HTC knows about livin' large, after all they created the once mammoth and ground breaking HTC HD2 and HD7S. Now that big phones are the trend, they've once again made one of the largest screen phones on the market, the 4.7" HTC Titan running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Despite that operating system's max resolution of 800 x 480, it's still a good platform for huge screens given the high quality graphics and typography used in the Metro UI and Windows Phone's multimedia focus. Movies look simply awesome at 4.7", for example.
The Titan joins the Samsung Focus S and the Samsung Focus Flash on AT&T as their first wave of Mango smartphones. It has a 1.5GHz Snapdragon CPU, an excellent 8 megapixel rear camera and a front 1.3 megapixel video chat camera. Like the Focus S and Focus Flash, it has HSPA+ 4G 14.4 and the usual WiFi, Bluetooth and a GPS that works with Bing Maps and AT&T Navigator.
The Titan feels and is fast. It's currently the fastest Windows Phone with a 1.5GHz second generation Snapdragon CPU with Adreno 205 graphics. Windows Phone doesn't support dual core CPUs, but honestly it doesn't need one. The OS runs very fast, video playback is very smooth and XBOX Live 3D games run perfectly. The Titan has the standard 512 megs of RAM (again, a Microsoft standard spec) and 16 gigs of internal storage with no microSD card slot (they're an extreme rarity on Windows Phones).
Honestly, the Titan doesn't feel faster than the 1.4GHz Samsung Focus S, and you're not going to notice 100MHz in every day use. But it feels faster, particularly when gaming, than the 1GHz first gen HTC HD7S and the original Samsung Focus.
Design and Ergonomics
Let's get this out of the way: yes, it's a large phone. Among today's 4.3" to 4.5" smartphones, it's not all that much bigger or harder to handle. The Focus S is just a few millimeters smaller, and the LG Nitro HD is a hair taller but a little narrower. But if tight jeans and traveling light are your thing, this isn't your phone.
Build quality and materials are both impressive and aesthetically pleasing. I'd say that HTC's unibody design and metal back have really contributed to brisk early sales (most AT&T stores sold out quickly after the phone's launch). This feels and looks like a quality piece, and it's weighty at 5.64 ounces but not heavy. The back cover wraps around the sides of the phone, just like the HTC Sensation 4G and HTC Amaze 4G. Remove the cover and you've got the core of a naked phone with side switches and internal bits viewable. The antenna is embedded in the back cover, and you'll see copper contact points on the phone that make contact with the back cover when it's on. That means if you remove the back cover, you'll lose most cellular and WiFi signal, so make sure you've got it completely snapped on. We noticed that if you squeeze and cover the plastic lower section of the cover (hard to do unless you have large hands), the cellular signal drops a bar. This is the area where the antennas are located and apparently it suffers a mild case of death grip. So don't cover the entire plastic section of the back cover, OK? If that bugs you, don't get this phone.
The power button is conveniently located up top and it's a little less difficult to press compared to other recent HTC smartphones. The large volume rocker is on the upper right side and the 3.5mm stereo headphone jack is up top. The micro USB port for charging and syncing with the Zune desktop software in Windows and the Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac OS X is on the left side and there are dual mics for noise cancelling at the phone's top and bottom.
