First Look: The AT&T Tilt Smart Phone

Whether you use the Tilt to type notes or to watch videos, its revolutionary adjustable, angled screen makes viewing a pleasure. And hey, it's also a versatile cell phone.

Slider phones have become increasingly popular; but until now, they've been limited to handheld devices that are best used in two hands. That changes with AT&T's newest Windows Mobile device, which you can either hold in your hands or rest comfortably on a surface.

The aptly named AT&T Tilt (also known as the HTC 8925) has a hinged display designed to accommodate various viewing scenarios. When open, the roomy adjustable screen gives the phone the look of a a tiny laptop, complementing the phone's use for computing or entertainment. (The phone costs $400 when purchased along with a two-year contract from AT&T; unlimited data plans are priced at $45 a month.)

Good design isn't the only thing the Tilt has going for it. It's also AT&T's firstWindows Mobile 6device. And it's a quad-band GSM world phone compatible with EDGE/GPRS and with high-speed 3G UMTS and HSDPA broadband networks. This makes it a great phone for travelers, especially if they can take advantage of high-speed networks.

The device has slimmed down ever so slightly from its predecessor, theCingular 8525: It still measures 4.4 inches long by 2.3 inches wide, but the product's maker,HTC, scaled down its depth by nearly 0.2 inch and its weight by 0.2 ounce (to exactly 6 ounces). It also has double the ROM (256MB) and double the memory (128MB). The display remains the same--a generous 2.8 inches, with 320 by 240 resolution and 64,000 colors. The processor is still 400 MHz, too, but now the unit uses a Qualcomm MSM7200 instead of a Samsung CPU.

The new phone is rated by AT&T to support up to 4 hours of talk time and up to 8 days of standby time. Our battery tests are pending, and we'll update this review with a full rating once those tests are completed.

In my informal tests, I found the audio quality over AT&T's network pleasing. I heard a faint (but not disturbing) hissing noise in the background, but the other person's voice consistently came through loud and clear. Another positive: The people I called could discern little background noise, even though I was in a noisy locale.

The volume wheel helped augment the sound considerably. When I used the wheel, my voice sounded louder When I spoke--even to myself--than it actually was. I still sounded clear enough to the other party, but this unadvertised amplification caught me by surprise. The effect diminished when I reduced the volume to its minimum level. The speakerphone, meanwhile, sounded tinny to my ear, and audio became distorted at higher levels.

The device can handle up to six Bluetooth pairings simultaneously--a good thing, since you may want to use it with a Bluetooth headset and an external keyboard at the very least. No headset--wired or wireless-and no keyboard are included in the package.

Though HTC is a popular manufacturer of other Windows Mobile devices, the Tilt's subtle and not-so-subtle design improvements--including the tilting screen--help distinguish it from the rest of the pack

The hinge permits a tilt of 40 degrees, making the unit far more functional than competing handhelds are. The design makes it feel a bit like a smaller cousin of thePsion Series 5PDAs of a decade ago. Thanks to the tilt, I could rest the unit on my desk and type more quickly using my index fingers, instead of having to hold the device in my hands and use my thumbs. The tilting screen also makes the device more conducive to use with a Bluetooth keyboard, as well as for hands-free sessions of video or TV watching (theMobiTV 2app comes pre-installed).

The AT&T Tilt's spring-loaded screen feels slightly sturdier than the screen on theT-Mobile Wing, another HTC slider phone of similar size. The tilting hinge appears to be relatively strong: I could hold the unit by the screen and not feel as though it might detach from the phone at any moment. I don't know how the unit would withstand a drop with the screen in its tilted position, however; and when in its flat, fully open position, the screen exhibited a slight give on the right side, causing me to wonder about the Tilt's long-term durability (a similar problem plagued the Wing--but there, the give was evident on both sides of the screen, and much more pronounced).

AT&T Tilt

The carbon-gray Tilt has multiple design points--both positive and negative--worth noting. On the negative side, the array of buttons beneath the Tilt's screen have a shiny metallic veneer that makes the button labels difficult to see; the etchings are faint, and the colors are too muted to stand out against the sheen. Also, the shiny buttons pick up fingerprints all too easily, much like the shiny back plate of an iPod. On the positive side, once you figure out which buttons are which, they provide convenient dedicated controls and shortcuts to key functions, including Send/End, OK, Mail, Internet Explorer, and the Windows Mobile Start menu. At the center of the array is a five-way navigation pad.

Slide the display to the left to reveal the QWERTY keyboard. The unit automatically reorients the screen so you can use it horizontally with the keyboard. The reorientation takes a couple of seconds, though, with a momentarily broken-up graphical display marking the transition from one orientation to the other. Another gripe: The lip on the outer rim of the keyboard (along the side with the spacebar) is a hair higher than on the Wing; those fractions of a millimeter make typing on the keyboard slightly harder when you hold it in your hand.

AT&T had its version of the device customized to emphasize the keys that double as the keypad. Unfortunately, however, the light blue numbers get lost in the silver paint used to distinguish the double-duty keys. If you choose to use the on-screen keypad, you'll appreciate that the buttons are slightly larger than those on the Cingular 8525.

I liked the button for accessing the 3-megapixel camera. When you hold the camera vertically, that button is situated on the lower right side of the unit; in contrast, the Wing put its camera button on the upper left side, where it interfered with the Wing's slide-out screen. Among the camera's numerous features are easy touch adjustments for changing resolution and white balance; in my tests, however, the camera seemed slow to adjust and focus, and it got significantly blurrier as I panned about a room in low-light conditions than the Wing did

The volume wheel on the upper left side conveniently doubles as a navigation wheel; the SIM card is located under the slider screen for uber-accessibility (a boon to world travelers who frequently interchange SIM cards); and the microSDHC card slot sits just beneath the screen near the USB port (the slot accepts optional high-capacity cards of up to 32GB, when available).

Admittedly, all of this just skims the surface of what you can do with the AT&T Tilt. The device can function as a full-featured mobile computer, from the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel it contains to its multimedia playback (via syncing withWindows Media 10on your desktop) to its built-in GPS for use with theTeleNav GPS Navigator(an extra-cost service priced at $10 a month for unlimited routes). All in all, it's quite a package.