Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Review: Finally a QWERTY Phone Done Right

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PROS:


  • Excellent QWERTY keyboard

  • Thoughtful software features

  • Sharp 4.03-inch AMOLED display

CONS:


  • 33W charging feels a little slow

  • Cameras are unremarkable

  • Mono speaker lacks depth

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Titan 2 Elite is not a keyboard phone for the sake of nostalgia. It is a thoughtfully modern take on a niche form factor that still offers something genuinely different.

Retro tech is back in fashion, and few categories capture that shift quite like the return of the QWERTY keyboard phone. With the market dominated by edge-to-edge glass slabs that all seem to blur into one another, the appeal of something tactile, distinctive, and a little nostalgic feels stronger than ever. But Unihertz is not simply chasing that renewed interest. The company has spent years building unusual smartphones around overlooked form factors, and the Titan 2 Elite feels more like a continuation of that mission than a sudden throwback play.

Since launching in 2017, Unihertz has focused on unusual and highly niche smartphones, often revisiting ideas that larger brands left behind long ago. The first Titan arrived in 2019, establishing the company’s QWERTY keyboard line and laying the groundwork for a series of devices aimed at enthusiasts who wanted something outside the touchscreen mainstream. The Titan 2 Elite feels like the clearest expression of that identity so far, combining Unihertz’s keyboard phone formula with more modern features like a 4.03-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, 5G, NFC, eSIM support, and dual 50MP cameras.

Designer: Unihertz

Aesthetics

The Titan 2 Elite makes a much stronger first impression in photos than you might expect from a niche keyboard phone. In black, it looks clean, understated, and surprisingly modern, with the glossy display flowing neatly into the keyboard below. The shape still carries that familiar BlackBerry-inspired DNA, but it feels less boxy and less utilitarian than its predecessors. The front has a nice sense of balance, with the display and keyboard split in a way that looks intentional rather than cramped.

It also feels like every brand is suddenly on the orange phone wave, and Unihertz is clearly not sitting that one out. Still, I cannot really complain when the result looks this good. The orange finish gives the Titan 2 Elite a more playful, more attention-grabbing personality, and it suits the phone’s retro-leaning concept surprisingly well. Paired with the sculpted keyboard and rounded corners, it gives the device a bolder, more expressive look that stands out immediately. Where the black version feels sleek and safe, the orange one feels much more full of character.

From the front, the Titan 2 Elite feels cohesive in a way some keyboard phones do not. The keyboard looks properly built into the design rather than tacked on as an afterthought, which helps the whole phone feel more intentional and visually balanced. Flip it over, though, and some of that charm fades. The large rectangular camera bump sticks out quite a lot, especially on the orange model, and the back just does not feel as refined as the front. I do like how subtle the Unihertz logo is, but overall, the rear design feels more ordinary and less resolved.

Ergonomics

The whole experience of using the Titan 2 Elite comes down to the keyboard. If you have been away from physical keys for years, there is definitely a short adjustment period, but once your fingers settle in, the appeal becomes easy to understand. Typing feels more deliberate, more tactile, and more engaging than tapping away on glass, even if, for me, an on-screen keyboard is still the faster option. That is worth saying because speed is not really the point here. The appeal is the feel of it, and the way it changes your interaction with the phone.

The keys have a faceted, slightly angled shape that makes them surprisingly comfortable to type on. In fact, this is one of the most comfortable QWERTY keyboards I have tested on a phone. The layout feels well judged, and while it still takes some adjustment, it does not come across as cramped or awkward in the way some smaller keyboard phones can.

At 117.8 × 75 × 10.4 mm and 163g, the Titan 2 Elite is compact in height and width, but it is definitely a thick phone by modern standards. You feel that extra depth the moment you pick it up, especially compared with today’s thin slab phones. Still, the weight is fairly modest, so it does not come across as heavy or cumbersome. If anything, the thicker body makes sense for this kind of device, giving the keyboard and overall shape a bit more substance in the hand.

The rest of the button layout is pretty straightforward, but there are a few details worth noting. On the right side, you get the power button, which also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, along with Unihertz’s signature red programmable button. On the left, there is the volume rocker and the SIM tray, which supports either two SIM cards or one SIM card and one microSD card. It is a practical setup, and the red shortcut key in particular adds a bit of extra personality while giving power users one more tool to customize the phone around their habits.

Performance

The Titan 2 Elite is not the kind of phone you buy for raw speed, and I think that is important to establish early. If your priority is benchmark numbers, heavy gaming, or the kind of power you would expect from a mainstream flagship, this is probably not where your money should go. The appeal here is much more about the overall experience than outright performance, which feels perfectly in line with what this phone is trying to be.

It is powered by the Dimensity 7400, paired with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of storage. In everyday use, that is more than enough for the kind of tasks this phone is clearly built around. Messaging, email, web browsing, note-taking, and general app navigation all feel smooth and reliable, and at no point did the phone feel like it was struggling to keep up.

That same sense of practicality carries over to the software. The review unit runs Titan 2 Elite_V02 based on Android 16, and thankfully, there is no bloatware to get in the way. A lot of the customization revolves around the keyboard and extra controls, which makes sense for a phone like this.

You can assign both short-press and long-press actions to keys, and there are also options to use the keyboard surface for scrolling, cursor control, or a combined touchpad and cursor mode. Better still, these can be set on an app-by-app basis, which gives the phone a level of flexibility that feels genuinely useful rather than gimmicky. The keyboard is also backlit, and the brightness can be adjusted, which is a small but genuinely helpful detail in lower light.

The 4.03-inch display also deserves some credit. On paper, it sounds small, and it is, but it is a surprisingly good panel with a 1080 x 1200 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 401 PPI, up to 1600 nits peak brightness, and 2160Hz PWM dimming. It looks sharp, bright, and much more modern than the phone’s form factor might suggest.

Where the screen becomes more complicated is in day-to-day use. The issue is not the quality of the panel itself, but the amount of space you have to work with. Some apps feel poorly formatted, and there are times when you simply want to see more vertical content at once. Unihertz tries to solve that with a Mini mode that switches the interface to a more traditional vertical aspect ratio, and it does help. I ended up setting a shortcut for it, and being able to switch quickly turned out to be genuinely useful.

Main, 1x

It also changed the way I used the phone. I spent less time mindlessly scrolling, and that is not because the phone is uncomfortable to hold or awkward to use. If anything, it is the opposite. The Titan 2 Elite just makes you a bit more intentional.

Telephoto, 2x

That more focused experience also shapes the rest of the phone. Audio, for example, is fine but unremarkable. The mono speaker gets loud enough for casual video watching or speakerphone use, but it lacks the fullness you would want for music or anything more immersive. It does the job, but not much more.

Main, 1x

Telephoto, 2x

The same goes for the camera setup. It is fairly limited, but that probably will not be a dealbreaker for the kind of person who would enjoy this phone in the first place. You get a 50MP main camera, a 50MP 2x telephoto camera, and a 32MP front camera. Image quality is good enough for quick shots and everyday moments, but it is not a camera system that stands out. Colors tend to look vivid and slightly overexposed, though still perfectly usable for casual snapshots.

Main, 1x

Telephoto, 2x

Battery life is better than the 4050mAh capacity might suggest. On paper, that number does not sound especially large, but because I spent less time idly using the phone, it still got me through a full day without much trouble. Charging is less impressive. At 33W, it feels a bit slow by today’s standards, especially when plenty of phones in this price range now refill much faster.

Sustainability

Sustainability is not a major part of the Titan 2 Elite’s pitch, but there are still a few positives worth mentioning. Unihertz says the phone uses an aerospace-grade aluminum mid-frame, offers IP54 protection, and promises five years of OS updates and security patches.

That is not the same as a full sustainability strategy, especially since there is no clear emphasis on recycled materials or repairability. Still, durability and longer software support do matter. If the Titan 2 Elite holds up well over time and stays secure for years, that gives owners more reason to keep it longer instead of replacing it early.

Value

At $489, the Titan 2 Elite is not cheap, but it also feels more thoughtfully made than a novelty device cashing in on nostalgia. Beyond the physical keyboard itself, you can tell Unihertz has put real thought into the overall experience, from the programmable keys and backlit keyboard to the display quality and software features built around this unusual form factor.

That is really where the value starts to make sense. You are not just paying for a keyboard stuck onto an Android phone. You are paying for a device that feels purpose-built for a certain kind of user, and one that tries to make that experience work in a modern way. It still will not be for everyone, but for people who genuinely want a keyboard phone and appreciate the care that has gone into making it usable day to day, the $489 price feels much easier to justify.

Verdict

The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite works because it does not try to compete like a normal smartphone. Instead, it fully embraces its niche, offering a physical keyboard experience that feels polished, distinctive, and genuinely enjoyable to use. Backed by a sharp display, thoughtful software features, and reliable everyday performance, it feels much more considered than a simple nostalgia play.

The trade-offs are still there. The cameras are only decent, the speaker is forgettable, and the small display can feel restrictive in some apps. Still, if you miss physical keys or just want a phone that feels more intentional and different from the crowd, the Titan 2 Elite makes a strong case for itself. It will not be for everyone, but for the right user, it is one of the most appealing niche phones you can buy.

The post Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Review: Finally a QWERTY Phone Done Right first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Design Student Just Fixed the Way Runners Hydrate

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Most runners know the feeling. You’re a few miles in, the sun is beating down, and somewhere between the last water stop and the next one, you’re already behind. You’ve read the articles. You know hydration matters. And yet, you still have no real idea if you’re actually drinking enough, or too much, or the right thing at all. You’re just guessing, like almost everyone else out there pounding the pavement.

That gap between knowing and doing is exactly what Yash Ghule, a student at ArtCenter College of Design, set out to close with Osmo, an adaptive hydration system built specifically for runners. It’s a student design project, but the thinking behind it is sophisticated enough to deserve a proper look well beyond the design community.

Designer: Yash Ghule

The problem Ghule identified isn’t lack of information. It’s that current hydration tools don’t fit how running actually feels. When you’re in the middle of a run, your cognitive bandwidth is largely committed to the act of running itself. Checking an app, reading a label, or doing mental math about electrolytes isn’t something most people can or will do mid-stride. Hydration fails not because runners don’t care, but because the tools available demand too much attention at exactly the wrong moment. That insight alone is sharp.

Osmo solves this with three connected components working as a single system. The wearable, worn on the wrist, continuously tracks sweat rate, temperature, humidity, and intake behavior. It then translates that data into cues delivered through haptic vibration and light feedback, nudging the runner without pulling them out of their flow. No screen to look at. No notification to parse. Just a quiet signal saying, drink something now.

The bottle is where it gets particularly elegant. Rather than requiring you to pre-plan your hydration strategy before lacing up, Osmo’s bottle includes a built-in mixing mechanism that lets you shift between water and electrolytes on the fly. A simple slider adjusts the ratio as your needs change. This is the kind of thinking that solves a real problem rather than adding a layer of complexity dressed up as innovation. No extra pouches, no separate drink mixes to remember, no mid-run compromise where you reach for the wrong option because you didn’t prepare for the conditions.

The companion app rounds out the system, handling setup before a run and offering digestible insights afterwards. That structure matters. It keeps the app out of the experience when you need to focus, and puts it to work when you finally have the headspace to reflect. I find this concept genuinely compelling, partly because so many “smart” fitness products get this backwards. They front-load the technology in ways that interrupt the activity itself, demanding interaction at moments when you just want to move. Osmo flips that. The intelligence runs quietly in the background, and the interface shows up only when it’s actually useful.

It’s also worth acknowledging the quality of thinking behind the design approach. Ghule didn’t just design a cool bottle or a slick wearable. He mapped out a friction problem, traced it back to its actual root, and then built a system around it. The research behind Osmo surfaced a key insight: runners know they should be hydrating better, but the physical and cognitive demands of running make it genuinely difficult to act on that knowledge in real time. That’s a design challenge with real nuance, and the response reflects it.

Osmo won’t be on store shelves tomorrow. It’s a student concept, and concept-to-market is always a long road. But the fact that it exists as a fully realized, integrated system rather than a single clever gadget suggests Ghule has a clear understanding of what it actually takes to change behavior. That’s not a minor thing. Running keeps growing as a sport, and the industry has largely kept pace. The gear has evolved, the shoes have evolved, the tracking technology has evolved. It’s about time hydration caught up.

The post A Design Student Just Fixed the Way Runners Hydrate first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kineo Might Be the Best-Looking Thing in Your Office

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The first thing you notice about Kineo is that it doesn’t look like fitness equipment. It doesn’t look like a medical device, a sensory deprivation pod, or a corporate novelty. Standing in an open-plan office, it looks like furniture: considered, warm, and completely at ease between a row of workstations and a glass conference wall. For a product designed to bring guided stretching and spinal decompression into the workplace, that’s not a small achievement. It’s actually the whole design challenge.

Designer Kat Lew built Kineo in collaboration with fitness brand Precor to address work-related musculoskeletal disorders, the chronic lower back, neck, and shoulder discomfort that most desk workers know well and most offices address badly. The booth measures 5 feet by 5 feet by 8 feet, built from modular panels so it can be shipped, carried through a standard service elevator, and assembled on-site. The logistics are solved. Now look at the thing itself.

Designer: Kat Lew

The exterior is a tall rectangular volume with deeply rounded corners, split between tinted glass and a cream acoustic panel, unified by a warm champagne gold frame. The glass is smoked just enough to imply privacy without making the booth feel opaque or isolating. The fabric panel has the soft, oatmeal texture you’d expect on a well-designed lounge chair, not a piece of fitness infrastructure. Together they give the booth a material warmth that sits comfortably alongside contemporary office furniture. It borrows loosely from the visual language of privacy pods, the kind you’d find in forward-thinking studios and airport lounges, but the palette keeps it from reading as purely functional. The gold trim does a lot of quiet persuasion here. It signals quality without announcing it.

Inside, the booth divides into two distinct zones, and this is where Lew’s design thinking becomes most legible. One side features a wall-mounted stretching apparatus: a set of slim horizontal bars at multiple heights, embedded into a warm wood-lined back wall. The bars accommodate hanging back decompression, shoulder and back stretches, calf raises, and thigh stretches, guided by a small control panel positioned at eye level. It’s a considered sequence. And importantly, the bars look like they belong on that wall. They don’t look bolted on; they read as part of the architecture, which takes real restraint to pull off.

The other half is a micro-workspace: a fold-down desk, an adjustable saddle-style stool with a round seat, and an arc floor lamp with a small copper shade. The lamp is doing significant tonal work here. A copper-shaded arc lamp in an office recovery booth communicates something specific: that this space is meant to feel restorative rather than clinical. Kineo has three functional modes inside the work zone: standing desk, sitting desk, and a meditation configuration where the desk folds away and the lamp becomes the only light source. The shift between those modes is a good editorial decision. The meditation mode is an acknowledgment that recovery isn’t always about movement. Sometimes it’s about stillness.

What holds the whole design together is the restraint of the material palette. Warm wood, oatmeal fabric, matte gold metal, and tinted glass are each quiet on their own, and Lew keeps them that way. Nothing fights for attention. The arc lamp echoes the curve of the door frame. The stretch bars mirror the warmth of the interior paneling. Every detail reads as intentional without being fussy, which is the hardest balance to strike in this kind of product.

That coherence matters more than it might seem. Kineo is asking people to do something that most office environments quietly discourage: slow down, step away, and attend to their body during the workday. A booth that looked harsh or clinical or gym-adjacent would undermine that ask before a person even stepped inside. The softness of the design is not decorative. It is, in fact, the argument. Walk past Kineo and it looks like a place you might actually want to go. That’s not accidental. That’s the design working exactly as it should.

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Inside the Strategic Shift That Makes the Galaxy S27 Ultra So Important

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Inside the Strategic Shift That Makes the Galaxy S27 Ultra So Important Comparison of the Galaxy S27 Ultra and iPhone Air 2 designs

The Samsung Galaxy S27 Ultra is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated smartphones of 2026. With a bold new design, significant hardware upgrades and a potential shift in strategy, Samsung appears determined to redefine its flagship lineup. However, these advancements come with challenges, including rising production costs and inevitable comparisons to Apple’s […]

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Award-winning Sunseeker robot lawn mower can maintain a football field without boundary wires

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The robot lawn mower space is a saturated one at the moment. New features like artificial intelligence, satellite-based wire free navigation, and obstacle detection are becoming a common sight. To stand out from the rest, a mower needs some recognition, stamping its authority to influence consumer decisions.

Sunseeker Elite X7 Plus Gen 2, a flagship model from the company, was recently conferred the German Innovation Awards’ prestigious Gold Award. Organized by the German Design Council, the award recognizes the Elite X7 Plus Gen 2 for its breathtaking innovation in smart lawn care. The jury also honored another Sunseeker lawn mower, the Elite X4 with the Winner Award in the Gardening Tools category.

Designer: Sunseeker

Sunseeker mowers in the company’s Elite line-up have shown why they are cutting-edge options in the evolving robotic lawn care industry. These awards further substantiate that standing, which even the iF Design Award jury found worth appreciating. The jury at iF Design honored the Sunseeker Elite X9 with the excellence in design and innovation award.

In order to understand what really makes the three robotic lawn mowers stand out in their respective categories, let’s head down:

Sunseeker Elite X9: iF Design Excellence in Design and Innovation Award

Built on the perfections derived from the residential front, the Elite X9 is Sunseeker’s debut into commercial applications. In addition to the large residential gardens, the robotic lawn mower can handle demanding expanses of a football field and municipal landscapes without breaking a sweat. For an idea, the Elite X9 can easily cover up to 12,000 m² area with precision and efficiency. The company informs that it can clean up an area that size within 48 hours.

Sunseeker Elite X9 is powered by a 16-sensor perception system and features eight cameras onboard with a 360-degree OmniSight system ensuring real-time recognition of obstacles and terrain it’s working on in both day and nighttime operations. The Always-On Navigation (AONavi) and RTK satellite positioning tech enable the X9 to work with centimeter-level accuracy without relying on boundary wires.

Since it is designed for larger, commercial settings, the four-wheel drive robot lawn mower features an independent suspension to climb up to 42-degree inclines and maneuver bumpy grounds easily. Sunseeker Elite X9 runs on a 42V, 8Ah battery system, which supports fast charging to power up in just 20 minutes.

Sunseeker Elite X7 Plus Gen 2: Gold Award

Large gardens require mowers with power, intelligence, and ability like the Elite X7 Plus Gen 2. The wire-free Sunseeker robot mower is built to handle yards up to 6000 m². Since it can manage large and complex gardens with equal efficiency, it is powered by nRTK and VSLAM 2.0 technologies and features binocular and iToF cameras for accurate positioning and navigation, whether it’s running during the day or in the night.

In our hands-on experience with Elite X7 Plus Gen 2, our editor mapped his “yard wire-free,” without “no-go zones around the beds, and ran both day and night cycles” to watch the “binocular and iToF cameras work” under each condition. The experience has been telling.

Provided with dual 14-inch cutting discs instead of a single narrow rotor, most robot mowers settle for this AWD robot has 8.7-inch all-terrain wheels. It features a smart LCD screen on top that shows battery status, connection, and the mode the mower’s running in. While it’s build-in tech allows it to map lawns, dodge more than 200 obstacles, and tackle extreme slopes with ease. All the autonomy and decision-making that the mower can do on its own is powered by 10 TOPS AI chip and fueled by a 10 Ah battery.

Sunseeker Elite X4: Winner Award

The Sunseeker Elite X4 is easily recognized for the effortless robotic lawn mowing it assures on smaller, private lawns that span not more than 1,200 m². The mower is ready before you can snap your finger: it requires no calibration and functions wire-free courtesy its 3D LiDAR and Vision AI system, mapping, navigating, and avoiding obstacles, independent of satellite signals.

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30 Major Titles Target an Eight-Week Release Window to Avoid GTA 6

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30 Major Titles Target an Eight-Week Release Window to Avoid GTA 6 A graphic showing the impact of GTA 6 on the video game release schedule.

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Apple Just Quietly Made Your iPad Massively Smarter with iPadOS 27

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