HTC Titan (AT&T)

The HTC Titan ($199.99) is the HTC Radar 4G's ($99.99, 3.5 stars) big brother. Both cell phones run Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), but whereas the Radar 4G is a fine midrange device on T-Mobile, the Titan offers a faster processor and a much larger screen on AT&T. The Titan is a nice phone and worth owning. But now that the modestly upgraded Titan II looms, wait for AT&T's inevitable discount on the first model before pouncing.

Design, Call Quality, and OS
The HTC Titan measures 5.1 by 2.8 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.6 ounces. It feels like a quality piece, with a mix of aluminum and soft touch accents, and a massive glass touch screen. It's tough to use one-handed; my right thumb couldn't reach the Back button, for example, although I could dial numbers and (barely) touch all of the home screen tiles. The 4.7-inch, 480-by-800-pixel panel makes photos and videos look huge, but the lack of resolution compared to competing 960-by-540 and 1280-by-720 phones is noticeable. Microsoft employs a little slight-of-hand to smooth the fonts, but the low-density screen can make things look a bit soft all around. Typing with the on-screen keyboard on such a large screen is a cinch, even in portrait mode.

The HTC Titan is a quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and tri-band HSPA+ 14.4 (850/1900/2100 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. This phone is 3G, not 4G despite AT&T's claims; expect download speeds averaging 2-3Mbps.

Voice quality was mixed overall. Reception was fine.?I heard a full, midrangey tone in the earpiece and plenty of gain, which is good. But transmissions through the microphone varied in quality, and often sounded muted when compared back to back with the HTC Vivid ($99, 4 stars). In addition, the phone is so large that even despite HTC's oversize earpiece speaker, you still have to position the handset carefully to hear the other person.

Calls sounded clear through an Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars). The TellMe-powered voice dialing worked perfectly over Bluetooth. The speakerphone could use more volume; it's not loud enough for talking outdoors, but at least it doesn't distort much. Battery life was a little weak at 4 hours and 40 minutes of talk time.

All Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) (Free, 3.5 stars) devices look and feel more or less the same on the software side. The Titan's 1.5GHz single-core Qualcomm 8255 S2 processor performed well in our benchmark tests, and the Titan feels snappy in day-to-day use.

Software-wise, the platform is fine; you get preloaded Office document editing, good music and video players, tight Facebook integration, built-in Exchange and Outlook sync, and a powerful WebKit browser. Windows Marketplace recently topped 50,000 third-party apps?still far behind Android and iOS, but Microsoft's efforts to court third-party developers are paying off. That said, plenty of big name apps are still missing, including Pandora, Mint, Zinio, Instagram, Hulu, and Dropbox. If that bothers you, you should still go with Android or iOS.?

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
There's a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack on top and 10.52GB of free internal storage, but no memory card slot, and no earbuds in the box. Music tracks sounded full and clear through both wired and Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars).

The Windows Phone music player is fun to use, with large album art thumbnails and a smooth interface. The Zune software transcoded and synced all of my media without issue?aside from XviD files?and Windows Connector also works great on the Mac side. Standalone video files looked vibrant and played smoothly right up to 1080p resolution.

The 8-megapixel auto-focus camera includes geotagging and a dual-LED flash. Test photos looked sharp outside, with well balanced color, plenty of detail, and good lighting. Indoor photos were fine in well lit rooms, but exhibited a fair amount of grain as the lighting dimmed. Recorded videos were average but not exceptional; both 1280-by-720-pixel (720p) and 640-by-480-pixel (VGA) videos topped out at 23 frames per second, although files recorded at both resolutions exhibited good detail. The camera app comes with plenty of adjustable settings for both photos and video recordings.

The Titan isn't going away when the Titan II hits the market, although the newer model adds a 16-megapixel camera and LTE. AT&T will continue to sell both models even when the Titan II arrives in "the coming weeks" (according to the carrier). That leads me to recommend the Titan as a decent choice, if slightly inferior to the Samsung Focus S ($199.99, 3.5 stars). Right this moment, for less money, you can nab our Editors' Choice Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket ($149.99, 4.5 stars) or HTC Vivid, both of which sport LTE data connections and access to Android's superior Android Market. At $199.99, the HTC Titan is also up against the much smaller Apple iPhone 4S ($199.99, 4.5 stars), which has a superior camera, the best apps and games in the industry, and a sharper screen.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 40 minutes

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