AT&T Tilt™

Calls and speakerphone: Calls sound great on the Tilt, with only the slightest amount of background noise. Similarly, callers reported great results on their end. The speakerphone, however, delivered lackluster performance, with weak and tinny-sounding audio.

Audio quality: Music playback through a pair of mini-USB stereo earbuds (not included) sounded very good, with decent bass and treble response—a good thing since you can’t make any adjustments to the audio quality. You’ll want to invest in earbuds because the external speaker is too weak for music playback. Also, a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack would have been useful so you could use an existing pair of headphones. As it is, the Tilt only supports USB earbuds and Bluetooth stereo headsets.

Menu/phone book: If you’ve worked with other Windows Mobile devices before, you’ll have no problem with the HTC Tilt. This device runs the Professional Edition, which is Windows Mobile 6. Of course, you can change what items you want to display, as well as the background image and the theme.

The screen orientation automatically changes to landscape mode when you slide open the cover, then changes back to portrait when you close it. There’s a slight delay during the transition, and on a couple of occasions the device didn’t leave landscape mode after we closed the cover. Though the Tilt includes a touch screen, it doesn’t include the slick TouchFLO feature found in the HTC Touch. But it does include a multifunction scroll wheel on the left spine, which is helpful for scrolling through large contact lists quickly.

The contact list is limited only by available memory, and you can add an additional 250 to the SIM card. Each entry holds up to 12 numbers as well as street addresses, IM screen name, and notes. You can record voice tags for individual contacts, but there’s no general voice-recognition for the entire phone book.

Messaging: As you’d expect from a messaging-centric device, the HTC Tilt offers plenty of e-mail options, including Microsoft Direct Push technology for real-time synchronization with Microsoft Exchange. It also supports BlackBerry Connect and AT&T Xpress Mail. If you don’t need to connect with a corporate e-mail server, the Tilt supports POP3 and IMAP accounts, so you can access web-based email accounts such as those provided by AOL or Yahoo!.

The device automatically detected and loaded settings for our Comcast and Gmail accounts. You can set up how often you want the Tilt to check for new messages for each account. Of course, the more often it automatically checks, the bigger the drain on battery life. A nice touch is the ability to view e-mail messages in HTML format regardless of account type. Additionally, the Tilt comes preloaded with AOL, Windows Live, and Yahoo instant messaging. You can use the high-speed 3G network on the cell phone or a WiFi connection for messaging.

Camera: The 3MP camera takes decent pictures with fairly sharp details and good lighting. But it’s hard to hold the camera steady enough while pressing the OK button to take a clear picture. Also, considering this is a 3MP camera, we were a bit disappointed in how dull the coloring is. The Tilt won’t replace your digital camera, but it’s a whole lot better than most camera phones.

Music: The HTC Tilt supports MP3 and WMA (Microsoft’s music format) files, including DRM-protected files purchased from online music stores. Windows Media Player (WMP) handle playback duties, so the device syncs easily with Windows Media Player on your PC.

You get the basic playback options, including shuffle/repeat and viewable album art, but you don’t get the ability to adjust audio quality settings such as bass and treble. With 124.5MB of storage memory, there’s room for saving music to the device. But you’d still be wise to use the inlcuded microSD card for storing music files, because depending on what else you have stored on the cell phone there may be little room left for music files, which take up about 3MB of space each. As noted the external speaker is weak, so best to use the included stereo earbuds.

Connectivity/Bluetooth/WiFi: Bluetooth 2.0 delivers support for wireless headsets, hands-free kits, file exchange, dial-up networking, and stereo headsets. We successfully paired the HTC Tilt with a Samsung A640 cell phone to beam contacts. The process was mostly smooth, although some contacts didn’t transfer from the Tilt to the Samsung cell phone, despite the fact that both devices said they were successfully beamed. We paired the Tilt successfully with Plantronics Discovery 610 Bluetooth headset, which we used for voice dialing. Additionally, the HTC Tilt support WiFi, which we found easy to set up through the WiFi menu.

Look and feel: No use sugarcoating it, the HTC Tilt isn’t the prettiest of smartphones. It’s big and heavy—if you try to lug it around in your front pants pocket you’ll probably pull a muscle. Its overall look is utilitarian, at best. Still, as a business device or for hardcore mobile messaging, it’s extremely useful. Heavy as it is, the Tilt feels sturdy and comfortable, and the sliding, tilting cover is easy to maneuver. We should also note that the SIM card slot is located on back of the front cover. We found this to be a more convenient placement than the usual spot behind the battery.

The key feature, of course, is the tilting display. After sliding the cover open, you can tilt the screen forward up to 40 degrees, giving the device a mini-laptop appearance. It’s helpful for viewing Web pages and documents, though it does inhibit typing somewhat because it partially obscures the upper portion of the keyboard. The two soft keys at the top of the keyboard are especially hard to reach with the screen tilted. We recommend keeping the screen flat while typing, but tilting it when reading documents or viewing pictures or videos.

The display measures 2.8-inches diagonally and delivers bright, sharp images and text. Below the screen resides a full set of cell phone controls, including Talk and End, a Start menu button, one-touch access to Internet Explorer and e-mail, two soft keys, a five-way navigation toggle, and an OK button for menu selection. The left spine contains a push-to-talk button, and OK button, and multifunction scroll wheel, which lets you scroll through contact lists or menu items, as well as control the volume during phone calls and music playback. The right spine houses the power/standby and camera buttons. On the bottom of the HTC Tilt you’ll find the microSD expansion slot, while the bottom right corner holds the stylus.

Keypad: The HTC Tilt’s QWERTY keyboard features large, tactile buttons with good backlighting. We had no problems typing out e-mails, instant messages, or working with documents. But as we mentioned earlier, the two soft keys at the top of the keyboard can be tough to access with the screen fully tilted.

This is one of the few areas in which the Tilt doesn’t shine. If you make several phone calls and set up the device to check e-mail regularly (say, every half hour), you’ll have to recharge the battery every day. You can use the included mini-USB-to-USB cable to charge the cell phone when it’s connected to a computer. Nice!