HTC Titan II review: Wrath of the Titan

Introduction

HTC made quite a statement when it announced the original Titan in the summer of 2011. Its sequel is aiming to do so as well. After all, smartphones with 16MP camera sensors are a rare sight on any market. Launched at the same time as the attention grabbing Nokia Lumia 900 during this year's CES, the HTC Titan II appears built for the sole purpose of besting the Finnish flagship's spec sheet.


The HTC Titan II is hardly a revolution in the realm of devices, running Microsoft's mobile OS, thanks to the software giant's strict hardware restrictions. It only ups the original with the presence of LTE network support, as well as a beefier camera unit.
But what a camera unit it is! The HTC Titan II packs a monstrous 16MP sensor, which is the biggest one, offered in a smartphone on the U.S. market. The camera alone puts the Titan II in the way of some seriously established smartphone players. Heck, it might even try and give your point-and-shoot digicam a run for their money.

Key features:

• 4.7" 16M-color S-LCD capacitive touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support; tri-band 3G with HSDPA 14.4 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps
• LTE network connectivity
• Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS
• 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 CPU, Adreno 205 GPU 512MB RAM
• 16 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash; dedicated button; 1.3MP front-facing unit
• 720p video recording @30fps
• 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
• Equalizer and sound enhancer present
• 1730mAh Li-Ion battery
• Comes with HTC Hub and a load of handy, exclusive HTC apps
• Surprisingly light and easy to handle for its size

Main disadvantages:

• 720p video recording does not do the massive camera sensor any justice
• WVGA resolution does not look that great on a screen this size
• Non-expandable storage
• No mass storage mode; Zune only file management and sync
• No Flash (or Silverlight) support in the browser
• No DivX/XviD video support (automatic transcoding provided by Zune)
• Non-user-replaceable battery
• A much higher price than its direct competitor, the Nokia Lumia 900
• Design is dated and not exactly innovative

Posted in: MOBILE PHONES