Motorola Titanium Review: Great Battery Life, Not Much Else

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Rattling long battery life
Push-to-talk

Cons

Data speeds are super slow
Gimmick slows down a pile

Our Verdict

The Titanium is a indigent excuse for a smartphone: with slow information speeds and below average public presentation, you'Re fortunate just getting a tug-to-talk feature phone instead.

The Motorola Titanium is a push-to-talk (PTT) Android phone engaged toward foremen and other "grey pinch" workers. Though the phone is targeted at a specific, accommodating niche user, they would not be satisfied with the slow information speeds and awkward performance of the Titanium.

Design

Priced at $150 (with a new biennial contract on Dash), the Ti looks like a steal for anyone looking for a rugged smartphone. The device looks very corresponding in intent to the Motorola Droid Pro and XPRT, though the Titanium doesn't feel as satisfying as its clientele course of instruction cousins. This is particularly odd when you consider that the Atomic number 22 meets military specifications for scatter, shock, and extreme temperatures. Unlike Motorola's other rugged offering, the Defy, the Atomic number 22 is not waterproof — although it does sport a 4mm thick Gorilla gorilla glass exhibit for added screen durability.

The Atomic number 22 is besides unity of the few Android devices to sport natural science "Call" and "End" buttons. The physical keyboard is a nice touch, though I found it a bit too cramped for my workforce. Considering this is a phone intermeshed towards masses World Health Organization work in places alike construction sites, you'd think that the keys would be spaced out a little more to accommodate larger fingers and custody. The 320-by-480 resolution 3.1-edge TFT reveal is the utmost thing from eye candy. Colors are dull and images are non sharp and were a little blurry.

Computer software

The Motorola Titanium runs on Android 2.1 (Éclair). That means you won't have memory access to Scud content, or whatsoever of the browser or system improvements found in Android 2.2. When I asked Motorola why the phone runs a relatively outdated version of the OS, the answer was that 2.1 was necessary for the PTT functionality of the device. Whether that agency that the Ti will ever embody updated to 2.2 remains to be seen, though I wouldn't particularly count along it.

MotoBlur is non present on the device, though the dock and several widgets are. Else than Nascar, Telenav GPS Navigator, and Sprint Football Live, there is little preinstalled computer software on the phone.

Performance

Being a push-to-talk phone, the Titanium uses Sprint's iDEN network. While calls on the Titanium came through limpid, you'd bettor non project to use this phone to surf the Internet. That's because the Titanium gets speeds around those of 1X. You can do basic things similar update your Chirrup status or consult something on Google, but if you want to watch videos connected YouTube Beaver State download applications, you'll have to connect to Wisconsin-Fi in order to avoid getting network errors.

I tested out the PTT functionality with several people and can happily say that IT is the Titanium's biggest strength. The speaker was nice and loud (though a little jarring once in a while), and it was dead easy to relay messages backward and forward.

The Titanium comes with a monster (1800 mAh) battery that can go for the amended part of a day before the phone needs to be obstructed in to mission. Get's hope Motorola will continue to include large capacity batteries in its future devices besides.

Something I detected in my clock with the Titanium is that scrolling direct homepages feels clunky, and whole the phone seemed to just chug along. As I mentioned earlier, I wouldn't expect to do anything more than basic tasks like checking email happening this phone.

Media

The Titanium comes with a 2GB microSD card that stool be used for storing euphony and photos, though the phone definitely wasn't built for media in mind. Videos embezzled on the Titanium's 5-megapixel camera looked horrible and audio sound garbled during playback. Photos fared a lot better, though they could have been a slim sharper. The Titanium does an medium job at playing back music, though information technology's tentative it will supplant your standalone media musician.

Bottom Line

What is the point of having a smartphone if you cannot even download apps to that while out along the go? If you are looking for just a button-to-talk speech sound, you'atomic number 75 probably better off just acquiring a feature phone (like the Motorola Brute). The battery life will be better, chances are it'll be competent to take more abuse, and the phone will belik be faster whole.