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review

Unihertz TITAN Pocket Review Qwerty Keyboard Phone

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

 
Unihertz resurrects the glory of BlackBerry (BB) devices with Titan Pocket - a qwerty keyboard phone with the classic BB form factor - perfect for boosting work productivity on the go!
 
Despite its small size, the TITAN Pocket has every features you would expect front a fully fledged phone, namely power button, volume buttons, led flashlight, ambient sensor, USB-C port and notification LED. Titan Pocket also has an external microSD card slot and 3.5mm headphone jack (for wired audio) - two features you won't find on newer, more expensive smartphones such as the iPhone 14 Pro Max and Galaxy S22!
 
Dimensions of Titan Pocket are 13cm x 7cm x 1.5cm (5.125" x 2.87" x 0.6") - same slim profile as the old Nokia 8210 - and thick enough to allow you to set the phone upright on its side. Titan Pocket weighs 222 grams. The body, buttons and keyboard are made of plastic with a thick rubber trim around the top, sides, rear and bottom corners of the phone. The buttons are clicky, tactile and responsive.


The Titan Pocket built-in keyboard measures 6.3cm horizontally x 3cm vertically.The keyboard uses leaf spring switches (non-hotswap) with a hard press actuation similar to rubber dome membrane. The keycaps are made of single shot plastic with laser marking spray font engraving. Despite the small size keyboard, typing on the Titan Pocket is intuitive thanks to the multi-directional shape of the keycaps. The touchpad looking pad isn't actually a touchpad. It is a Home button with fingerprint unlock.
 
Titan Pocket internal battery charges at a rate of 7.5 watts max input, taking 3 hours to fully charge with a 2 day battery life under heavy usage. There is no quick charge support and no power delivery (PD) support. 


As far as mobile providers, Titan Pocket is factory unlocked global phone so, it will work with most carriers, except some such as AT&T and Sprint. 
 
Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) maybe also supported but you will need to check first that the frequencies of your mobile company supports the frequencies of Titan Pocket's bands: GSM (Band 2/3/5/8), WCDMA (Band 1/2/4/5/8/6/19), TDSCDMA (Band 34/39), FDD-LTE (Band 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/12/13/17/18/19/20/25/26/28A/28B/66), TDD-LTE (Band 34/38/39/40/41), CDMA2000 (Band BC0/BC1)
 
Titan Pocket is equipped with a MediaTek Helio P70 SOC - same one found in the Realme U1 phone.  The Helio P70 SOC integrates a powerful processor (Cortex-A73 + Cortex-A53) and Mali-G72 MP3 graphics unit, which allow the Titan Pocket to be power efficient and good for gaming - handling all games without issues. 
 
Titan Pocket's GPU and CPU processor perform better than the Adreno 509 GPU and Snapdragon 636 CPU found on phones such as the Nokia 6.2, Sony Xperia 10 Plus, Motorola Moto G7 Plus, Blackberry KEY2 LE, Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro and Honor 8X Max. Titan Pocket runs vanilla Android OS, which is developed and designed to run over the core kernel of Android, making it more private and secure.
 
Titan Pocket's performance is almost as good as a Snapdragon 660 smartphone (e.g. Xiaomi Redmi Note 7S, Nokia X71, Vivo Z3X) and has high RAM too (6GB RAM) - perfect for playing PUBG Mobile smoothly on medium setting. 
 
For exclusive gaming though, a Snapdragon 660 phone is probably a better choice. Titan Pocket features also 128GB internal storage, which can be expanded to 256GB total via the external microSD card slot. 
 
Titan Pocket uses a 720p display protected by corning gorilla 3 glass. Titan Pocket integrates a functional camera setup with an autofocus f/1.79 rear camera with 6P lens size, 80 degree view angle and Samsung S5KGM1SP sensor. 
 
The front selfie camera uses an Omnivision OV8865 sensor with fixed focus 5P lens, 76 degree view angle and f/2.2 aperture. The f/1.79 aperture on the rear camera makes it a fast lens, which performs decently in low light. 


Both the selfie and rear camera can shoot in 1400 x 1400 (square) video resolution but, you can get a horizontal rectangular image by shooting in 720p. The rear camera can shoot in full HD 1080p resolution. 
 
Speaking of rear, the backside of the Titan Pocket phone has a raised mid hump (similar to Unihertz Tank phone) which prevents the rear facing speaker from muffling when resting the phone on a desk. The mid hump is only slight so, it doesn't cause the phone to rock excessively when typing with the phone against a desk.
 

Potential deal breakers
  • External microSD card slot supports only 128GB - lower than the Unihertz Jelly 2E which supports up to 2TB
  • Mono speaker - no stereo
  • Rear facing speaker
  • Compatible with Message Plus and Gboard
  • SIM card tray has no o-ring waterproofing
  • No quick charge support
  • No wireless charging
  • Does not support AT&T and Sprint
  • Only supports Bluetooth 4.2 - strange considering low end MediaTek chips like Helio P22 support bluetooth 5.0 
  • Not easy to remove battery
  • No trackpad
  • No 1080p display
  • No 5G support
  • Small square aspect ratio screen due to keyboard
  • No depth sensor camera on front or rear; hence no portrait mode
  • No ultra wide, no telephoto cameras
  • Mic quality isn't as good without HD Voice
  • Titan pocket supports HD Voice but it is dependent on your mobile carrier supporting the HD Voice band
     
 

Selling points for Titan Pocket
  • Built-in keyboard with physical back button
  • 6GB RAM
  • Clicky, responsive tactile buttons
  • External microSD card
  • Pro camera mode 
  • Supports timelapse
  • Runs Android 11, which works with Android Auto
  • High-end midrange SOC MediaTek 
  • Snappy phone with powerful Cortex-A73 cores perfect for performing heavy tasks, gaming browsing and messaging 
  • Supports 4G TD-LTE 
  • Supports HD Voice, although it depends on the mobile carrier you are using
  • Hot plug SIM/MicroSD card tray automatically recognizes the cards, even with the phone turned on
  • No over heating under heavy usage
  • Impressive AI performance similar to flagship grade SOCs
  • Supports USB OTG function
  • Dual 4G SIM/microSD tray: 1 nano SIM + 1 nano SIM or 1 SIM + microSD card
  • Rugged - rubberized frame + corners
  • Front facing fingerprint sensor
  • 12 month warranty
  • includes a 16.8mm screen protector
  • NFC support
  • 3.5mm headphone jack
  • Screen protector pre-installed
  • IR blaster (remote control)
  • Corning Gorilla 3 glass
  • Programmable button to customize functions
 
Accessories included with Titan Pocket are a 10W USB-A wall charger with EU plug, 1.2 meter long charging/data cable (2A/USB 2.0), SIM card tray tool, screen protectors and a quick start guide. You can download the full user guide from Unihertz website and buy the Titan Pocket phone from Unihertz and amazon.

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