What’s immediately obvious at first glance is that the Titan is a much better looking device than the clunky, bricklike Apache, which weighing in at 186 grams and encumbered by dimensions of 108 x 58 x 25.5mm, has much to fear from the leaner, more athletic Titan, a battle ready 165 grams, taller and marginally wider at 110 x 59mm, but almost pocketable at a slimmed down width of merely 18.5mm.

And all this without sacrificing muscle power? It’s clear that word from the trenches finally filtered through to the powers that be and the Titan pulls few punches in the technical specs department, equipped with double the ROM, improved battery capacity (1500 mAh), a 2 Mega pixel camera, Bluetooth v2 with stereo support, and built-in Wi-Fi with compliant IEEE 802.11 b/g.

In the hand, the Titan’s superior design and build quality asserts itself, with a more ergonomic curved shape and tactile buttons that are differentiated by shape, colour, texture and action for improved operational speed and control.

The casing, in gunmetal grey and silver tone plastic, is ridged on the back which provides traction when you want to slide out the full-size QWERTY keyboard, and here’s another welcome improvement, as the Titan’s keyboard pops out on a spring-loaded mechanism and snaps into place with a reassuring click.

Even better, the slide direction has been reversed on the Titan to ensure that when the keyboard is open, the jog wheel is easily accessible but out of the way at the top of the screen, rather than at the bottom of the keyboard as it is on the Apache. Some other very useful design features include the easy access MicroSD slot on the bottom edge of the phone enabling quick swap memory card changes without having to ferret around in the innards of the device, and the telescoping stylus which provides a little extra length for those of us with hams for hands. But before you turn in your fleet of Apaches to arm yourself with a squadron of Titans, let’s pause a moment and consider what hasn’t changed. Sadly, as is evident the moment you kick your Titan into action, this shiny new beast has been saddled with the same old software. No Windows Mobile 6 and no EVDO Revision A.

Navigation
There are a range of options for entering text: on-screen keyboard, slide out 42-key QWERTY hardware keyboard, letter and block recogniser, and our personal favourite, the “just write on the screen” transcribe function. The placement of the stylus in the bottom right hand corner worked well for us, as did the telescoping action as you insert or remove it. The jog wheel on the Titan is now conveniently located for ease of use above the display and it makes quick scrolling up and down a very snappy experience indeed.

The D-pad has also been reconfigured into a layout that is much friendlier for those of us with large fingers – although since the Titan is bristling with so many well thought out purpose assigned buttons for functions including camera, internet, messaging, connection manager, voice command among others, it’s possible to get by without using it much.

Calling
Calling on the Titan is simple yet elegant. Press the green phone icon and the touch screen transforms into an easy-to-select-with-the-naked-finger keypad for dialing or you can just select from a convenient list of your contacts or previous calls. Call quality was clear and activating the speaker phone was simplicity itself with a press-and-hold action on the green phone icon. Speaker phone sound quality was average both in the car and outside, but things really started to go bad when we needed to go full volume in a noisy environment, with the sound deteriorating into tinny distortion that was pretty hard on the ears. An easy solution to this is of course to plug in the wired headset, or invest in a Bluetooth earpiece – both of which connected easily and worked like a dream.

Camera
The HTC Titan is supplied with what seems to have become entry level specs on the camera front: a 2.0 Mega Pixels CMOS based camera and LED flash, providing an effective photo resolution of 1600x1200 (UXGA). HTC claims that the Titan has up to 8x digital zoom but in practice this is just a low resolution, cropped version of the high resolution image. The camera is easily activated by pressing the camera activation button on the side of the phone, and there are a range of options for transferring images to your PC using Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/USB or even infrared connectivity. The images we took were generally hazy and really only seemed good enough quality for the MMS or quick snap situation – nothing here that you’d want to print out and keep.

Messaging
Messaging is clearly a central feature of the Titan, and the quick message key, with its envelope icon occupies prime real estate on the top left above the display. This gives you one-click access to email, SMS and MMS messages and effectively integrates your messages together. Another key function of the HTC Titan, as a PDA-style device, is the capability of running Microsoft Mobile Outlook and Exchange server connectivity. If you are set up with the correct server version you can use the Exchange Direct Push Technology which keeps email coming to you as it happens, no delays.

Applications
It’s in the area of applications that the Titan really comes into its own, notwithstanding our deeply felt disappointment at the absence of Windows Mobile 6 and EVDO revision A, which may yet be on the cards at some future stage. And in the meantime, along with all the messaging functions already mentioned, you get Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, which takes care of your audio and video needs and supports synchronisation with Windows Media Player on your PC.

The Microsoft Mobile Suite includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint Viewer, as well as a mobile version of the Adobe Reader. Active Sync makes it simple to synchronise all your phone data with your PC.

Summary
The HTC Titan is a re-sculpted version of the HTC Apache, offering some significant improvements including a more ergonomic design, better build quality, and more grunt.

In a nutshell, the Titan can go faster, do more, and last longer than its chunkier predecessor and is highly configurable, making it one of the premier Windows Mobile devices in the field at present.

It remains to be seen whether Telecom’s heavyweight marketing machinery can convince us that Mobile 6 is an upgrade we really don’t need or whether the Titan - like that other beautiful piece of hardware, the Titanic - is left dead in the water as nimbler (and less expensive) devices with far fewer pretensions to greatness seize the moment to forge ahead and conquer the fiercely competitive mobile business marketplace.

7/12/8_ex_m_h

By Steve and Kylie Jurgensen