Unihertz Titan Slim for those who like their phones a little QWERTY
Unihertz Titan Slim. Picture: Noel Campion.
The Unihertz Titan Slim is a 2022 take on a modern Blackberry with a physical keyboard for those who want some QWERTY goodness while still having all the conveniences of a touchscreen smartphone.
While the name suggests the Titan Slim should be a wafer-thin phone, the opposite is true. With a thickness of 12.75mm it’s much thicker than say the iPhone 13 Pro Max at 7.65mm although it’s also much more comfortable to hold due to the round edges and narrow girth of 67.6mm.
On the right edge are not one, but two nano SIM trays rather than a single tray that supports two SIMs. Here you’ll also find a red shortcut button that by default will turn on the flashlight with a press and hold or take a screenshot with a double-press.
On the right are the volume rocker and power buttons. Both the bottom and top edges are flat sporting the same shiny black plastic surface that’s on the rear and sides. On the bottom edge is a USB-C port along with a speaker grille and a hole for the mic. The top also has a hole for another mic and an IR blaster that’s used with the pre-installed Zaza remote app to control appliances like TVs, projectors satellite receivers and so on.
On the rear is a single 48MP camera and an LED flash located on the top left of the phone.
The 8MP fixed focus selfie camera is located around the front, above the 4.2-inch LCD HD display (768 x 1,280 pixels).
The Titan Slim's main feature is a physical QWERTY keyboard with a sizable capacitive home button in the middle of the top row of keys that also serves as a fingerprint reader. The latter is fast and reliable with a satisfying vibration each time you use it to unlock the phone — the vibration can be turned off if you don’t like it.
Thanks to the extra thickness, large rounded side rails and narrow width, the Titan Slim is incredibly comfortable to hold and use, even one-handed — at least in my slightly larger than normal hands.
The Titan Slim is all about ease of use and the physical keyboard. Unihertz has done an incredible job making the phone as easy to use as possible with lots of customizability. You can use all of the letter keys as shortcuts. For example, use the A key to call a particular contact with a long press or open an app with a short press. You can also use the home button to summons the Google Assistant with a long press or take a photo with a double press of the space bar.
Unfortunately, there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack or any support for a microSD card and the Titan Slim doesn’t come with any water-resistant rating. You do get Bluetooth 4.2 and NFC for contactless payments.
While the Titan Pocket does come with a charger, there’s no wireless charging option. Many will be please to see there’s an indicator LED on the top of the screen that will light up blue for incoming calls or red for missed notifications.
The 4.2-inch display is not OLED, but is sharp enough despite the HD resolution. It doesn’t get super bright and the viewing angles aren’t perfect but the mono speaker sounds good and can get plenty loud.
The display combined with the physical keyboard doesn’t make it ideal for playing games. This isn’t saying you can’t, but it does feel a little awkward with the keyboard taking up a third of the phone.
It feels a little strange going back to using a QWERTY keyboard on a smartphone but you do get the benefits of both physical keys and a touchscreen here. I won’t lie, it took me a while to get used to pressing on keys instead of just touch typing which feels effortless. However, you do build up muscle memory and with practice, it’s even possible to type without looking.
The keyboard layout features a top row of function keys including the capacitive home button and then the standard QWERTY keys on the other three rows. At first, the keys felt a little hard to press and I found I would press two together at times but practice makes perfect. One annoyance is how easy it is to hit the home key, especially when going for the R, T, Y or U keys. Again, practice helps.
The Titan Slim uses a Mediatek Helio P70 Octa Core/up to 2.1GHz. My review unit came with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but the retail units will ship with 6GB+256GB DDR4 1600MHz UFS 2.1.
Despite the mid-tier hardware, the Titan Slim doesn’t feel slow. I never ran into issues running any of the standard apps I use, but I wouldn’t use a phone like this for heavy-duty tasks or serious gaming.
The UI is almost stock Android 11 and it feels fluid and fast most of the time.
The 4,100mAh battery is good enough to get through a day of use and often into the next. There’s no wireless charging and the included charger is only 10W so it’s not a fast charger.
The phone boasts two cameras: an 8MP f/1.8 front-facing camera and a 48MP f/1.7 primary camera on the rear that uses quad-pixel binning to produce 12MP images.
Image quality is only average at best and there are not a lot of camera features either. It can capture good photos in decent light but suffers when the light gets low. Video is limited to full HD with no support for 4K and it only supports MP4 or 3GP video formats.
Unihertz creates distinctive mobile devices and deserves praise for its audacity and innovation. The Titan Slim offers something different and although the masses won’t be interested in going back to a QWERTY phone there is a market for such a device. If you’re feeling nostalgic for a physical keyboard or simply prefer one, then the Titan Slim is a great option.
Unihertz Titan Slim is available for pre-order now and will ship start shipping from August 15.
See Unihertz for more.
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