Video of HTC’s newest Windows Phone Mango handsets
Despite the anticipated impact that Nokia is to have on the Windows Phone ecosystem the clear leader today is HTC. Today HTC showed off both the Titan and Radar Mango devices. The videos are below. I have to say the size of the Titan and the design of the Radar both have me thinking about re-upping with HTC for my new device. Nokia don’t take too long or you may be forgotten.
Thanks to WMPoweruser for the heads up.
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muranilewis
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Can anybody tell from the specs if the Titan will be on attt or T-mo?
It better be T-Mo or i’m molly-whoppin’ some damn body!
@Sean: Seems like it’ll be a T-Mobile or AT&T judging from the SIM slot.
I have a question. Are OEMs still failing WP7 by not being committed to the platform, or does Microsoft still have such a stranglehold on hardware specs? What I mean is, this is the second generation of WP7 devices, yet no dual core, higher RAM, and qHD resolutions on any of these new phones? We’re also seeing OEMs release 5 times as many Android devices and WP devices. These OEMs are essentially putting WP on their leftover Android scraps.
When you’re late to the market and way behind Android, you can’t compete if you’re always one step behind the market leader. Is this Microsoft’s fault for not adding support for these features, or are OEMs simply not even trying with WP7?
But hey, at least we got faster processors, FFC, and a better GPU. But it’s still not good enough. I know WP7 doesn’t need high end specs to run butter smooth. But consumers do care about those things. It should be criminal to release a phone with only 8GB of memory, and no microSD card slot.
@Joe: Let me address things in an orderly fashion.
1) Microsoft has established minimum specs and approved processors chipsets.
2) Dual core chips have to be properly developed for and devs aren’t taking the time to do it so the apps end up not benefiting from the dual core. Higher RAM and qHD displays are all up to the OEMs. Yes Microsoft still is touting the 800×480 resolution which i’m not sure if you can go denser than that or not but will research that.
3) OEMs like Samsung and HTC released multiple phones at the same time while they typically release Android phones in a staggered fashion. Then with the updates slow to roll out OEMs decided to wait for Mango to put on their newer form factors.
4) Yes all the OEMs focus on Android first and Windows Phone second. I will say that what you see in Titan is an earnest attempt to do the best they could within the scope of the hardware chassis requirements from Microsoft.
5) You will see phones coming out more frequently going forward. No more launch parties where all devices are launched simultaneously. It’ll resemble the natural order of product launches now.
6) Consumers get told they should care about these things, they don’t naturally care that something is dual core because they have no idea what that means. Its like the XOOM ads compared to iPad. One mentions specs and one mentions the experience and the consumer buys into the experience.
7)Remember that the Radar is a mid-tier device and HTC is aiming to release it below the usual $199 on contract price. So the 8GB is HTC trying to shave cost where it makes sense.
8) Everyone is moving to cloud storage for better or worse. With the increased adoption of tablets as devices you take when gone for a while phones are not really needed to lug around huge amounts of memory. Especially when you consider all the cloud solutions and how they are actually going to be much better and simpler going forward.
Hopes this helps.
Joe. Don’t think the single model (or maybe two models soon) has hurt the iPhone much. OEMs can build as many WP devices as the like. But it’s all about economics. Let’s say it costs $1M to tool up for a new device. Not that unusual when you consider design, software development, prototypes, testing, tooling, printing, etc. An OEM might need to sell a minimum of 500K devices to break even on that investment (assuming $2 per device). With the sale of Android devices, the risk is pretty low, but WP still has to prove itself.
Personally, I prefer seeing models released once a year, with maybe a few others thrown in here and there. Don’t want my phone to appear outdated a week after I buy it. And aside from confusing consumers, I would question the benefit to OEMs of releasing a “new phone of the month”. They still have to pay down those new device investments.
While something like a FFC might interest a consumer, not sure how important things like dual core are to average users. But I do agree that 16GB should be an absolute minimum on every device. At least until WiFi is available for free everywhere, and carriers are forced to provide true “unlimited” data plans at a more reasonable price.
Thanks for the replies guys! I don’t really care about dual core, but I would like to see more RAM and higher screen resolutions. The Titan looks like a phone I’d upgrade to. But I’d be worried about WVGA resolution on a screen that large. I’m also a bit worried about 512MB of RAM, specifically with respect to the multi-tasking. I guess I’ll have to get a closer look at the phone when it goes on sale.
WP is butter smooth even on the minimum specs. But the higher specs will certainly help games and third party apps. I just hate seeing WP always a step behind the competition.
I hope Nokia puts out some killer phones. They really need to hit it out of the park. Unfortunately, I’m not expecting them too, and I don’t expect any Nokia phones in the U.S. this year. I’m not sure I can wait til 2012.
Multitasking is limited to 6 apps at the same time so after you reach that number an app falls off the app-switch menu.
According to hands on of both the Titan and Radar the Titan achieves higher frame rates for certain games due to its more powerful processor and RAM. Remember that the Radar is intended to be a mid-tier phone. The titan is HTC’s attempt at the flagship device.