I have quite the history with this series of devices, as I was watching the news feeds about a month before it even came out. Unfortunately, the model that came out back in August, known as the HTC TyTN II, runs for $800.00 MSRP. That was far more than I could justify spending on just the device. About 4 month later, I have my hands on the Tilt. The only difference between the two devices is the absence of the VGA camera on the Tilt. I had a short phase where I didn't want to buy any of the "watered down" models, but I got over that quickly.
Ok, enough of my personal background, let's start looking at the Tilt in both it's fame and failures. The Tilt runs on a 400 Mhz Qualcomm 7200 processor and comes with 128MB of RAM and 256MB of internal storage. The screen resolution runs 240 x 360, features a full 93 key mini-qwerty keyboard. It has the full 65536 bits of color to display everything in vibrant detail. It is one of the first devices to be released with Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 6 operating system. The most impressive of the hardware features include an internal GPS unit, a quad-band GSM unit, access to HSDPA, stereo bluetooth 2.0, wifi and a spectrum of other connectivity protocols.
Some of the things I've done with the device and expect to continue using the device for: email, web surfing, mp3 player, video player, excel spreadsheet editor, word editor, finance tracker, note keeper, sensitive data storage, mobile blogging, instant messanger, phone, contacts manager, task manager, calendaring, GPS with mapping, camera, and I'm sure that I've left something out...
Now, let's talk about the bad. The Tilt comes preloaded with crapware from AT&T. Thankfully, these kinds of phones are much like PCs which means you can flash them, upgrade them, and change out the applications. So this is not a problem with the device so much as the specific model being distributed by AT&T. One thing I haven't exactly diagnosed yet is the odd fact that I can no longer receive picture messages. My phone service plan has not changed, and I could receive them on my last phone, but not on this power house of a PDA Phone. Strange. Thes pros certainly outweigh this little con.
So more subjective remarks on the Tilt. The keyboard is nice, though it may scare some people at first. It really is helpful, and makes data input for emails, documents and blogs much easier. I personally can't stand how small microSD cards are, but I suppose have no intent on removing it from the device. The software that comes with the Tilt is disappointing and requires users to spend time customizing it, but for those users who are willing to take the time, the device can become even that much more powerful.
ARF Rating: 9.0 / 10.0
-Alex
(sent from mobile device)
