoft Take on the iPhone — By Going Local]
Under the hood, the
Windows Phone
Mango handset comes sporting a 1.5 GHz S2 Snapdragon processor, 512 MB
of RAM, and 16GB of built-in storage. The phone has 800x480 Super LCD
screen, and comes rocking a 1.3-megapixel froward-facing camera for
video chatting as well as a massive 16-megapixel rear-facing cam.
However, it's also $100 more with a new contract than the Lumia, its
only LTE Windows Phone competition. So is the HTC Titan II worth the
extra cash?
[More from Mashable:
Got a Hot App? Microsoft Will Pay Top Dollar for a Windows Phone Version]
Design
One of the first things you'll notice about the Titan II is that it's
huge. The phone measures 5.2 in. tall and 0.39 in. thick. The Titan's
curved design makes it easy to hold (even for medium-sized hands), but
if you're used to toting around something smaller like an iPhone then
the Titan will definitely be an adjustment.
But if you have trouble viewing content on smaller screens, the Titan
II offers a decent amount of screen real-estate that's easy to read and
interact with.
Display
The phone has a 4.7 in. touchscreen, which is on the smartphone high end. The
Nokia Lumia
900 has a 4.3 in. screen. Unfortunately, the resolution on the Titan's
screen is just 800x480 -- exactly the same as the Lumia and the original
Titan.
The screen resolution is a limitation of Windows Phone, which
currently can't support higher res displays. But it stands out on the
Titan II's gigantic screen a little more than it does on smaller
displays like the Lumia.
Zoomed-in text on the screen can often look pixelated and jagged, and
video and photos look less sharp than they do on some other handsets
running competing operating systems.
Camera
The 16-megapixel rear-facing camera is where the HTC Titan II really
shines against the competition. 16 megapixels is larger than many of the
point-and shoot cameras out there, and the phone's dedicated camera
shutter button can make you feel like you've got a traditional camera in
your hand rather than your smartphone.
The
Titan II's built-in camera app comes loaded with a ton of scene modes
and the kind of settings you might find on a point-and shoot. There's a
great panorama mode which allows you to shoot a panoramic shot by simply
panning your phone across a scene.
Less exciting is the Titan II's video-capturing abilities. The
handset is only capable of recording 720p video, rather than the 1080p
available on much of the competition. Sure, 720p video is by no means
horrible. But it's a definite downside if you're looking to play your
videos back later for friends on a television.
Windows Phone
If you haven't tried out Windows Phone, you should go check out a
handset at your favorite mobile retailer –- even if you're not in the
market for a new phone. The OS is clean, easy to use and perfect for
smartphone newbies, as well as anyone looking for a simple no-nonsense
smartphone solution.
Even though the Titan II has a single-core processor (another
limitation of Windows Phone), the OS was able to zip smoothly along. App
support for Windows Phone is considerably smaller than that available
for iOS and Android, but we were able to find most of the apps we were
looking for in the store. Their design meshed well with Windows Phone's
Metro interface.
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