About five years ago I covered the Titan, a throwback keyboard phone made by a Shenzhen OEM (original equipment manufacturer) named Unihertz. I wondered then if keyboard phones were making a comeback.
Turns out, the answer is maybe? While phones with physical keyboards aren’t exactly commonplace in 2025, Unihertz has seen enough success and interest in the Titan to release at least two follow-ups in the years since, and there’s third-party keyboard accessory for Apple and Google phones which have reached minor cult status among tech enthusiasts.
So there is demand for a physical keyboard. And so comes the Titan 2. Currently on Kickstarter now but will go on sale officially later, the Titan 2 is a square-ish phone that’s unusually wide by 2025 standards (it measures 88.7mm, or about 3.5-inches, from left to right). This means the keyboard is almost impossible to use with one hand for most people, but I suppose, like Blackberry phones of decades past, the Titan 2 is meant to be a two-handed device. The keyboard is excellent: keys are evenly spaced, with grippy textured coating, and solid tactile travel. You can also swipe through the keyboard to navigate through the phone’s UI, like you would on a trackpad.
I am not a fan of the Titan 2 moving the fingerprint scanner to the right side of the phone, embedded into a power button, because I hold my phone with the left hand and a right side fingerprint scanner is slightly harder to reach. I prefer the previous Titan’s fingerprint scanner location, in the middle of the phone on top of the keyboard, more.
Because the phone is so wide, and because it needs to accommodate a keyboard, the phone screen aspect ratio is close to a square, which is very odd in 2025. Most apps will just span to fill the extra wide screen, but this sometimes results in missing UI elements at the bottom of the app.
What’s new with the Titan 2? The processor is newer, obviously, powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 with 12GB of RAM. This is far from a flagship phone, but it offers enough power.
There’s also a small screen on the back of the phone, which by default shows just the time and some basic information, but you can use it to run any app, though most apps are almost unusable on a display this cramped. Still, it’s nice to have a secondary screen even for glimpsing the time.
Battery life is tremendous, which makes sense given that this phone is meant for business. This is a phone that can go through an entire day easily, meaning you don’t have to charge at bedtime, and next day you’d still have enough juice to go until maybe late afternoon.
At $400, I think the Titan 2 is priced decently and niche enthusiasts of keyboard phones would find it interesting. For me, I think I’d stick with a touchscreen keyboard and conventional screen aspect ratio.
