HTC Titan WinPho 7.5 smartphone

The HTC Titan is big, really big and yet the Taiwanese manufacturer has managed to make this sizeable WinPho 7.5 smartphone look manageable. Much of that is down to the thinness of the handset, making it feel less massive than it actually is. HTC Titan The big picture: HTC's Titan It helps that there’s nothing on the front …

[Paul Boocock (UK)]

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.

[Christopher Rogers]

Not quite yet

I'll wait another couple of generations before I buy into the WinPhone world. Until then, they can keep their single core offerings.

I still can't get my head round how we all laughed at Dell for the 5" streak, yet 4.7" is the way forward now?

[Paul Shirley]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Minor point I know, but it's an Aztec code, not a QR code. QR is probably the most common symbology used with phones, but Aztec is gaining traction in some vertical markets.

[Danny 14]

err

was this a review or a spec check? Pretty light on details of how it performs really. I guess you didnt actually use one (cant see any piccies of pillar boxes) or else more details on power usage and battery life (given the massive screen) would be useful. HTC are pretty shocking on battery usually so a comparison on what you did to get what life would be good.

signal coverage, drain of doom when you hold it etc bluetooth capabilities when paired with devices etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at one instore

At am surprised it got a 75% review, considering some other phones on similar ratings.

It's more like a 55%. A very average phone, with a less than stellar OS..

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol

Looks like you really upset the softies - but one of them is probably still asleep, they usually have 10 votes. Can someone go and wake the chair throwing one, he forgot to downvote a criticism of the fisher-price toy?

[Venturo]

A great review so why only 75%?

after having an iPhone for the past 4 years I decided to go for the Titan and think its a great phone.

[dotslash]

HTC Sucks

I'm gonna keep commenting on every HTC article in my own personal endeavour to sully their name. HTC have had my broken desire for 2 months.

Poor quality hardware, awful customer service and repair process - the people you talk to on the phone don't have a clue and there is absolutely zero communication between them and the repair centre.

I paid for a phone and a contract that I would like to use. Instead HTC have essentially stolen this money from me - any chance of a refund? Not likely...

Also, try googling "htc sms delay"

Goodbye HTC, never again.

[Dapprman]

You ought to try being a HTC Desire Z Owner

The official gingerbread upgrade killed the phone, making it slow and causing request UI crashes. Despite all the complaints they refuse to acknowledge the issue. My phone went back twice for OS downgrades - even Vodafone UK told them to return my phone back to 2.2.4, both times they ignored it saying the latest and greatest worked so it must be my fault.

Net result is I'd go HTC again but I'll not let the phone be upgraded and I'd not trust HTC to sort out any issues or their help desk to be useful.

Funny thing is I can but compliment Vodafone UK as they were helpful and ended up sending me a replacement phone. Alas all new Desire Z already come with 2.3.3

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Darryl]

Never mind all that

Did the shampoo work well? What brand? Fruity smelling or purely business?

[dotslash]

thanks all for sharing your woes.

Wow, 10 months! lol at the shampoo!! Impressed with your persistance, research, share buying and result of a new phone, any chance of sharing that manager's mobile? I'll buy you a virtual beer ;)

[Roger B]

As I have mentioned before in the Nokia comments this might be my first phone as I'm hoping the Mango/Windows 8/Xbox 360 dashboard will all match up nicely, (Yes I know three different desktops should'nt work, but hey, it might!) Anyway, how am I supposed to be able to buy this and have bragging rights over the iPhone crowd if its only got 16GB onboard and no room to expand, I have around 40GB of music and I'd like to have all that one here and do with out my Creative Zen (alternativly does any know of replacement hard drives for the 30GB Zen? something like a 100GB would do) plus no HDMi out and a lower res screen, the only plus I can see is a good battery life.

[Julesthom]

So close...

I was almost ready to leap from iPhone to HTC, and thought the Titan would be the phone to make me switch - the big screen being really easy on the eye when I tried one in-store.

Unfortunately the lack of upgradable storage has stopped me in my tracks. It's my biggest gripe with the iPhone (my last Nokia took microSD cards...), and I'm hugely disappointed that the Titan has the same restriction. 16GB is paltry, especially if you like to carry a large-ish music collection around with you... at least the iPhone allows you to choose different sizes, albeit they're unreasonably expensive upgrades for the extra storage.

I'll wait to see whether the Titan's successor has larger/expandable storage, and then hopefully leave iOS behind.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ 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.

[windywoo]

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.

[Gordon 10]

Max out

The iPhone hasn't maxed out at 16gb for 2 1/2 years

Get with the times commentard.

[Shaun 1]

I tried this instore, and yes the screen is nice and big, but comparing the LCD screen of the Titan to the Super AMOLED of my Omnia 7, I would take the Omnia 7 every day of the week.

The colours looked completely different! I feel I have been spoiled by AMOLED now and couldn't (willingly) go back to LCD

[Richard Wharram]

Too expensive imo. Apple prices :/

And does that IBM building have a bra on ?

[n4blue]

(pixel) density

"the proportional resolution is actually lower than some smaller phones.

For instance, last year’s HTC Trophy with its 3.8in screen managed a pixel density of almost 246ppi from this resolution"

Sorry if I've got this wrong, but given that Microsoft mandates a fixed resolution of 800x480 for WP7 phones, isn't it obvious that a larger screen will have a lower pixel density? So why the comment above? Can you give an example of a smaller phone that actually has a lower pixel density?

Reminds me of my old school physics teacher, 'Bomber' Jeffries, who, when wanting the answer 'density' to a question, used to ask us to think of our own qualities (if he wanted the answer 'joule' he would refer to himself). ;-)

[cloudgazer]

Just because MS has set a crappy upper limit to the resolution doesn't mean that phones using supersized screens shouldn't be marked down for it. Just because it isn't HTC's fault doesn't mean it isn't HTC's problem.

[Clive 3]

Apple bias

The reviews are always biased. They never seem to take into account the price of the iPhone which is just short of a grand for the 64GB version and £740 for the equivalent 16GB model - over 50% more expensive than the Titan.

[Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware]

Re: Apple bias

Sim free, the 16GB Titan is £480. Sim free the 16GB iPhone 4S is £499.

That's a four per cent price premium for the Apple over the HTC.

[cloudgazer]

@tony smith

now now, everybody knows that using facts in an argument is cheating.

[Richard Wharram]

Indeed. Buying unlocked from Apple rather than a stupid contract with a telco, iPhones aren't much different in price to other high end smartphones. Hold their value better too. Have you seen how much you can flog an iPhone 4 16GB unlocked white for on eBay ?

Jumping to Apple this generation sorry. (Yes, it's not a computer, it's a shiny phone that Apple permits you to do a bit of computery stuff on.)

[LarsG]

IF I HAD IT IN MY TROUSER POCKET....

I would be arrested for carrying a concealed weapon, alternatively it may help me pull!

[Anonymous Coward]

75%?

OK, since i think your percentages are pulled out of the air based on your own opinion rather than how the actual phone is can you at least provide us with a clear guage,

IE

example of 100% / 50% and crap phone? in your opinion of course

Im just curious because there was little in the way of negative points in the article so what was it that pulled it down so much?

Physical size? thats up to the user surely an not a point of concern? unless it weighs too much....which it doesnt

Screen density? well lets have something to compare it against rather than the numbers, forinstance, at approx 14in from you eyes the density of this phone is perfect, any further an it makes no difference, any closer an you lose visable density, unless i bring this phone to within 10in i cant see any difference at all compared to an iphone or any other device for that matter at the correct viewing distance

Battery life? well you seem to suggest its good, without actually listing any figures other than more than a day, so whats good in your opinion, whats crap?

Apps? thats not really a subject to rate the phone on, thats rating the OS, we are talking hardware here, if people are intrested in WP then they will have a good idea what thats all about

Missing hardware? is the lost score because its missing hardware, if so what hardware, an HDMI port? dual core? what is it, an does not having these features make the blindest bit of difference, personally i cant see how having a dual core would make the slightest bit of difference as the limiting factor on WP7 on my device is me! but if it is cores then please give an example of why it needs dual core.

a 16 core xenon would be great and very quick, but do i need it on an ATM, would it make any difference!? you see what i mean?

[Sil]

The best phone I ever had

This phone is fantastic, in fact it is the best I ever had and I think it deserves 85% or 90%.

Let's begin with the negatives as everything else is very positive:

- no microSD card reader. This is a bane shared by all Windows Phones (I think) and there isn't a single valid reason why it is so. Although to be fair I am far away from using the whole 16GB (yet).

- Some WP7.5 applications are only working in certain countries. I was disappointed to discover I couldn't use the name that song app in Switzerland.

- The 3 standard WP7.5 are too far apart for my small hand. Although the Titan is big, I use it with only one hand. unfortunately I have difficulty pushing the back button with my thumb.

The positive.

Almost everything else. here are highlights:

- It is a great phone. Yes as a basic phone it is very good with good sound etc.

- It is gorgeous

- Space is used optimally, there is very little space that isn't screen

- It is really nice to handle, even with only one hand.

- The screen is great

- It is very responsive

- The battery is fine. Yes I would like a battery that lasts a week but it hasn't been developed yet.

- There is much much to like about WP7.5. It is amazing how much thought went in the OS and weeks later I still discover nice touches (such as very small HTML list being rendered as very nice big list when choosing).

- As a work phone it is fantastic. Integration with pop3, cloud/exchange, office, skydrive, linked in and so forth is formidable.

- I never had a better typing experience. The fact that keyboards are multilingual is a boon and I regularly switch between EN FR and GE.

- The only big wishlist point, as for many SkyDrive users is, although it is perfectly integrated with Skydrive (hello fantastic attachment/photo management) is that it can't be used as a full Skydrive Synced Folders sync partner. My Skydrive Synced Folders are synced among all my computers, and it would be great if WP7.6 phone could also.

-As a social phone, it is fantastic and the best. The integration with facebook, twitter, outlook and so forth is second to none. Only missing is better flicker integration.

- Group functionalities are great

- As a web browsing phone it is great. I am reading everyday during commute time and the big screen is really great. A surprisingly large amount of pages are either optimized for it (msnbc, engadget, ...) or look great and I just read a blog that was completely WP7 aware. I'm not sure if it was this specific blog or if all wordpress blogs look great on Mango.

I wish it would automatically zoom 1 column wide in multi-column layouts, and I wish it would be possible to put an adblocker but who knows perhaps in the future.

- I also wish that TomTom would sell a Navigator app but I'm crossing my fingers for the future free Nokia Mapping app.

All in all I highly recommend this phone. It is my first new gen Windows Phone (I used to have WP5 phone) and Mango is a fantastic piece of software.