Messaging, App Store, Browser

Messaging

Messaging with the HTC Titan was pretty swift, thanks to the large keyboard afforded by the huge screen. Notwithstanding, the WP7 on-screen QWERTY keyboard doesn't offer 2nd functions for whatever of the keys, so whenever you want to add together a character such as a question mark or hyphen, you have to delve into one of two split up pages of characters. Merely the comma and full terminate/period are catered for on the main keyboard, along with a button for calculation smileys.

Otherwise, text entry was quick and easy, and predictive text is still nowadays to help ready any typing errors. SMS and MMS are grouped together in a single application and are shown in a chat view, inside speech bubbles. While Twitter and Facebook functionality is pre-loaded, it is quite basic on both counts, so you'll have to download the free apps from the WP7 Market for extended functionality. Instant messaging and video chat apps are not nowadays, despite the Titan's forward facing photographic camera.

The Titan's email customer caters for IMAP, POP, Microsoft Exchange, and Gmail accounts, including synchronization of contacts and agenda entries. Equally yous'd expect from a Windows Phone, it too offers full Hotmail back up and syncs Windows Live calendars likewise. A new comeback here is that whatever of your e-mail inboxes can be linked into combined inboxes, and you can configure multiple combined inboxes.

Apps / App Store

This is one surface area where Windows Telephone 7 falls behind rival platforms, due to the comparatively minor number of apps available on the WP7 Marketplace. Apps are constantly existence added, though, and in that location's withal a decent number to exist getting on with. Another recent modify to WP7 is that third party apps can now run in the background, which pairs well with the new job switcher to make the phone feel much 'smarter'.

Navigating the Market place is fairly straightforward. Apps can be sorted by new, top, featured, and complimentary. There is also a search role and apps are sorted into diverse categories also. Music has been arranged into the Marketplace and information technology ofttimes chaotic the search results when searching for apps, which is a shame. If you're into games though, it's non a bad place to shop as there'southward plenty on offer and yous can even endeavour before you buy. Also, logging into your Xbox Live account will drag your gamer tag and avatar across, and Microsoft even announced a planned app for decision-making certain functions of your Xbox.

Our HTC Titan included the usual basic pre-loaded apps, plus a few little extras thrown in for fun such as HTC'due south Photo Enhancer, Locations app, and Connected Media app. At that place was the usual WP7 agenda and great Function Mobile certificate support, plus Bing Maps was pre-installed. Bing Maps doesn't offer the turn-by-turn navigation of Google Maps, but does at least offer written directions and nearby points of interest.

HTC has likewise pre-installed its HTC Hub application, which provides weather and stock information, news, and 'featured' HTC apps and Xbox Live games. Other pre-loaded apps include the usual figurer, alarms, and notes, as well as 'HTC Watch': an app for renting and buying movies and Idiot box shows on your phone. Information technology was strange that on our review unit of measurement this app would merely offer us a selection of eight movie trailers to scout and nothing more. Users can uninstall any applications that they don't similar, even those from HTC, which is a plus.

Browser

The Titan's default Internet Explorer Mobile browser offers a decent web experience, loading full desktop pages quickly thanks to the 1.5Ghz processor and new hardware acceleration present in IE9 Mobile. It also employs compression gestures and double taps to navigate and zoom, and web pages can be viewed landscape by flipping the phone on its side. While the big 4.seven inch display makes information technology easy to view whole pages at a time, zooming is still often required due to the comparatively low WVGA resolution of the brandish, which leaves text jaggy and unreadable at times, fifty-fifty when it would otherwise be big plenty to read.

Tabbed browsing is supported, though access to tabs is via the '...' option at the bottom of the screen, and then it requires a few screen taps to function. The '...' softkey also offers access to recent pages, favorites, and gives users the option to share a page via email, SMS, social networks, or pin information technology to the home screen. The Titan misses on Adobe Flash support for web pages, and then the web experience isn't as total as on HTC's Android devices, plus it doesn't re-flow text when you zoom, either.

One peachy update to the browser was the accost bar being located at the bottom of the display. This makes it much easier to reach when using the phone i handed, especially with the display beingness so big in this instance.