Cherry Mobile Titan W500 Quick Review, In the Flesh Photos and Hands-On Video!

Finally got the chance to play with the ultra-cheap and much-talked about Cherry Mobile W500 Titan phablet last week.

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Our friend TJ of TJ's Daily brought the Php 6,990 smartphone with him during one of the events we both attended and he let me tinker with it. "It looks a lot better in person," I remember telling him as soon as he handed me the device.

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So let me just share with you some of my initial impressions as well as a quick hands-on video of the hybrid.

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1. The design and build of the handset are surprisingly good considering its very affordable price tag. I was expecting it to feel a tad plasticky but it actually felt quite solid in my hand and even had this reassuring heft and weight, sort of telling me that it can take a beating. The design, on other hand, is more on the 'industrial' and boxy side (replete with metallic lining), reminiscent of the HTC HD7 or Samsung Galaxy S2.

2. I've had Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 and HTC Desire HD as my daily phones so I'm used to handling larger than usual handsets. If you ask me, I think Cherry Mobile Titan's size is just right. And frankly, I don't think its size would keep anyone from properly using it even with just one hand.

3. If there's one thing I didn't like about the handset, it's the rather low-resolution screen. Sure, the display - at 5 inches - is big but its mere 480 x 800 resolution would make you feel that you're just using a blown-up screen of an entry-level smartphone by Samsung, HTC, or LG, for example, which is actually the case. I guess you'd do well to keep your expectations low when it comes to this feature of the handset.

4. The user interface is almost (if not exactly) like the stock Android ICS UI. So if you're not a fan of third-party skins for this operating system, you might like what you'd see on Cherry Mobile Titan, at least, in that department.

5. The phablet runs on a MediaTek MT6577 chipset, which features a Dual Core 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 and a PowerVR Series5 SGX GPU. Compared to Tegra 3 or Snapdragon S4, this chipset isn't quite as popular but I'd say it delivers a decent performance. While I haven't had the chance to play games nor use multimedia features extensively on this handset, the smooth screen transitions and good touch response that I got show me that the chipset is rather reliable.


Do you own this phablet? Let me know your thoughts about it. What do you like or not like about the product? Are you satisfied with the purchase?