HTC Tilt 8925 / TyTN II
Average Ratings
Upgrade to Android Warm Donut 1.6
I've had this phone since the first release for $150 w/ 1 year contract and it's been revived by Android Warm DONUT 1.6. Before it would crash every so often, was slow, didn't do much but now it does everything and is fast. It's going to hold me over until the next generation of EVO4G type phones with longer battery life. I thought of going Iphone 4G but Android has convinced me otherwise. Here's the instructions:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=636024
I used 3.29 HardSPL and replaced nbh with Warm Donut's 4-2010 release.
http://download219.mediafire.com/t0lnxmijgEjg/1drm2jqwjzn/myn-WarmDonut-04-24-2010-240x320-110.zip
htc good att bad
had phone over a year, thought id give it some props. hate when peeps write reviews about crap theyve had for 2 hours...
tips: kaiser tweaks is must, so is home 2.0. keep your apps closed, if autofocus camera gives you probs set it to "sports", it will take a 3 shot burst so you can get a quality pic of moving objects (like kids). turn off the word memory for typing, that lil box that trys to fig what word your typing all the time to "help you out" will cause your keys to be less responsive and slow your text appearance greatly. much happier without it. if it starts to eff up on you refresh the screen with power button, just clear and back on once or twice will solve probs. keep your temp files deleted or will eat up device memory and slow you down...
pros: powerful device, decent memory out of box, durable (14 months of hell and just as good as new, cept for the scarring of numerous pavement collisions), endlessly customizable, qwerty is great, lights well at night, video, supports lots of expandable memory (4gb+), bluetooth, lcd is great, records video, email, no limit to text length (hate that 160 crap),
cons: att bloatware!!!! windows mobile!!!! every os micro has made is poop, i mean we all rely on it but realistically geez... phones heavy, sometimes keys have bad response. if you let memory run low, like really low, 1/2 mb low, will be hard to get memory cleared at that point...so clean up! slow to answer calls. i hate hitting answer and then waiting 2-3 secs or more for connection. can actually miss calls in time it takes to connect!!! even though you answered. oh and autofocus on camera...ruins it.
overall good phone though. got me thru a lot and has a presence about it, impresses. no nokia but htc is good and customization is unending. its like buying a civic or something, thier are millions of aftermarket parts for it! best of all they are free!
perfection!!!
came from t-mobiles wing, which is a little lighter then the tilt. But the weight isnt an issue unless your a pansy. the speed at which everything runs is alot faster then the wing,
pros
1: 3.0 mp camera
2: gps
3: more apps then the wing through att
4: feels sturdier overall
cons
1: none, quite complaining about the battery life when your probably not closing out the programs, hitting ok doesn't exit out of them hitting the "x" does, which is why your battery is probably running out. Not to mention if your talking on the phone for 3 hrs all phones will drain, if you have your bluetooth, wifi access, active sync, or push email running it will run the battery down. texting by itself will not kill the battery, i text all day long on the standard battery and it lasts 2 days
Too Many Bugs!!!
I've had this phone for about 2 months now and the phone is so full of bugs you just want to throw out the window half the time!
Cons:
1. The touch screen can be very unresponsive at times. You have to click on something 2-3 times for it to come up.
2. Texting will fail to send and you have to try resending till it goes through, even in great coverage areas.
3. Short Battery life.
4. Keyboard will fail to light up at night so you can see what you're typing, then it will just come on.
5. Poor reception!
Pros:
1. The wi-fi
2. Nice size keyboard
I had a blackberry before this and should have never have switched!
Not For Everyone
Pros: Bluetooth, WiFi, Push E-mail, Large ROM with many programs available, 3G speed, speakerphone, Excellent Earpiece Volume, good reception and good integration with Microsoft Office.
Cons: On screen telephone buttons, heavy, requires registry tweaking to work well, not enough power without the aftermarket extended battery and just fair full sunlight screen visibility
I've owned this phone for 1 month. After the 1st week of ownership, the phone froze so many times that I returned it assuming that is was defective. My second Tilt had all the same freezing problems. Before giving up, I downloaded "Kaiser Tweaks" (a registry altering program). Now the telephone is quite stable without lockups. My mail gets pushed. I can get mail HTML or text! It's like having your desktop in your hand. 3G browsing speed is good and the mini opera browser improves the mobile web experience on many sites.
THIS IS NOT A TELEPHONE FOR TECHNOPHOBES! This is not a phone for someone who wants out of the box performance. It is also not a phone for multimedia buffs. If you want multimedia, buy an iPhone. If you want a business phone, buy the Tilt. If you have the patience to master it's functions and ability to figure out the registry tweaks, you'll appreciate it's power! That being said, you'll not have enough power in the standard 1350 mAp battery to use the phones functions without prematurely running out of power. I have the 3000mAp Mugen battery which works nicely, but does add weight and size. An unfortunate trade off. You'll have to weigh that upgrade trade-off for yourself.
Great PDA/Smartphone
I recently switched to AT&T and picked up a Tilt. After a few weeks, I'm very pleased with it.
Pros.
1. It seems well built and solid to me
2. Connections were a snap (Bluetooth file sharing with my powerbook G4 and using my Motorola headset) and WiFI (with my home WPA2 encrypted 802.11g network, and open public networks).
3. GPS!! A standalone GPS chip makes this a great nav device (with AT&T Nav and Google Maps).
4. Great email setup (I have two IMAP accounts set up, and Active Sync with my work exchange account).
5. Very good call/sound quality, and the speaker phone is easily loud enough for phone calls and Nav directions.
6. I love the large keyboard, although in tilt mode, some of the very top row keys are a bit crowded against the edge of the screen (typing is better in non-tilt, open mode).
Cons.
not many to my mind, but
1. screen size - it just would be a lot better with a 3" or bigger non-QVGA screen
2. Antennae/GPS bump on bottom - it's just annoying, especially when tilted and sitting on a table or desk
3. Screen brightness needs to be all the way up to use outside in sunlight
4. battery life - getting through a day is okay for me, but it does need a charge each night (and be careful to turn off BT and WiFi when not actually using them).
5. requires a fair bit of customization, but worth the effort.
I've been using the Tilt with an older 64MB SDHC card, but have a 4GB coming this week.
I've blown away the AT&T bloatware, installed Kaiser Tweaks to optimize settings, and use MemMaid to clean up things every morning before I get up. There are still occasional Windows lags, but they are rare and overall the OS and apps perform crisply and well. There are registry hacks posted to remap the PTT key (if you don't use PTT - I have that key set to launch FileExplorer and AT&T Nav).
With regards to some of the comments in other reviews:
- m.youtube.com plays fine if you install the HTC Streaming Media Player
For Everybody to Read
Love this phone, if anybody actually did research they would know about the video driver issue. want some advice, go to www.xda-developers.com , click forums, scroll down till you see kaiser (thats the tilt) and click general. everything you need to know, how to do to the phone is there. I've had a tilt for 6 months, never had a problem with wifi, never had a problem with texting with it, and never had a problem with push e-mail, mine takes about 10-15 seconds to get my mail, but big deal. Active sync starts at random but its manageable, doesnt slow mine down at all, then again, i got rid of all that crap that comes pre-installed. Anybody has any questions about the tilt, just e-mail me at ramsport_03@yahoo.com and i'll help ya the best i can. (Put Tilt in the subject title bar so i dont delete it by accident.)
Bad Video Playback
Don't Buy this phone if you plan to use it to WATCH VIDEO also. The phone has a terrible speaker and a horrible video playback. THe front buttons are very cheap and they are not solid they move. THe bad video playback is a video driver problem from HTC. They know the problem exist but they fail to fix it.
If you are within the 30 days with AT&T exchange or return the phone. The iPhone 2 is coming. Google Tilt video driver and you will get more info.
Thanks!
Will play streaming vids but not Youtube?
Everything about this phone was fine. It's support of so many programs...I had to hand enter my phone numbers but that was because I had a SIM fry on me...I can't blame the phone for that. I was afraid of the microsoft apps and OS at first but I ended up liking it.
So after spending a few hours plugging in numbers I was excited to see what my new phone had to offer. For $423.99 out the door I expected it to be revolutionary in terms of Phones/PDAs, having just upgraded from a Blackberry Curve that worked for what it could do but I wanted more.
This phone did everything I threw at it except for one little thing that I simply cannot forgive.
IT WILL NOT PLAY YOUTUBE MOBILE VIDEOS...I can't stress this enough. Sure it has a big screen and bigger keys for my big fat ham fisted meat hook sausage links (aka fingers), but to not play video with all that Hardware (AND THE PRICE) is simply Sac religious.
I was willing to play with it to get it to work. After vtap, flashlite 2.1, and the new realplayer mobile 1.1 were all installed...Realplayer still sat there and said 'Media not supported'. I wanted to break it. 20 hours of frustration trying to find a hack or trick to get it to work...then I realized for almost half as much I could have had it work from the very start...and I wanted to cry AGAIN. What killed me the most was it will play movies off of that stupid CellularVideo link that comes on it (aka CingularVideo)...but who wants to sit and watch horrible American Idol Auditions and hear some fat Emo's review on 10,000 BC...I don't.
Point in case, I want my youtube...sure it may not be all the vids youtube has to offer but they are slowly converting the vids to it. I do recommend this phone to someone who wants to use it for pretty much anything else, especially if you are in a lot of wifi areas in your down time from work (provided you can get the damn thing to work).
Great phone, but it takes some tweaking to use the full capabilities of it.
Ryo
Fun for those who like complicated!
The AT&T Tilt was what I thought would be a great phone to get, I chose it over the iPhone, to which I wanted before the Tilt came out. To my dismay the Tilt ended up being a complicated little box that had a mind of it's own, and I'm a college kid on the Computer Science Major path!
Pros:
- 3G: Nice to have, though where I live 3G isn't available.
- Tilting Screen with slide out keyboard: Awesome feature, it works well and it is easy to use.
- WiFi: (when you can use it) would let me run Skype flawlessly and was fast.
- Trans Flash Slot: Awesome feature, and can support up to 32GBs (or so they say)
Cons:
- Complicated WiFi: I read the manual, I called and asked, I just couldn't get the phone to like going from Data Connection to WiFi, and had to manually change settings, it often required a phone restart to get it to start using the correct connection type.
- SLOW: You have to close all the programs manually and if you tell it to do it, it often doesn't do it anyway. ActiveSync opens every chance it gets, and the phone slows down. I had it hang up on just web browsing because ActiveSync would open and try to connect to my computer.
- Texting is a Pain: It doesn't always work right, and sometimes you can just send blank messages with out even realizing it.
In the end, after only 4 days I ended up returning Tilt and springing for a iPhone... which is cheaper by $100.
I'm sure the tilt is awesome... when you have the complicated figured out but I don't want to spend my day trying to get my phone to work, I just want it to, and I didn't get it from this phone!
