The HTC Titan! It’s a phone, it’s a Windows powered phone, it sports 4G speeds and it’s available on America’s second biggest network. Not exactly the introduction we would normally use but if you were to follow the marketing campaign behind the phone, it’s something along the above mentioned lines.

With the war heating up for dominance of the smartphone market, many companies are betting their futures on either one or two operating systems. HTC is one of those who isn’t putting all its eggs into one basket and as such has released the Titan, a Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) device. How does it fair against the competition? Is there data on where to buy the HTC Titan Windows Phone for less than AT&T’s hefty price tag?  Read on to find out.

Design and Features

HTC was right to name this the Titan as this is the biggest phone the company has released, if our memory serves is right. With a screen of 4.7 inches, it is just 0.3 inches shy of matching the 5 inch screen of the Dell Streak.

Other than the screen, everything looks like a generic HTC device with the back appearing a little left out but otherwise clean slim design with solid construction. The phone is a bit heavy though weighing in a over 5.5 ounces.

Running through the feature list, you will notice a 1.5GHz single-core processor, sourced from Qualcomm with a dedicated GPU. 512MB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. HTC is not allowing microSD cards to play with the Titan however, so you’ll be stuck with the internal storage.

The 4.7-inch screen boasts 480 x 800 pixels with S-LCD technology and scratch resistant glass (think Gorilla Glass), 8 megapixel rear facing camera with dual-LED flash, 1.3 megapixel front facing camera with 720p @30fps video recording supported by the rear unit.

Connectivity includes quadband GSM, triband UMTS, and data on the HSDPA, UMTS, HSUPA and EDGE networks as well as A-GPS. Moving along, we find a 2.1 + EDR Bluetooth radio along with an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi radio with support for mobile hotspot, microUSB charging port, DLNA and tethering compatible as well as gyroscope and compass.

Performance

You’d think that having a single-core processor would slow down this WP 7.5 mango device. However, from the start, Microsoft has taken special care to optimizing it’s phones to operate on the Qualcomm chipset, the only CPU it currently supports and as such the performance marks are great.

Thanks to the Metro UI, the movements, scrolling and browsing are painlessly simple and blisteringly fast. In fact, when we put it up to the Android and iOS competition, the Titan held its own. We’re not saying that a dual-core chip might not bring even better results, but in our tests we did not notice any issues.

One reason why we are such fans of the single-core processor is the improvement on battery life. Even with heavy usage, the HTC Titan can still make it through a full day with charge left over. Use your phone a lot less and you are approaching two days of usage without reaching for a charger. Now of course these numbers will vary on cellular reception, temperatures and usage statistics, but suffice to say, the Titan blows away the Android competition.

High praises belong to the camera as well which takes stunningly beautiful photos. Videos are great as well and even though our videos were limited to resolutions of 720p, we had no problem enjoying the recording and playback experience.

Lastly, we were impressed with the keyboard. This has got to be the best virtual keyboard we have tested on a mobile phone and certainly beats anything we have seen from Android as well as narrowly besting the iPhone at its own game.

Conclusion

There is not a lot to complain about when it comes to the Titan. Windows Phone 7.5 Mango has established itself as a legitimate contender and with an app store boasting over 40,000 apps, you’’ be hard pressed to find something you really need there. Only question to ask yourself is if the phone is too big for you. For us the answer is no, but you may want to measure your pockets before picking up this phone or you might be looking at a major wardrobe change.  This page will direct you on options for where to purchase the HTC Titan Windows Phone