Judie: Our saga began when Dan and I received HTC Titans at a Microsoft sponsored dinner while attending CES; it’s hard to believe that on the 11th it will have been one month ago. You can catch up on our previous posts before starting with this one by clicking the following links:

Considering the Move from an iPhone 4S to Windows Phone Titan

Comparing the iPhone 4s Hardware to the HTC Titan and Dipping into the Windows Phone User Interface

In that month, my iPhone has never left my gadget drawer. Although I can think of a few times I wished I had it – mainly when writing up a cool accessory I had just discovered that was ‘iPhone only’ or when feeling the absence of a favorite app — not once have I missed it enough to retrieve it from the drawer. That’s better than I can say for any other phone running any other operating system that I have tried in the past … but I’m not sure if I’m ready to list the 4S on eBay just yet!

There's a dramatic difference between 4.7" and 3.5"!

Judie: For those of you who missed it, in our last article, Dan and I talked about the circumstances behind how we — two iPhone 4S users — each came into possession of an HTC Titan [you can click here to read it]. We also gave some of our initial thoughts about the operating system and why we might have been hesitant to make the change. In this installment, we dig in further into what we like and don’t like about the Titan specifically when it’s compared to the iPhone. Because our Windows Phone experience is occurring on the Titan, the hardware is directly influencing how we perceive everything …… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Judie: I recently reviewed the Nokia Lumia 710; even though the lower-end phone’s hardware wasn’t the greatest, I came away with a new respect for the Windows Phone operating system. About a week later, Dan and I were at a Microsoft-sponsored CES dinner where we were both given an HTC Titan to try. Maybe it’s because at 4.7″ the Titan’s screen was so amazingly large when I laid it to my iPhone with its 4S 3.5″ screen, maybe it’s because I was at CES and had been looking at new phones for days, or maybe it’s because I was looking for an excuse to use something different from the iPhone OS which has basically become… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Over the last week or so we have seen evidence that Windows Phone sales might be picking up … and in no small part thanks to Nokia! Sales of the Lumia 800 and 710 were reported at ~1.3 million for 2011 in spite of only having the phones for part of the fourth quarter.

But that was enough to earn them 45% of all ‘second generation’ Windows Phone devices. HTC holds 40% of the market with their Radar and massive Titan devices (which Dan & Judie love), and Samsung has 12% with the Focus. The remaining 3% is split amongst minor players.

In terms of ALL Windows Phone devices, HTC still holds… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Corning Gorilla Glass. You know the name. You know it is strong. You know it is on dozens of smartphones and a growing number of notebooks. [600 different devices and 600 million total devices sport it!!]

And you likely know that Corning announced Gorilla Glass 2 during CES.

But until you see it in action you can’t really appreciate just what it is. Seriously, Judie and I were impressed, and we think you will be too!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Judie and I both got HTC Titans the other day and have jumped into using them. Our initial thoughts? We both like them… a lot! We’ve been discussing a great deal of this behind the scenes. One discussion began with my posting

So I really have to say that I am loving the hell out of the HTC Titan (even with its now slightly dented corners):-] I’m still learning how to get around but it is polished, tight, and a pleasure to use. Best onscreen keyboard ever! No matter how good the hardware o do t think I would like an Android phone long term. Not do here. It needs more apps but Microsoft killed it with the OS.

It sparked a lot of private discussion that we will share soon. In the meantime Mike wrote/asked…

Along the WP7 lines … here is my topic for debate: Android has almost no inherent loyalty base, and if WP7 and Nokia gets traction, we will see Android plummet almost as fast as RIM, while iOS hold happy at ~28%.

Thoughts and comments?

If you search around the internet based on the images in this post you will find loads of prognostication – Android fans calling it meaningless (despite foretelling the death of iOS with each percentage Android gains at the expense of RIM), iOS fans calling it the ‘Android plummet’ (in spite of arguing that short term shifts are meaningless), and so on.

What I see – particularly when I look at the next image – is a market that is moving more rapidly than ever before. Smartphones accounted for over TWO THIRDS of all mobile phone sales in October and November of 2011!

This afternoon I attended a standing room only event in the impossibly small Ballroom A at the Venetian. The purpose was to hear about Nokia’s latest announcement for North America, and what I was hoping for specifically was news that the Lumia 900 (the North American version of the Euro Lumia 800) would soon be available. I wasn’t disappointed.

The front of the room was decorated with color tiles on the wall reminiscent of the live tiles in Windows Phone 7; if there were any doubts about what we were there to see, these should have removed them.

Stephen Elop, President and CEO of Nokia, came out and mentioned the first pillar of their global… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Wow, I am glad that I hadn’t already spring for a Titan from AT&T; today saw the announcement of the Titan II, and this model appears to be even more impressive than the first!

Today, at the 2012 International CES, HTC introduced the HTC TITAN II as the company’s first Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) device to run on a 4G LTE network. Expected to become available in the U.S. exclusively to AT&T customers in the coming months, the new smartphone is designed to help consumers stay connected while on-the-go with the largest display among Windows Phones, an advanced digital camera and access to 4G LTE speeds.

Equipped with a brilliant 4.7-inch super LCD display, the HTC TITAN II offers

… and according to some developers the problem is that only 40% of the user base has updated to Mango!

WMPU (Windows Mobile Power User) noted the multitasking shortage last week:

Fast Application Switching, otherwise referred to as multitasking, was a new feature added in Mango. Three months later, and you still can’t use this feature most of the time!

The sad truth is that only 30% of the top 20 apps in the Marketplace support multitasking. To make things worse, 19 of those 20 games are endorsed by Microsoft themselves. The top 20 free apps are quite better, but still not acceptable, with 20% not supporting Mango.

With so few

Nokia has long been one of my favorite hardware manufacturers because they consistently have devices with a better than usual build quality, their phones typically have strong radios, and they usually throw in a few excellent features not easily found elsewhere  – like the built-in FM radio transmitters and Zeiss optics cameras many of their media phones sport. Like everyone else, I watched with interest when Nokia and Microsoft partnered up in February 2011; I wanted to see what types of designs these two titans would create, and I hoped that this would mean a bigger (and better) selection of Windows Phones from which consumers could choose… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

After a first year that can most generously be called “disappointing”, Microsoft and their key partner Nokia have been working hard to make this second year a success. Microsoft started with an amazing launch of Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’, which rolled out to all phones worldwide within only a few weeks – and that is counting a specific technical issue with an EU carrier that delayed roll-out for a couple of weeks!

Nokia introduced their first two Windows Phone 7 devices recently, and while many had hoped for powerhouse phones (or a front facing camera), what Nokia is delivering is a stylish package and reasonable hardware that will work well… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

On February 11, Nokia and Microsoft made a major announcement that Nokia would be adopting Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy which meant they would be building hardware that would run the Windows Phone Operating System. This was huge news for both Nokia and for Microsoft, and now things are finally starting to happen.

Early today, Nokia World 2011 kicked off in London. First up was the introduction of four “Asha” or “Hope” models aimed at consumers in developing countries that want smartphones but don’t have a lot of money. Nokia’s goal is to help a billion extra people who who don’t currently have access connect to the internet using phones that look… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I recently wrote about my initial experiences with the HTC 7 Pro from U.S. Cellular and commented on some early concerns about Windows Phone 7.5, aka the ‘Mango’ update that some are touting as what will save Windows Phone and enable Microsoft to lead the smartphone market. Despite early concerns and more recent issues with Windows Phone Marketplace ‘spam’, most early reports indicated that Mango is what Windows Phone 7 SHOULD have been a year ago.

No one really knows exactly what the mobile market will look like five years from now – and certainly any analysts in 2006 making predictions of the 2011 mobile market would have been totally wrong… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

When Windows Phone 7 launched a year ago, it had lost several features from when it was announced. Those features were promised within a month … and ended up coming within 6 months via the disastrous ‘minor update’ and later NoDo update. I say disastrous since it was rolled out slowly yet bricked devices, failed installs, was pulled and relaunched several times, and just overall was worse than any update of a modern mobile OS (webOS, iOS, Android) in recent years. Of course, many features didn’t that update and were promised for the Windows Phone 7.5 update known as ‘Mango’.

The core features Mango will bring include Multitasking, Internet Explorer 9… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...