While waiting for a sequel to the summer
2018-released BlackBerry KEY2 that has yet to pop up in the rumor mill,
hardcore fans of hardware keyboards can support the latest initiative designed
to blend the productivity of past mobile phones with the advanced features and
convenience of modern Android soldiers.
Before rushing to deem the design of the Unihertz
Titan unveiled just a couple of weeks ago as cumbersome or outdated, you may
want to know it took mere minutes for the handset's newly launched Kickstarter
campaign to reach its (arguably modest) US$ 100,000 goal. By the looks of things,
the China-based company behind this crowdfunding program could easily cross the
$1 million barrier in a matter of hours, at least if the initial pace of
"donations" is maintained throughout the Kickstarter's opening day.
Early backers have the chance to score a Titan at a
nice US$ 120 or US$ 100 off an already reasonable $359 retail price, although no
matter how early you join the campaign, you'll still need to wait until December
to receive your bulky BlackBerry Passport lookalike with Android 9.0 Pie
software pre-installed. Tipping the scales at a massive 303 grams and measuring
almost 17mm in thickness, the bad boy has both an "ergonomically
designed" physical QWERTY keyboard and a sharp 4.5-inch touchscreen with a
resolution of 1400 x 1400 pixels going for it.
That sounds an awful lot like the BlackBerry KEY2
(minus the display resolution and 1:1 aspect ratio), but if you thought the
KEY2's battery life was impressive, wait until you see what the Unihertz Titan
can (presumably) do with a ginormous 6,000mAh cell under its hood. The handset
is also rugged, aiming to cater to folks who "get sh*t done" with a
water, dust, and shock-resistant construction.
So, yeah, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation
(or two) why this thing is so incredibly chunky, and if you're willing to
overlook that chunkiness, you'll undoubtedly notice the value proposition is
almost too good to be true, at least on paper. In addition to the keyboard, display,
and battery, the Unihertz Titan has a generous 6GB RAM, 128GB internal storage
space, unspecified octa-core processor, both fingerprint and facial
recognition, and dual SIM support with "global" LTE connectivity
going for it.
Granted, the slide-out F(x)tec Pro1 looks far
sleeker ahead of a commercial launch scheduled for sometime this summer, but
the Titan is much cheaper than US$ 649, even at its full price.
