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| AT&T Tilt Smartphone (AT&T) | 
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| Brand: HTC
Category: Wireless
List Price: $599.99
Buy New: $49.99
You Save: $550.00 (92%)
New (1) Used (1) from $49.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  124 reviews
Sales Rank: 53
Color: Silver
Media: Wireless Phone
Battery Type: Lithium Ion
Display Size: 4
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 0 x 0 x 0
Model: 8925
UPC: 821793000585
ASIN: B000UWDU5K
Release Date: October 5, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Do It All Device - Think Twice About Upgrade from 8525 February 27, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I'm surprised Amazon reviews seems to be on average lower than CNET Reviews. CNET Users are known to be sticklers when it comes to giving high reviews and as of today this had an 8.3 on CNET which is really good for CNET. But I'm probably more inline with the Amazon reviewers...
Don't get me wrong, this is a definite step up for users of the previous version of this phone, the 8525, but other than the GPS and double internal memory (128MB instead of 64MB) all the other improvements are relatively minor compared to those two major improvements. If you are a power user looking for a phone that "does it all" this is basically the best choice on the market - it blows the iPhone which is more of a mainstream - multimedia oriented phone than a power user PDA phone.
I won't go into the details on all the minor improvements - the gadget freaks that live for the latest device can rant and rave about all the bells and whistles on this device until the cows come home. It is quite a feature packed device, the closest thing I've seen so far to a device that "does it all."
I was going to wait for an even better version to come out before upgrading from my 8525, although I really was attracted to having a built-in GPS, but it's too expensive and time consuming to keep upgrading PDA phones every 18 months. However I dropped and broke my 8525 and that made the decision for me.
Luckily the phone can now be had for $199 refurbished with contract renewal with AT&T and the phone is basically just like a new phone and comes in plain white box with 90-day warranty instead of 1-year. These things are solid-state, no internal moving parts like a hard drive, so if they're going to fail, they'll fail in the first 90 days in my experience. Plus credit card doubles warranty anyway. So no worries saving $100 buying refurb.
If this phone didn't have a GPS, I would have repaired my 8525 with new screen for $99 or bought a refurbed 8525 for $125. The Tilt is definitely the better phone overall, but when you are a power user it costs not only the money but more importantly the several hours of loading all your applications, configuring them and all the settings, email accounts, etc. It's can be a BIG pain a very time consuming if you have a lot of apps and customizations on your phone.
So overall I like it better than the 8525 due to the GPS, but there are several dissapointments:
1) Probably the biggest drawback of this phone is they took the camera flash out. The 8525 had a great little flash that allowed close-up low-light indoor photos and you could use it as a flashlight. Not on the Tilt.
2) Even though the camera is 3 megapixel instead of 2 megapixel, it doesn't take better pictures, even outdoors. In fact, the pictures sometimes look worse! I'm into digital photography also. If you understand how digital camera CCD's work, you will know more megapixels doesn't always mean better picture, usually worse (more noise), but from a average consumer marketing standpoint, everyone assumes more is better.
2) The battery life on this phone is average at best. Not as good as 8525, and abysmal if you use the GPS a lot. That's I guess a drawback of having such a powerful phone. Be interested to see if higher capacity batteries are available.
3) The tilt screen is a bunch of hype. With the screen tilted it is actually harder to use the keyboard then when it isn't tilted as there is less finger room at the top of the keyboard. The two soft keys are virtually unusable for all but the smallest hands if the screen is tilted, so I don't even tilt it. What a stupid gimick.
4) The keyboard overall is not as nice as the one on the 8525. While I like the finish of the keys, they don't stick up as much or press down as much, hard to tell as the 8525 so the keyboard is not as comfortable to use in my opinion.
5) The change to the buttons are a step backwards in my opinion for two reasons: a) they moved the e-mail and IE buttons down so that everything is crowded in one clump of buttons now making the buttons more difficult to press for the average size or larger finger/thumb, and b) the chrome finish is cheesy looking and just shows fingerprint smudges.
6) You can't store e-mail on the storage card without removing the Messaging plug-in from the Today screen. There are a number of registry hacks to make Windows Mobile operate better and use memory more efficiently. One of the most popular are the three hacks that allow the phone to use the Storage Card to store e-mail messages, e-mail attachments (that's also a setting in Windows), and My Documents folders on your storage card. This works fine and dandy with the 8525, but with the Tilt, the phone boots differently so that it loads the Messaging Today plug in before it recognizes the SD card. What ends up happening is that if you do the e-mail hack to store email on the card, the phone will create a folder in main memory called Storage Card and call the SD card Storage Card2. LUCKILY, the phone has 128MB of internal memory instead of 64MB, so even users who store entire copies of 1000 or more Outlook e-mails on their phone, there's now enough memory to not worry about storing the email on the storage card instead of internal memory. So I just store the attachments on the storage card with no worries. So essentially this isn't really a drawback that you can't store email on the card due to the larger internal memory, but I though I should include this for power users who uses the registry hack previously so they know they can't do it on the Tilt without disabling the Messaging Today plug-in.
With all the nit picking, I still would highly recommend this phone to anyone looking for the most advanced, feature packed phone that does everything.
HOWEVER, if you are coming from an 8525 or similar device and the GPS is no big deal to you and you are satisfied with your device, don't waste your time and money. Wait one more version to get something even better, more worthy of the cost and time to upgrade.
 Not So Great as a Phone February 23, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've tweaked mine and added 3rd party programs, but you can't get around the fact that it's pretty darn hard to make a simple phone call without the stylus, and it's especially frustrating to use the keypad for call options (e.g. voice mail) once your call is connected. This just plain sucks.
Basic phone call operations turn into a two handed procedure, pretty dangerous when you're on the road.
After 5 months with this phone, I'm really missing a phone that has a keypad. I've gone back to my Nokia 73 and will continue shopping for a better Windows Mobile device...
 Would be an awesome phone if it wasn't so slow February 22, 2008
11 out of 17 found this review helpful
Everything on this phone is slower than it should be due to the fact that HTC chose not to include hardware graphics acceleration (something that is present on ALL other smartphones). As a result the graphics take longer to render on every single program you run, from email to web browser. It doesn't matter, it will run slower than it should due to the graphics problem.
From what I understand this is something HTC can fix by releasing drivers for the 3D graphics chip on the units processor. However they seem to be ignoring the customers who purchased their product.
Overall I am happy with look and feel of the phone. I would like stereo speakers and better bluetooth quality, but some of the tweaks I used helped the bluetooth.
The phone runs a little better after you spend 20-30 hours on the internet researching it and tweaking it, but there is really no excuse for not having the 3D drivers.
The GPS works good, however the GPS software (I've tried four different programs) has trouble rendering the screen and is choppy and sluggish due to the missing drivers.
The camera is all but unusable due to the missing drivers, it has alot of trouble rendering the target and takes along time to process the picture due to having to do everything through software and having no hardware graphical support. The video it records is horrible and the audio doesn't sync due to the driver problem.
An advertised feature, HSDPA,is disabled by default by AT&T. You have to either have it show hidden files and dig deep in the windows file to find the program that turns it on and off that should be available in the settings area. Or you can search the net and find a utility someone wrote that enables it along with fixing other issues on the phone.
Once the HSDPA is enabled, the speed is really fast if you are in a 3G area that supports it.
So, at this point I would say avoid this phone until the company does the right thing and shows it cares about it's customers.
The AT&T Cell Phone stinks as a phone , yet is good online. February 16, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
The AT&T stinks as a cell phone. Calls are easily put on hold in error or lost with no input from the owner causing the problem. The virtual keyboard feature blanks out after seconds no matter how many times you AT&T Tilt Smartphone (AT&T)try to change the settings. The cell phone stinks for phone calls, gets an "F", but the Medianet connection is fast and very good, and the pda aspect is good and has a reminder alarm. It is a good portable internet access device/PDA, but the cell phone needs improvement. It was priced higher pre Xmas and I want a refund on the difference. AT &T is a lousy service provider and I would not recommend it.
 How did I do it without a Smartphone before?? February 16, 2008
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
My husband and I each got one of these just over a week ago and we have been very pleased with it. Amongst our frieds, we are considered 'late adopters' when it comes to Smartphones.
The main reason we picked this phone over the other PDA phones available:
1. WiFi - we want to be able to use our phone without paying a lot even when we are roaming. If we have WiFi access, we could still use the internet (surfing, emails, IMs) and make PC-to-PC calls with this phone using Skype without paying voice and data roaming fees. Granted, we will need to find free WiFi access while travelling, but if free service is available, why not? In case of emergencies, we wouldn't have cared about the cost of roaming anyway.
2. Microsoft Platform - I know a lot of people do not like the Windows Mobile software... many people do not like Microsoft products, period; however, I am a creature of habit and I like the familiar feel of MS products. I am sure it could be better, but it works for me and I will just wait for upgrades in the future.
3. Ability to sync with Exchange - this is a feature my husband cares about. We were considering the iPhone, but was told that it does not sync with Exchange, which means he can't check work email.... not very useful to have a PDA phone that does not sync with all email systems no matter how slick it may look.
4. GPS - It's a nice bonus. And you can use any GPS software you want - free ones like Google Maps and Windows Live Search or get the Tom Tom software. So you don't have to pay for the AT&T service.
We did lots of research before picking this phone and we have found that the main complaints people have are the speakphone and video driver issues. Luckily for us, the videio issue doesn't affect us: we don't plan on watching videos or playing sophisticated games on the phone. The location of the speakerphone is unfortunate, but we don't really use that feature anyway; and for handsfree in the car, we use Bluetooth headset and speaker (The Motorola T305 works quite well). We downloaded an application called Bluetooth Audio which would transfer the audio (GPS and music) to the speaker/headphone, so it works well in the car. This software has its bugs, but I am sure better ones will come out as the demand for such an application increases.
There are lots of downloads available for Smartphones and mobile devices, so you can totally customize it. Until a couple of weeks ago, all I wanted was a phone that could make calls, no need for a camera, downloadable ringtones... But now that I have got everything on the Tytn, I don't know how I made it in the past without a Smartphone!!
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