Without a doubt, the Tilt is the best Windows Mobile 6 device we've seen so far, though that doesn't make it the best smartphone. The OS lags occasionally, and doesn't seem to take full advantage of the hardware. The Tilt design improves upon HTC's basic premise, the side-sliding QWERTY, but this design is starting to get worn, and we're frustrated that after years of building the same type of phone, the OS still can't keep up with a simple aspect change. That said, business users will be happy to find everything, and we mean everything, they want on a phone, including speedy tethered modem support, a first rate address book, powerful productivity and scheduling options, and even a good navigator. So what if multimedia isn't worth the price of admission. There is plenty on this device to recommend it to a serious power user. Release: October 2007. Price: $400.
Pros: Interesting new design makes using a bit easier. Fast for a Windows Media phone. Great keyboard. Best-in-class address book features.
Cons: Still some lag switching aspect ratios and opening programs. Doesn't take full advantage of AT&T's fastest network in tethered modem. Multimedia is an also-ran feature.
Poor
Mediocre
Good
77% VERY GOOD
Excellent
Full review of the AT&T Tilt:
Design – Good
The AT&T Tilt is a high-end HTC Windows Mobile phone, which should tell you exactly what it looks like. Its form follows the same basic idea as the Sprint Mogul, T-Mobile Wing, or, most significantly, the AT&T 8525, among others. The main difference is that on the Tilt, the screen lifts slightly when the keyboard is extended, giving users a better viewing angle. Unfortunately, this also obscures the soft keys, which are located under the crease, but the Tilt uses a touch screen, so you can simply tap your selection on screen instead of on the keyboard. In practice, we found this feature to look enticing, but it made little difference in the usability of the phone. In some cases, like text messaging, the tilted screen seemed to give our fingers less room to maneuver the keys. In others, like navigating while driving, the Tilt held the screen at just the right angle. Still, you certainly don't have to Tilt the screen, so there's no harm done if you're not a fan.
The Tilt lacks the wealth of buttons found on other HTC smartphones. On some phones, such as the 8525 or the Wing, we've found dedicated keys for instant messaging and even the communication manager. On the Tilt, you'll find none of these, and the simplicity doesn't pay off. Windows Mobile needs hardware buttons, or else users are forced to break out the stylus, and nobody wants that. On the Tilt, you don't even get a dedicated volume rocker switch, which is a serious oversight, as the volume icon is too small to reliably peck with a fingertip. In fact, in most applications, the volume icon did not appear at the top, and so we had no obvious way to change volume. Also, the clickwheel gave us problems. It often failed to register a click, forcing us to press harder on the wheel, which resulted in frequent errant spins and mistaken selections.
Otherwise, the Tilt is a solid phone. The screen is high-quality, and the keys are firm but comfortable. They are slightly rounded and nicely spaced, making typing a breeze. Switching between portrait and landscape, as the keys are slid forth, was not instantaneous, there was a noticeable lag, but the phone seemed better at handling the change than slower models like the Wing. In all, Windows Mobile may be a slow operating system for phones, with plenty of lag time, but the Tilt felt like one of the faster Windows Mobile phones we've seen, and even complicated third-party apps, like TeleNav, opened quickly.
Calling – Very good
The sound quality on the speaker of the AT&T Tilt is much better than the microphone. Listening to calls, our friends sounded clear and loud, better than on most phones we've used. On their end, however, our friends reported a muffled, heavy sound, with an occasional megaphone effect that made us sound digital. Not bad, but the sound could have been brighter.
For calling features, the Tilt gets the full Windows Mobile treatment, which we like. The address book is among the best in the smartphone class, with live searching from the Today screen and a contact list that keeps track of recent calls in each contact entry. The phone uses voice tagging, and though we prefer speaker-independent dialing, we'll take any hands-free option we can get. Bluetiooth worked well, and the phone had no trouble pairing with our BlueAnt Z9 or Motorola S9 headsets. Conference calling should be easier, requiring some menu digging. We'd like to see Microsoft make better use of the touch screen for calling, especially for conferencing, where a few taps should suffice.
Messaging – Very good
The Tilt is a business messaging phone, so the emphasis was on e-mail, but that doesn't mean there aren't some other options thrown in as well. You get instant messaging for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, as well as SMS and MMS messaging. These worked well, and in some cases even better than the e-mail client. For e-mail we set up our corporate e-mail over an IMAP account, and Gmail over POP (yes, we are set up for IMAP Gmail, but we wanted some diversity). Both of these accounts had problems functioning properly. In fact, our corporate IMAP account never worked properly, though we had tweaked all of the port settings and security protocols. Our Gmail account worked fairly well, though we had problems sending e-mails, especially large e-mails, like pictures from the Tilt's 3-megapixel camera. These didn't even appear to try to leave the device, they simply sat in our Outbox indefinitely. Outlook Mobile worked much better, but since we don't have a corporate Exchange ActiveSync account, we didn't use it much. Still, with Outlook, you get HTML e-mail and plenty of shortcuts to make management easier.
The keyboard on the Tilt is very nice. We're fond of HTC's keys, and the Tilt's QWERY is among the best we've seen. We still prefer the keys we tried on the i-mate 8502, but the Tilt's keys were plenty comfortable. Each key is slightly rounded, just enough to give your fingers an idea where to press, and though the keyboard is fairly flat, keys have just enough travel.
Scheduling and productivity – Very good
What can we say about Windows Mobile 6 in terms of productivity that hasn't been said? It's a very capable system, and it pairs very nicely with your desktop PC. Outlook works like Outlook should, which means you can schedule appointments, invite co-workers, and set reminders from the phone. It could look prettier, but it functions very well, and synchronizes with our laptop like no other OS can, for better or for worse.
Office Mobile gives you Word, Excel and Powerpoint, though you can't use the Tilt to create a new PowerPoint slideshow, only view and edit existing slideshows. Word and Excel, on the other hand, are quite capable, and we are always impressed when we dig through the menus on the mobile version of Word. Though we've rarely had to resort to using our smartphone to create Word documents, it is certainly possible to create not a rudimentary file, but a real, formatted piece. Again, everything could look a little nicer, more up-to-date, but in terms of functions, we can't complain.
Laptop sidekick – Very good
The AT&T Tilt does everything we want a laptop sidekick to do. Foremost, it can act as a tethered modem. We got speeds into the 600Kbps range when paired with our Dell D420 laptop, which is perfectly fine for our purposes, which include uploading images. Of course, we've gotten the same speeds, and occasionally better, on our Sprint Palm Treo 755p, so we would have liked to see the Tilt take better advantage of AT&T's 3.6Mbps HSDPA network. Otherwise, the Tilt can charge via the USB connection, and it uses a standard mini-USB cable, which means we don't have to bring any extra accessories on the road. Colleagues complained about the lack of a carrying case or holster, but that's an accessory we rarely use, so it wasn't a big deal to us.
Multimedia – Good
Though the Tilt may dig deeper into AT&T's 3G multimedia capabilities than most of their smartphones, the experience still falls short of what we would like from a multimedia smartphone. This makes sense, because the Tilt is aimed at power business users. The phone features AT&T's Cellular Video service and AT&T Music, thought the upcoming over the air music download store was not active. Videos were small, blocky and a bit blurry, and sound quality was generally poor. There was no full screen option for the many videos that opened in the device's RealPlayer, and even switching to landscape mode didn't improve the size of the videos. Streaming speeds were surprisingly good, and we managed to watch videos, without hiccupping, even over an EDGE connection, though obviously the 3.6Mbps HSDPA is the ideal network for streaming.
Web browsing – Good
Internet Explorer is starting to fall behind some of the more impressive offerings on the market, especially Apple's iPhone and the many phones that can use the mobile Opera browser. Download speeds were okay, certainly better than on the iPhone, but page rendering leaves something to be desired. Navigating pages was also a hassle, as long pages required endless clicking of the navigation button, constant scrolling with the wheel, or breaking out the stylus. Microsoft needs to take better advantage of the touch screen in this application, and adopt a finger navigation for the Web. Borrow the idea from Apple, it's not like it hasn't been done before.
GPS navigation – Very good
The Tilt comes loaded with TeleNav. At no cost, users can get simple, static directions, but do not have access to the onboard GPS. For GPS navigation, you need to pay $10 a month, which is a trend among the carriers these days, and one we don't appreciate. It seems like the price of the hardware is included with the device, so charging extra for software to support the GPS hardware would be like charging extra if you want to talk during a phone call, instead of just listen.
That being said, TeleNav worked very well for us with the GPS navigation active. It wasn't nearly as quick to find us as a standalone unit, but the device had good, strong reception compared to other phone's we've tested. TeleNav's software is fine, nothing too outstanding. We were happy to see that pedestrian direction really were for pedestrians, directing us the wrong way down one way streets, as it should, but this is more a comment on the sorry state of some of the other navigators than a compliment to TeleNav.
Price and availability
The AT&T Tilt is available now for $400 with a contract agreement. A mail-in rebate of $100 is available, when signing up for a qualifying data and voice plan.
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