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add to deliciousOur take on the AT&T Tilt - quite possibly what we predicted: The Best Damn Windows Mobile Device (in the US) Ever. Quite possibly - but not definitely. The out-of-the-box experience made one thing clear, that this device is meant for power users. It's not just that it has WiFi, GPS (which you'll need to manage carefully given the relatively small 1350 mAh battery). It's that the out-of-box experience on the device is woeful - long initial "configuration boot up" time, horrible defaults on the today screen, basically they took out nearly all of the improvements that HTC has made on Windows Mobile.
Still there is the HTC "use X to close" and flick-scroll, but before I can give the Tilt my offial "Seal of Awesomeness," I'll need to tweak the heck out of it. So expect more Tilt reportage from us - a "How to Tweak Your Tilt" and then a full review after I've bent it to my will.
I've been MIA for a while, but I'm back!
Well I sprung for the Tilt first day. Got a Premiere upgrade pricing so not too bad on the pocket book.
I agree with Dieter's comments 100%. One of the worst experiences when buying a laptop is waiting for a couple of hours at the first bootup for bloat ware to install only for you to have to spend more hours trying to remove it all.
Well same thing with the Tilt. You get it configured and then a 3 second countdown to doom while it installs AT&Ts links and apps.
I recommend anyone buying this to go through with this and check out the bloat ware that's installed, then hard reset the device and prevent bloatware from installing.
When you get to the 3 second countdown before it 'configures', press the reset hole on the bottom and you'll end up with a totally clean Device.
It'll be AT&T branded, AT&T configured, etc, but none of the extraneous garbage that you may not want. The one thing you'll need that you won't get is the "proxy manager" so you'll have to get these from here:
http://www.gadgetech.info/treo/hacks/disableproxy/index.shtml
Note, that the 'disable' only lasts until you reboot the device then the proxy setting comes back. To remove it permanently use a registry editor to remove the "EnableAutoDetect" setting completely (rather than just setting it to 1.)
Hours and hours later and many tweaks, and this this is very nice.
Here are my comments:
1) Do a hard reset and head off the bloatware install (described above.)
2) The screen re-orientation "delay" is only apparent on the today screen and is not as prevalent if you remove some of those today plug ins. I don't know which one(s) cause the delay, but don't think this is a deal breaker.
When switching in-program, the switch is very fast ( .5 second usually.)
3) HTC has a default today screen plugin that gives you 1 touch access to:
a)Author a new SMS
b)battery meter
c)change screen orientation (landscape)
d)call history
e)Screen brightness
f)comm manger
I use a, e, and f very frequently and this is a huge improvement for accessing these frequently needed features.
4)With the help of 'quick gps' which download satellite location info from the internet (1 week's worth of data) the GPS will lock on in 5-10 seconds in most cases. Google maps is free and works with the GPS. Not the best for navigation, but at least it's a free tool you can try out the GPS with.
5)The camera take very good pictures in decent lighting. No flash. But it's good for a camera phone without a flash.
There are some reports of bad audio over bluetooth with some in-car bluetooth systems. So far it works great with my jawbone headset, but the volume adjustment on the Tilt does NOT adjust the headset's volume (like the Treo 750 does.) You have to use the volume controls on the headset.
Otherwise I've been extremely pleased with the build quality and first few days experience. The jury is still out on the bluetooth issues, but otherwise there's nothing wrong with this device.
You may want to find registry and other tweaks to customize it.
Most of the "hermes" tweaks work on the Tilt (aka Kaiser)
http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=Hermes_Registry
Also download Kaiser Tweak:
http://www.jongma.org/KaiserTweak/
Which makes editing many of these 'tweak's' friendly.
Some musts are:
Enable HSPA
Title bar battery meter (instead of clock)
Keyboard backlight timeout (increase)
Others not in Kaiser Tweak, can be done via reg edit:
Enable the "H" icon for HSDPA connections
Disable or reduce sound on the start up animation.
I recommend this as a 'buy'.