Please don't hate. This is a constructive post. I absolutely love WP7. Nothing beats the Twitter/Facebook integration and the OS is beautiful. I have had the original Focus, Focus S, and now the Titan II. I wanted the Titan over the Lumia because of the better camera. After a day of frustration, I returned it. Below are my reasons:
1) The #1 reason I took it back was because Google Sync wouldn't work. It was a temporary issue that has since been resolved, but from 6 pm CST last night to 11 am CST today, I was getting nothing but errors. All of my contacts, calendar, and e-mail is in my Gmail account. I didn't even know who I was getting text messages from. The workaround of importing to Live didn't work for me. Consequently, I couldn't deal with it anymore. I knew it would be resolved, but the other issues combined to make the decision easier.
2) My unit had a stuck/dead pixel. It was minor and I probably would have just swapped if not for the Google sync issue.
3) Pictures - The camera appears to be great. 16 mp and the detail is amazing. The problem is, almost every method for getting the pictures off of the phone (e-mailing them, uploading them to Skydrive, etc.) involves compressing them down to where they lose that detail. A 5 mb file gets squashed to 400kb. It's automatic and the user has no control. This is unacceptable on such a great camera phone. I shouldn't have to plug into Zune to get the raw pictures.
4) Videos - If you e-mail a video, it will compress it and send. That seems to work fine. But you can't send one over MMS this way. Seems odd on an OS that is so easy to use.
5) E-mail sync - The push e-mail means receiving it right away. But the sync back sucks. If you delete or mark read an e-mail, it will be quite some time before these changes are reflected on your account. iPhone and Samsung phones don't have this issue. Seems minor, but I'm accessing e-mail from several different sources all day long. I need these changes to reflect immediately.
6) DNLA - i downloaded the DNLA app and couldn't get it to work with anything. I tried it on my Apple TV, Roku, PS3. It might have worked on my computer, but I didn't try. At that point, it was useless to me. I was really hoping this would be better.
7) App and app support - We all know about this gorilla in the room. I won't waste too much space on this. But for me, it's the support more than the lack of apps. Take Slacker for instance: I have a subscription that gives me station caching, which I use regularly. This feature doesn't work on WP7 and hasn't worked in months. The Slacker team shows no interest in fixing this. Other apps fall into the same trap of no support. Not only that, you see a new app come out for a website/game/utility and it always appears on iPhone first, then Android. WP7 is left out in the cold. We will probably never see a Draw Something app on WP7, at least not anytime soon.
8) IE9 - Most sites are designed for webkit or even specifically the iPhone. IE9 has all kinds of compatibility issues and forms, drop-downs, etc. simply don't work. A perfect example is my work's webmail. It just won't work in IE9 and that's a deal-breaker for me.
9) Sim card slot - This won't affect many, but I swap phones all the time. The sim card slot is a pain. I have to use a sim adapter to put my microsim in the Titan and I had to use needle nose pliers to get it out. It obviously would have worked better with the Lumia, but I really wanted the Titan's camera.
Overall, the Titan is a fine phone. I would have liked to have gotten to know it better. LTE speeds were good and the phone felt good in the hand. I didn't get a chance to test call quality, but signal and battery life seemed fair. If the Google Sync had been restored earlier today, I may even still have it, but I'm sure it would have gone back eventually. Some of my gripes are with Windows Phone and not the Titan. There are so many things that Microsoft got right and so many things that we're missing. The sad part is, we won't get those missing features until Apollo and I can't wait for that.
I hope other people have a better experience with their Lumias and Titans. The ecosystem needs a jumpstart and the more of these phones we can get in peoples' hands, the better.
TL;DR - My Titan II just didn't cut it for me with my usage patterns, but I really like Windows Phone.
1) The #1 reason I took it back was because Google Sync wouldn't work. It was a temporary issue that has since been resolved, but from 6 pm CST last night to 11 am CST today, I was getting nothing but errors. All of my contacts, calendar, and e-mail is in my Gmail account. I didn't even know who I was getting text messages from. The workaround of importing to Live didn't work for me. Consequently, I couldn't deal with it anymore. I knew it would be resolved, but the other issues combined to make the decision easier.
2) My unit had a stuck/dead pixel. It was minor and I probably would have just swapped if not for the Google sync issue.
3) Pictures - The camera appears to be great. 16 mp and the detail is amazing. The problem is, almost every method for getting the pictures off of the phone (e-mailing them, uploading them to Skydrive, etc.) involves compressing them down to where they lose that detail. A 5 mb file gets squashed to 400kb. It's automatic and the user has no control. This is unacceptable on such a great camera phone. I shouldn't have to plug into Zune to get the raw pictures.
4) Videos - If you e-mail a video, it will compress it and send. That seems to work fine. But you can't send one over MMS this way. Seems odd on an OS that is so easy to use.
5) E-mail sync - The push e-mail means receiving it right away. But the sync back sucks. If you delete or mark read an e-mail, it will be quite some time before these changes are reflected on your account. iPhone and Samsung phones don't have this issue. Seems minor, but I'm accessing e-mail from several different sources all day long. I need these changes to reflect immediately.
6) DNLA - i downloaded the DNLA app and couldn't get it to work with anything. I tried it on my Apple TV, Roku, PS3. It might have worked on my computer, but I didn't try. At that point, it was useless to me. I was really hoping this would be better.
7) App and app support - We all know about this gorilla in the room. I won't waste too much space on this. But for me, it's the support more than the lack of apps. Take Slacker for instance: I have a subscription that gives me station caching, which I use regularly. This feature doesn't work on WP7 and hasn't worked in months. The Slacker team shows no interest in fixing this. Other apps fall into the same trap of no support. Not only that, you see a new app come out for a website/game/utility and it always appears on iPhone first, then Android. WP7 is left out in the cold. We will probably never see a Draw Something app on WP7, at least not anytime soon.
8) IE9 - Most sites are designed for webkit or even specifically the iPhone. IE9 has all kinds of compatibility issues and forms, drop-downs, etc. simply don't work. A perfect example is my work's webmail. It just won't work in IE9 and that's a deal-breaker for me.
9) Sim card slot - This won't affect many, but I swap phones all the time. The sim card slot is a pain. I have to use a sim adapter to put my microsim in the Titan and I had to use needle nose pliers to get it out. It obviously would have worked better with the Lumia, but I really wanted the Titan's camera.
Overall, the Titan is a fine phone. I would have liked to have gotten to know it better. LTE speeds were good and the phone felt good in the hand. I didn't get a chance to test call quality, but signal and battery life seemed fair. If the Google Sync had been restored earlier today, I may even still have it, but I'm sure it would have gone back eventually. Some of my gripes are with Windows Phone and not the Titan. There are so many things that Microsoft got right and so many things that we're missing. The sad part is, we won't get those missing features until Apollo and I can't wait for that.
I hope other people have a better experience with their Lumias and Titans. The ecosystem needs a jumpstart and the more of these phones we can get in peoples' hands, the better.
TL;DR - My Titan II just didn't cut it for me with my usage patterns, but I really like Windows Phone.
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