Gadgetory

what's up everyone John Rhett enger' from TechnoBuffalo here at the full review for you of a successor to was arguably one of the flagship Windows Phones this is the HTC Titan - we have putting this guy through a battery of tests let's go ahead dig in and see if it's the worthwhile to Gracie your pocket for the next two years so first announced at CES 2012 the Titan 2 is coming at at $199.99 with the obligatory two-year contract that is running Windows Phone mango 7.5 that's the second release meaning it's got LTE onboard so in full disclosure this is the second HTC Titan 2 that we've had the first one had some trouble connecting to LTE and experienced more drop calls and really any other AT&T phone that I've tested over the previous six months and ii you know however didn't have any such issues able to connect to LTE right away we haven't had any abnormal dropped calls so whether or not it was unique to our first unit and we're gonna give HTC the benefit of the doubt let's go and talk about what makes this phone unique from the Titan 1 the first obviously being LTE it's here and we'll talk about that a bit more in the full review the second though is that 16 megapixel camera on the back pictures look very sharp in normal light below average in low low light but HTC is done you've given you really awesome manual controls you've got face detection you've got smile capturing white balance that you can set to auto which I always prefer first is really solid as well so it doesn't Lee take 720p video 1080p is not supported the video quality was just about average for a smartphone despite that really nice sensor video was about we'd expect it is on par with most other mid to high range smartphones right now he's looking for a phone that shoots great pictures this is really going to fit that bill quite nicely it is typical HTC build quality it feels really nice and solid in the hand who the mentioned standpoint we're looking at five point two inches by 2.7 inches by a very thin point four inches from a weight standpoint it is five point two ounces it's just the right weight without feeling overly heavy let me know you're using a high quality device HTC has amongst the best build quality industry and the titan ii is really no exception there as opposed to the titan one we now have a soft touch back as opposed to the metal that we saw on the first version got a non-removable battery now it's been ups to 1730 milliamp hours the sim door now is part of the antenna system so this guy right here you go ahead and open this up all that's part of the antenna meaning that when you pull this out the phone is going to turn itself off and reboot when you plug it back in so don't think you can swap SIM cards without turning your device off chipset not much has changed a Qualcomm 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon s 2 single cork Windows Phone currently doesn't support double core but you have a 1.5 here it's clock speed so we've got now a pretty standard 512 Meg's of RAM internal storage is a non expandable 16 gigs we're not gonna talk that much about Windows Phone 7.5 mango we talked about it quite a bit but you do get a typical Windows Phone experience here nice part about the Titan 2 you're getting a big windows fun experience the screen and this guy is pretty much all screen is a 4.7 inch WVGA resolution Super LCD display so for those of you keeping track at home that means it's got a 480 by 800 resolution which right now is the maximum resolution that Windows Phone allows and for you math to whizzes that's a hundred 99 PPI so the live tiles look huge the messaging little smiley guy looks like he is smiling right at you internet explorer is a giant e things just look super-sized so for the generation that likes an extra value meal and things a little bit bigger this is going to be a great choice I love the original Titan one for that reason I like the size my eyesight's not the best and things were huge in the lower resolution made things even giant err it looks great tiles are bright and vibrant pictures appear to be nice but when you start digging in you start looking at tax that's really where you see a difference it can equate this to going to a big box store and looking at televisions we've got two decks for each other a couple thousand dollars difference going to notice a huge difference in fixture however once you get that lesser model home and on your wall if you look pretty decent you're gonna forget about the higher resolution model the same thing is here too while using this phone but daily driver I didn't mind the resolution but when I picked up another phone that I was testing or compared it to the HTC One X or the iPhone 4s the screen you definitely notice they're low resolution if you think texture is fine but when you zoom in you can definitely see a little bit of pixelation this is probably though one of the better resolution looking displays and I've seen and that includes the Lumia 900 if you want the Windows Phone experience you got to live within those resolution limitations screen on Titan 2 does look quite nice pictures look really good on here as well despite that low resolution and video as well looks very nice you're gonna get a relatively decent text picture and video experience from the HTC Titan to HTC has a few tweaks to the phone which you know I've arguably improved experience can't really do much to the windows so Nokia's the only manufacturer has the right to sort of change the UI HTC I sort of lived within those limitations so what they've done is created the HTC hub the HTC hub is gonna look very sense UI issue if you're familiar with it on Android there are several HTC applications as well though which are gonna give you an improved functionality and you can only download them if you're using HTC phone LTE speeds were pretty reasonable to what I've seen on other AT&T LTE devices certainly it's kind of vary depending on where you're located but speeds that are getting we're about five point eight ish down and one point for up and again that's just in Southern California where you are now your speeds are going to vary so running a test here live on camera and I'm getting almost exactly the same speeds that I just mentioned battery life has been much improved actually over the original Titan one I'm able to get seven and a half to eight hours of talktime when I call a radio station on a full charge and leave it on hold until it dies it was just shy of eight hours using the phone as my daily driver pretty regularly so with two emails being checked an hour two phone calls some text going through and some pretty decent web browsing and video views by end of the day is able to get about twenty to twenty five percent battery remaining taking it off the charger about 7:30 in the morning and plugging it in and around eleven o'clock at night so you definitely get a full day usage out of the HTC Titan 2 despite its large screen and LTE battery life is still staying pretty solid I like this big screen I love big screen phones I love the galaxy note I love the Titan one and I love the Titan two it's a big benefit to me but it might not be a big benefit to you that's something you're gonna want to try the phone see if you can live with a phone of the screen size I really like HTC's industrial design I can appreciate the work that went into it I like the intuitive UI as well on the big fan of Windows Phone 7 I think the live tile interface is really well done and the camera also was pleasant surprise at 16 megapixel sensor at HTC tweaks really did a nice job and took some pretty impressive pictures alright so what do I dislike out the phone it's got a relatively weak antenna with other devices when I was getting five bars of LTE this one generally held on to four are oftentimes three at one 9999 it's tough to recommend this phone over the 99.99 lumia 900 which for a short period of time has $100 of rebates coming with that on top of it the Lumia 900 represents a really nice package of design and price the Titan 2 if they were the same price it'd probably be a toss-up but when you put these two next to each other start the justify spending the extra hundy for the Titan 2 this is something that I keep lamenting on in my Windows Phone reviews why can I charge this device while it's powered off I find to be extremely annoying I know I can turn it on airplane mode or change profile settings but it's just a huge irritation for me that I can't turn my phone off at night and charge it I do wish that we would have a user replaceable battery for me it hasn't mattered but I know a lot of you guys like to carry extra batteries with you if you charge that's something you're gonna want to consider based on personal usage I do wish memory was expandable as well we're stuck with 16 gigs I can find any place to put your microSD card and certainly the last knock on this phone and Windows Phone as a whole is the resolution 480 by 800 just doesn't cut it anymore especially when you're looking at HD displays by competitors so let's give this phone a score I don't know if you guys are familiar with our new phone scoring system a5 is a perfectly usable and feasible phone with no real glaring flaws a 10 is something that's being reserved for phones that are absolutely incredible so very few devices or tablets should ever get that score this gets a pretty solid 6 it's a great phone that's like particularly Wong with it it works well it works well with the Windows Phone 7.5 but it's hard to recommend because of the price especially when the Lumia 900 singer right next to it offers almost exactly the same feature set for a lower price point so you guys agree or disagree the review of the HTC Titan to is it the next phone to grace your pocket love to hear your thoughts and opinions I'm John rende you're some TechnoBuffalo be sure to check us out for the latest tech news opinions reviews and unboxings and I'll see you the next video bye bye you