HTC Titan review

Aside from our gripe about there only being 12.63GB (out of 16GB) of storage available with no option to expand, we're really happy with media handling on the HTC Titan. It's all packaged with a Zune approach, so there's familiarity for Microsoft users.

One of the new additions to come from the Mango operating system update is Smart DJ, which creates playlists from whatever songs it finds on your Windows Phone 7 Mango handset, and even searches through the Zune catalogue (if you have a pass). Think Genius in iTunes repackaged with a Microsoft flavour.

Music playback was fine and we had no complaints. There was nothing in there that's particularly memorable for us. It just worked and coped with pretty much all of the obvious formats. We like how you can buy that Zune music pass and go wild. Spotify may need to worry here - although not being able to keep the tracks in the UK (you can in the US) is a gripe.

The HTC Titan is one of those great breeds that supports an FM radio, which we're always pleased to see. You can also find apps with a media twist in the Media section like setting up DLNA and programmes such as YouTube, for which there are two apps available in the Marketplace.

One is Microsoft's own, which, although it claims to be an app, is actually only a link to m.youtube.com (lazy!). The other is HTC's YouTube app, which has thankfully had a bit of work go into it, and looks nice.

One other addition to the Titan is HTC's own Watch service, first seen on the Sensation handset. HTC has obviously realised the benefits of offering its own downloads service. However, it's not all there yet.

We fired it up hoping to be able to rent a movie for the train journey. You can only imagine our disappointment when we saw what was on offer: eight trailers for movies including Burlesque and Eat Pray Love (movies that have been out for ages). And, erm... that was it. No more trailers and certainly no movies on offer.

We tried to upgrade the player and it told us it was checking our region and then just gave us exactly the same offerings. We've asked HTC why this is, so we'll update you as and when we find out.

Video is less of a decent situation, as while it's a nice experience on the larger screen it still required copious syncing with the Zune PC or Mac app to chuck stuff on there. Even MP4 files that work flawlessly on most other devices required far too long to sync across - what we'd give for some drag and drop functionality.

At least the trailers worked, and we were really impressed with the way the screen holds up when videos are being shown. As we said before they do look good on this screen, and it being larger than most lends itself to a bit of viewing.

When it comes to looking at your own pictures on the HTC Titan, the gallery app is a pleasure to use. It links other bits of the operating system in here so you can not only use apps that enhance photos but view Facebook albums (yours and others') and of course, view your own pics taken on the HTC Titan itself.

This is one area of Windows Phone 7.5 that other operating system designers could learn from.