HTC Titan review

The massive HTC Titan is well-named, but does this new Windows Phone 7.5 handset tower above the competition or is it already a dinosaur? Julian Prokaza gets to grips with the behemoth to find out.

The Titan's 16GB of internal storage is a little middling worse still is that only 12.6GB is available for use and there isn't a memory card slot for adding more.

The single-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor should be a capable performer and that certainly seems to be the case with WP Bench, where a score of 98.57 puts it at the top of the users' chart for that synthetic Windows Phone 7 benchmark. A SunSpider JavaScript benchmark score of 6,441ms is much less impressive the Samsung Galaxy S II scored 3423ms and the iPhone 4S 2200ms but we suspect the JavaScript rendering engine of Internet Explorer perhaps plays a part in that.

HTC makes no claims about the Titan's battery life with MP3 playback, but our test result of just less than 40 hours with flight mode active is impressive enough. In the far more demanding WP Bench battery test, which hammers the processor and keeps the screen on, that Titan lasted for just over three and a half hours.

The Titan certainly has the semblance of a premium smartphone and pricing, both unlocked and with-contract, is along similar lines to the iPhone 4S. The specification, however, is a little lacking for a smartphone of this supposed calibre and it's a shame HTC didn't equip and design this behemoth just a little better.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The HTC Titan is well made, looks great and is generally pleasing in most aspects of its performance, but that super-size screen is largely wasted on Windows Phone 7 and apart from being a great way to show off photos, its only real benefit is that people with poor eyesight will find it easier to use.

Connectivity: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G HSDPA/HSUPA 850/900/2100 Display: 800 x 480 pixels, 4.7in OS: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Camera: eight megapixels with dual LED flash rear-facing, 1.3 megapixels forward-facing GPS: A-GPS Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon, 1.5GHz Bluetooth: v2.1+EDR Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n Memory: 16GB internal Dimensions: 132 x 71 x 10 mm Weight: 160g Battery: Lithium-Ion 1,600mAh Part code: X310e