Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Review: A Few Tweaks From Greatness
Now that I’ve lived with the Unihertz Titan 2 Elite as my primary device for a while, I’ve moved past that initial 48 hour honeymoon phase and settled into what life is actually like with this phone. It remains one of the most unique experiences on the market, and while it isn't perfect, the shift from the standard Titan 2 feels like a significant step forward for the keyboard focused niche.
Display and Ergonomics
The most immediate upgrade over the Titan 2 is the display. Moving to a 4.03 inch AMOLED panel and away from the old LCD Unihertz was using changes the entire aesthetic of the device, even if viewing angles are the best I’ve ever seen. The blacks are deep, the colors are rich, and one of my biggest annoyances, that annoying rainbow effect I saw when wearing my polarized sunglasses, is completely gone.
While the screen supports a full 120Hz refresh rate, I have kept my device locked at 90Hz. It provides that modern fluidity that was missing from the 60Hz Titan 2, but it strikes a much better balance with battery life. Take whatever phone you’ve been using and swap it back to 60Hz for a few days and you’ll see how nice 90Hz really is.
The speaker is still a bit too quiet and tinny, and the minimum brightness is a touch too high for late night use, but these are small trade offs for a phone that mostly does what it really needs to do.
Ergonomically, this is one of the most one handable devices I’ve used in years. Because it is narrower than its predecessor, your thumb can actually reach across the entire keyboard without much effort. You can even type one handed in a pinch, though it is admittedly a bit slow. I've seen quite a few comments concerned about the thickness, but according to my own measurement, it is only about 10.3mm thick. That isn't much thicker than a normal flagship slab. I actually find that it's kind of nice to have that extra bit of thickness when you're typing on a physical keyboard that requires a little bit of pressure to actuate the keys.
The Typing Experience
The one thing this phone absolutely has to nail is the typing, and from a hardware perspective, I feel comfortable in saying that this is the best typing experience Unihertz has managed so far. The keys require less pressure than the old Titan 2, which has been great for my accuracy. I’ve found that I can hit a key and just rock my finger over to the one next to it, like moving from "e" to "r", without even lifting my finger. It makes for a very smooth, tactile typing experience once you get the rhythm down. Mapping the Fn key to Ctrl is also a total game changer for text controls like copying, pasting, or closing browser tabs. I also have a soft spot for using the space bar to play/pause YouTube videos. Even if my backlight is a bit uneven, which I haven’t seen on other review units, the hardware itself is solid.
However, the Kika software is currently the biggest problem with this phone. To put it bluntly, Kika has always been pretty bad. While it does some things well, the auto correction is rough. It misses plenty of obvious corrections and, even worse, has a habit of auto correcting things incorrectly far too often. I honestly don’t know how many times "were" has been corrected to "we're" with an apostrophe when I absolutely didn't want it. I’ve also see random letters turning “makes” into “mmakes” being inserted as an attempted "autocorrect," which is incredibly frustrating when you're trying to stay in a flow. If you miss a letter and backspace to finish that word, it might try to autocomplete off that single letter, not realizing that letter ended a word. Going back to put the “w” on “now” turns into “nowe.”
Their is a nice option that got enabled into my review cycle that allows you swipe up on the keyboard toward predictive text to select a word like we had on older keyboard devices and this does work pretty well.
The good news is that a lot of these issues can be totally fixed by installing Pastiera, a third party keyboard software maintained by a couple of keyboard phone enthusiasts. It is infinitely better than the stock experience and works well now after an update. I can’t describe how much better correction is with Pastiera and there’s even a replacement for the launching of apps with keyboard shortcuts I prefer over the built-in one. Hopefully, these issues with Kika can be addressed by Unihertz before the phone actually ships, but at least we have a solid replacement that massively elevates the experience.
Performance and Thermals
Under the hood, my unit is running the Dimensity 7400. For day to day tasks, it is perfectly capable. You will notice that heavier apps, like Weatherwise, take a beat longer to fully load in compared to a flagship phone, but once you are in the app, everything runs smoothly. I have noticed that while scrolling YouTube with a video playing in the corner, the screen might drop under that 90hz refresh rate and that can be a bit jarring.
While Unihertz has left in the IR blaster and SD card expansion, the 3.5mm headphone jack remains gone, although a USB C to 3.5mm adapter is included in the box.
One thing to keep an eye on is the thermals. I have noticed the device getting warmer than the Titan 2 and this has largely persisted through my testing. Whenever the Titan 2 Elite is in use for an extended period, thermals can start to creep up and this is a definite sign of some inefficiency. The good news is that endurance has been pretty decent after that pre-release update was pushed out. Where I was in the 4-5 hours of screen time range, now I’m hitting 6 hours or longer if I push things. This puts us well into the good enough range, even if I wish it didn’t get as warm as it does.
The fingerprint scanner is fast and responsive, and for those who like it, face unlock is here as well, though it is just your basic Android implementation.
The Camera Experience
The camera is usually the Achilles' heel of these niche phones, and out of the box, that’s still largely true here. The primary 50MP sensor tends to overexpose, losing detail in the highlights, and the 50MP telephoto is lackluster at 2x with quite a bit of noise.
However, I’ve been using a GCam port and the results have actually surprised me. I took it out to an outdoor market here in Knoxville recently and the photos were solid. Good detail and balanced colors meant results that were more than good enough for a quick social post. I’ve actually mapped GCam to a double press of the programmable key so I can get to it instantly. If I ever do need that telephoto lens, I just double press the power button to jump into the stock app.
The GCam port doesn't help with the telephoto lens or video, which remains pretty rough with plenty of jitter. But for standard photography, GCam makes this a much more usable device.
Software and Final Thoughts
On the software side, I also did spend some time testing Niagara Launcher. It creates a clean, minimalist look that reminds me of the "Just Type" feature on old Palm webOS devices. Being able to just start typing from the home screen to launch an app feels very natural on a device with a physical keyboard.
If you prefer to stick with the stock launcher, you can map each letter key to a short and long press, allowing you to quickly launch apps when you're on your home screen. I’ve also found that scrolling with the keyboard seems to be much smoother on Mode 2. On Mode 1, things felt weirdly inconsistent, and I would sometimes trigger long presses on the screen just by letting my finger rest on the keys. Mode 2 keeps things much more predictable.
The Titan 2 Elite isn't a do everything device, although I do wish it could do Circle to Search which has once again been omitted here. With that squarish 4-inch screen, it clearly isn't meant for binging TikTok or scrolling Instagram for hours. The screen size and shape makes some apps you might need hard to use, like editing in Google Photos. The image is so tiny it is really not worth doing. You can actually improve apps like Instagram or YouTube Shorts by changing the DPI to 601 in developer options which triggers apps to use their tablet interface to prevent the videos from clipping off screen, but you’ll have just traded one problem for another. In tablet mode, many apps that did work just fine will now be difficult to use.
It’s a tool for communication, responding to emails, firing off texts, and snapping a spontaneous photo before getting back to the real world. For that use case, it does a surprisingly good job after installing Gcam and Pastiera.
