Motorola TITANIUM

Motorola TITANIUM is the successor to the Motorola i1 that was introduced last year. The Motorola i1 was a solid device however came with an earlier version of Android coupled with some performance issues like too much lag for instance. So how does the successor, Motorola TITANIUM, fare? Let’s find out.

Design
For those who are familiar with the Motorola XPRT, the Motorola TITANIUM would have definitely reminded them of it. However, it’s not a carbon copy as it now has three physical buttons instead of the four capacitive buttons found on the Motorola XPRT. The physical buttons doesn’t seem like a good idea as it is thin and hard to press. The keyboard, albeit similar looking, felt softer thus making it harder to get a message typed in one try.  Measuring 4.71×2.44×0.53 inches, this phone is pretty much the same size as the Motorola XPRT. It comes with a 3.1 inch capacitive display that has a resolution of 320 x 480. For a device of this magnitude, we definitely expected much more, but it looks like we have to settle with what we have. On the right side of the phone is the dedicated camera button. While on the top is the lock button. These buttons might be hard to find at first, but once you get used to it, they are easy to press. Meanwhile with the PTT button and the volume rocker that are found on the left are not so hard to find as they stand out from the pack. Flip the phone around to find the 5MP camera sitting there waiting to be explored. The Motorola TITANIUM in terms of its design is really comfortable to be held in the hand just like the Motorola i1.

Features
These days, smartphones are capable of powering its own dock and act like a laptop. It didn’t already know what I was talking about, it’s the Motorola ATRIX 4G. However, expect no such capabilities with the Motorola TITANIUM as it has only got 540MHz processor on board. The 512MB memory coupled with the processor is almost surely not going to be enough to run the Android with no hiccups.

The Motorola TITANIUM is running on Android v2.1 Éclair. This in itself is a downer as now we have Android v2.3 Gingerbread which is definitely the best out there. Adding on to that is the performance issues that will arise no thanks to the 540MHz Freescale Zeus processor that we had previously talked about. This is sadly a recurrence of the lag problems its predecessor the Motorola i1 faced, just that it was running on Android version 1.5. The UI that runs on the Android is the Blur-type interface. With this UI we get five home screens compared to the seven most other phones come with these days. Other standard Motorola widgets and the App Drawer are included as well. Other than that, there is a cool app called the My Sign app that allows us to come up with gestures which will then be how you launch other apps.  There is also the Quick Office app for Office document viewing and editing. There are also apps like the TeleNav and Facebook apps. The soft keyboard that we had touched about earlier isn’t the best at detecting what we key in, so we had to give the alternative that’s provided, Swipe. This is available in landscape mode thus making us less reliant on the physical keyboard. However, its presence doesn’t seem to be fully utilized by many users as they prefer to stick to the mushy physical keyboard.

We don’t get why Motorola did this, but they decided to throw in only a 3.1 inch screen with a meager 320 x 480 resolution into the Motorola TITANIUM. For a smartphone like this, the screen is really average to say the least. Although it can be seen in almost all lighting conditions except for direct light scenarios, all in all its quality is obviously not the best out there.

Even though business users are the main target for the Motorola TITANIUM, it has actually got a good mix of multimedia capability thanks to the Android it runs on. It comes with a 5MP camera, which gives pretty good detail on the subjects in the picture. Taking pictures under bright sunlight sadly gives over-exposed pictures. The colors were also a bit washed out but overall it was a good camera, just not great. Customizing options is not what this phone is going to be known for as the camera comes with very little camera options. As for video recording, it’s pretty bad as the maximum recording resolution is just CIF.

The Motorola TITANIUM comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR and GPS support. However, when connected to Wi-Fi, no thanks to its slow CPU, it takes a long time to load web pages. This phone is also powered by iDEN. Nevertheless, this isn’t something to cheer about as the data speeds on iDEN network are extremely slow that you would rather not be surfing the internet. The browser does however give support for double tapping and pinching to zoom. Sadly though, these two methods will only expose more problems in the phone. The Wi-Fi had its issues too as it would disconnect from the network with no apparent reason, and when we reconnect, it sometimes almost immediately disconnects.

Previously on the Motorola i1, the 1440mAh battery it came with posed many issues. Now, the Motorola TITANIUM comes with a power packed 1820mAh battery which lasts a lot longer. It gives approximately 7 hours of talk time while being rated for 235 hours in standby. Users on the other end of our call were pleased as they could hear our voices clearly although there was some background noise. They could also be heard loud and clear on our end plus the speakerphone was also loud.

Pros and Cons
The Motorola TITANIUM comes with the Military Spec 810G which is great. In terms of phone performance, the phone does well with good call quality as well as solid battery life.

Nevertheless, on the dark side, the CPU that came with the phone was really insufficient. The mushy keyboard that resulted in a lot of mistakes was a design issue with the phone. Running on Android v2.1 is going to be a major turn off too.

Conclusion
Motorola TITANIUM does a much better job than its predecessor the Motorola i1. Although maybe not the best phone for those who want the latest specs on their phone, it’s definitely worth looking out for if you are out for a business phone.