Judging by the strange, tiny phones it made in the past, Unihertz seems like a company that just sort of builds whatever it wants. When you consider just how homogeneous smartphones have become over the years, that approach starts to feel really refreshing. Here’s a brand that doesn’t care about taking over the world; it just wants to make weird, but functional, shit. And its latest product, the Unihertz Titan, is nothing if not weird.
Just look at it. It’s a whopper of a smartphone, with a massive 6,000mAh battery, a physical QWERTY keyboard, that runs an up-to-date version of Android, selling for somewhere in the neighborhood of $250. And beyond all that, people were quick to point out the strong similarities between the Titan and BlackBerry’s 2014 Passport: Both had oddball square screens, touch-sensitive, three-row keyboards, and very wide proportions. That by itself is pretty fascinating. Of all the devices that Unihertz could’ve cribbed notes from, it chose the bizarre last gasp from a company rapidly losing relevance.
To me, at least, the weirdest thing about the Titan is that it’ should probably be really lousy, but it isn’t. It’s just pretty lousy. I’ve been using an early model for a while now, and even after all this time, I can’t say that I’ve fully gotten used to it. (In fairness, it’s meant more for die-hard QWERTY fans, professionals who need rugged hardware or outdoorsy types, and I am none of those things.) Even so, it’s not hard to appreciate the Titan for what it is: a low-risk, niche phone that still needs a lot of polish.
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