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AT&T Tilt continues the tradition of crappy Windows Mobile phones; what phone can I buy instead that will do what I need?
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AT&T Tilt continues the tradition of crappy Windows Mobile phones; what phone can I buy instead that will do what I need? Jonathan Kamens 10-27-2008
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Posted by Jonathan Kamens on October 27, 2008, 2:13 pm
Please log in for more thread options
 (From
http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2008/10/27/att-tilt-continues-the-tradition-of-crappy-windows-mobile-phones/)

So, I know that I said
(http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2008/03/10/i-am-so-switching-to-palmos-or-blackberry-when-my-windows-mobile-phone-contract-expires/)
that when my phone contract expired I was going to switch to PalmOS or
BlackBerry, because the software on the AT&T 8525 (a.k.a. HTC Hermes)
was so sucky.

But when push came to shove and I needed to buy a new phone (because I
dropped the old one for the nth time and the LCD broke), I looked at
all the options and decided, despite my misgivings, that I was going
to have to go with the Tilt, AT&T's Windows Mobile 6.1 replacement for
the 8525. Here's why:

* As cool as it is, the iPhone is ruled out because tethering my
laptop to the network through my phone is a non-negotiable feature,
one that the iPhone doesn't offer (well, it does if you jailbreak
it, but I'm not willing to jailbreak a phone paid for by my employer
and make myself dependent on features that the vendor doesn't
support).

* PalmOS and Blackberry are both ruled out because none of the AT&T
PalmOS or Blackberry OS phones support 3G. Given how heavily I use
the network through my phone, EDGE-only is simply not an option.
There are other reasons, too, but this is the biggest one.

(I'd love to go with the Google Phone, but it's not available yet from
AT&T and I don't know if an unlocked T-Mobile Google Phone would be
fully functional on the AT&T network. Even if it would be, I'm sure
it would take me a buttload of time to make it work, and that's time I
don't have. Really, I just want to be able to buy a PDA Phone from
AT&T that does what I need out of the box and doesn't suck. Is that
too much to ask? Apparently, yes, it is.)

And so, although my gut was telling me that I was not going to be
happy, I went ahead and ordered the Tilt. "How bad could it be?" I
thought to myself. "Surely in Windows Mobile 6.1 they will have
addressed the stability problems in Windows Mobile 6.0, right?" Yeah,
right, pull the other one.

I've had the Tilt for less than two weeks. Not only is its stability
no better than the 8525's, it's actually markedly worse. In fact,
it's so bad that shortly after I got it, I started keeping a lot of
all the things that go wrong with it. Here is the list of the bugs
I've encountered so far. These are not subjective, vague complaints
about the interface of the phone, they are real, honest-to-goodness,
nobody-can-argue-with-them bugs. They are severe functional defects
in major functionality that people use every day. Most of them are
issues that I have encountered multiple times and continue to
encounter on an ongoing basis.

1. Messaging (IMAP) redisplays messages that have already been read
and deleted by the user.
2. Internet Explorer stops being able to resolve DNS host names
(unfixed from WM 6.0).
3. The phone forgets to display reminders for upcoming appointments.
4. The "Today" screen goes blank and doesn't come back until you
power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM 6.0).
5. When I tried to change the notification preferences for new email
messages and save the new settings, the phone claimed that the
settings was invalid because of a corrupt ring tone, even though
the ring tone was not in fact corrupt and I didn't change it
anyway (this is probably a race-condition bug; I've only seen it
once).
6. The power button regularly "double bounces" when I use it to turn
on the phone screen, i.e., the screen comes on and then
immediately turns off, and I have to hit the button a second time
to turn it back on.
7. Icons suddenly disappear from the "Settings" screen, and the only
way to get them back is to power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM
6.0).
8. When you are in the messaging application and you turn off the
screen in the middle of a Send/Receive, the Send/Receive fails
(unfixed from WM 6.0).
9. I configure the backlight to dim when I've been idle for 1 minute,
but it keeps switching itself back from the 1 minute setting I
configured to 10 seconds.
10. Every once in a while the phone spontaneously reboots.
11. Once, the messaging application was suddenly unable to send
outbound SMTP messages. To fix it, I viewed the server settings
for the account, paging through them without actually changing any
of them, and after doing that SMTP started working again.
12. I've seen multiple crashes from the tmail.exe and shell.exe
applications.
13. I've seen at least one fatal exception from the PocketPC2003.exe
application.
14. The LED on the phone is supposed to blink yellow when there are
new email messages, but it regularly fails to do so (unfixed from
WM 6.0).
15. The phone occasionally turns off WiFi or BlueTooth spontaneously
for no obvious reason.
16. Every once in a while the phone stops displaying the network
status when you tap the bars icon in the title bar.

Good grief!

What can I do? Is there, somewhere on the market, a phone I can buy
that will work with the AT&T 3G network (my employer's preferred
vendor); supports these features out of the box, or at least with a
minimal amount of tweaking; and doesn't suck?

* Phone (obviously!)
* Laptop tethering via BlueTooth PAN and USB
* WiFi
* 3G with fallback to EDGE when 3G not available
* IMAP email (send, receive, display HTML, view IMAP folders and move
messages between them)
* Outlook email (send, receive, display HTML, view folders and move
messages between them, Calendar and Contacts synchronization)
* Decent HTML browser
* Useable keyboard
* Touch screen a plus but not a requirement
* 320x240 or larger screen
* Notes application
* Camera (still a must, video a plus but not a requirement)
* Google Maps or equivalent with GPS support (built-in or external
BlueTooth)
* Support for reading Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents a plus but
not a requirement
* Text file editor
* SSH client a plus but not a requirement
* Remote Desktop client a plus but not a requirement

Posted by Todd Allcock on October 28, 2008, 12:38 am
Please log in for more thread options
 At 27 Oct 2008 18:13:28 +0000 Jonathan Kamens wrote:

> But when push came to shove and I needed to buy a new phone (because I
> dropped the old one for the nth time and the LCD broke), I looked at
> all the options and decided, despite my misgivings, that I was going
> to have to go with the Tilt, AT&T's Windows Mobile 6.1 replacement for
> the 8525. Here's why:
>
> * As cool as it is, the iPhone is ruled out because tethering my
> laptop to the network through my phone is a non-negotiable feature,
> one that the iPhone doesn't offer (well, it does if you jailbreak
> it, but I'm not willing to jailbreak a phone paid for by my employer
> and make myself dependent on features that the vendor doesn't
> support).
>
> * PalmOS and Blackberry are both ruled out because none of the AT&T
> PalmOS or Blackberry OS phones support 3G. Given how heavily I use
> the network through my phone, EDGE-only is simply not an option.
> There are other reasons, too, but this is the biggest one.
>
> (I'd love to go with the Google Phone, but it's not available yet from
> AT&T and I don't know if an unlocked T-Mobile Google Phone would be
> fully functional on the AT&T network. Even if it would be, I'm sure
> it would take me a buttload of time to make it work, and that's time I
> don't have.

Sadly, T-Mo was stuck with 1700MHz "AWS" frequencies for 3G, so the G1's 3G
won't work on AT&T (nor can AT&T 3G phones work on T-Mobile at 3G speed-
they all fallback to EDGE on each other's networks.)

> Really, I just want to be able to buy a PDA Phone from
> AT&T that does what I need out of the box and doesn't suck. Is that
> too much to ask? Apparently, yes, it is.)

I've actually been pretty darn happy with my Tilt. Mine is unlocked and
being used on T-Mobile (so no 3G for me), but is running the standard off-
the-shelf WM6 (not 6.1) upgrade issued a few months ago by HTC/AT&T.


However, following the advice given by many at HowardForums and XDA-
developers, I did NOT let the AT&T customizations run at the first startup-
instead, I soft-reset it during the 3-second warning countdown. Supposedly
those customizations are a major source of bugs. (And certainly weren't
needed for use on T-Mobile. Even without the customizations, the AT&T 3G
data settings for Media Net and PDA connect are hard-coded in the device,
so AT&T users shouldn't need them either- unless you'll really miss the
garish blue/orange AT&T theme!)

> And so, although my gut was telling me that I was not going to be
> happy, I went ahead and ordered the Tilt. "How bad could it be?" I
> thought to myself. "Surely in Windows Mobile 6.1 they will have
> addressed the stability problems in Windows Mobile 6.0, right?" Yeah,
> right, pull the other one.


I have not heard many good words spoken about WM6.1 implementation on the
Tilt, unfortunately.


> I've had the Tilt for less than two weeks. Not only is its stability
> no better than the 8525's, it's actually markedly worse. In fact,
> it's so bad that shortly after I got it, I started keeping a lot of
> all the things that go wrong with it. Here is the list of the bugs
> I've encountered so far. These are not subjective, vague complaints
> about the interface of the phone, they are real, honest-to-goodness,
> nobody-can-argue-with-them bugs. They are severe functional defects
> in major functionality that people use every day. Most of them are
> issues that I have encountered multiple times and continue to
> encounter on an ongoing basis.
>
> 1. Messaging (IMAP) redisplays messages that have already been read
> and deleted by the user.


I haven't seen this on my Tilt (WM6.0). I did see this on my WM5 Wizard (T-
Mo MDA/AT&T 8125- the 8525's predecessor.)

> 2. Internet Explorer stops being able to resolve DNS host names
> (unfixed from WM 6.0).

I'm not savvy enough to understand- is this when it stops displaying any
web pages for no good reason? If so, it happened to my MDA regularly, but
rarely if ever on my Tilt. Closing (killing, not minimizing,) IE and
restarting usually fixed it, if it didn't a soft-reset would.

> 3. The phone forgets to display reminders for upcoming appointments.
> 4. The "Today" screen goes blank and doesn't come back until you
> power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM 6.0).
> 5. When I tried to change the notification preferences for new email
> messages and save the new settings, the phone claimed that the
> settings was invalid because of a corrupt ring tone, even though
> the ring tone was not in fact corrupt and I didn't change it
> anyway (this is probably a race-condition bug; I've only seen it
> once).

Haven't seen those under WM 6.0.


> 6. The power button regularly "double bounces" when I use it to turn
> on the phone screen, i.e., the screen comes on and then
> immediately turns off, and I have to hit the button a second time
> to turn it back on.


Once in a blue moon for me- however I suspect in my case, it's because the
Tilt occasionally delays turning on, so I hit power a second time thinking
it didn't register the first time, then it eventually obeys both
keypresses, turing on then off rapidly.

> 7. Icons suddenly disappear from the "Settings" screen, and the only
> way to get them back is to power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM
> 6.0).
> 8. When you are in the messaging application and you turn off the
> screen in the middle of a Send/Receive, the Send/Receive fails
> (unfixed from WM 6.0).

Haven't seen those in mine.


> 9. I configure the backlight to dim when I've been idle for 1 minute,
> but it keeps switching itself back from the 1 minute setting I
> configured to 10 seconds.


Got that in my MDA on some WM5 versions and "unofficial" WM6.0 upgrades,
as well as on my Tilt's original WM6- the AT&T WM6.0 upgrade fixed it for me.


> 10. Every once in a while the phone spontaneously reboots.

My MDA often locked up if WiFi was left on when powered down. The Tilt
locks up VERY rarely.

> 11. Once, the messaging application was suddenly unable to send
> outbound SMTP messages. To fix it, I viewed the server settings
> for the account, paging through them without actually changing any
> of them, and after doing that SMTP started working again.


There's a severe SMTP bug in WM6.1- MS released a KB article about it a few
days ago, and is working on a fix.

> 12. I've seen multiple crashes from the tmail.exe and shell.exe
> applications.
> 13. I've seen at least one fatal exception from the PocketPC2003.exe
> application.
> 14. The LED on the phone is supposed to blink yellow when there are
> new email messages, but it regularly fails to do so (unfixed from
> WM 6.0).
> 15. The phone occasionally turns off WiFi or BlueTooth spontaneously
> for no obvious reason.
> 16. Every once in a while the phone stops displaying the network
> status when you tap the bars icon in the title bar.


I've not experienced any of those bugs either.

> Good grief!
>
> What can I do? Is there, somewhere on the market, a phone I can buy
> that will work with the AT&T 3G network (my employer's preferred
> vendor); supports these features out of the box, or at least with a
> minimal amount of tweaking; and doesn't suck?
>
> * Phone (obviously!)
> * Laptop tethering via BlueTooth PAN and USB
> * WiFi
> * 3G with fallback to EDGE when 3G not available
> * IMAP email (send, receive, display HTML, view IMAP folders and move
> messages between them)
> * Outlook email (send, receive, display HTML, view folders and move
> messages between them, Calendar and Contacts synchronization)
> * Decent HTML browser
> * Useable keyboard
> * Touch screen a plus but not a requirement
> * 320x240 or larger screen
> * Notes application
> * Camera (still a must, video a plus but not a requirement)
> * Google Maps or equivalent with GPS support (built-in or external
> BlueTooth)
> * Support for reading Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents a plus but
> not a requirement
> * Text file editor
> * SSH client a plus but not a requirement
> * Remote Desktop client a plus but not a requirement


I'd check with AT&T and see if the last WM6 update is still available and
"downgrade" to it (with the threat of returning the Tilt as leverage.)
Honestly, while I have a few very minor issues with the Tilt on WM6, it's
been very stable for me, as WinMo devices go.



Posted by Jonathan Kamens on October 28, 2008, 6:46 am
Please log in for more thread options
>However, following the advice given by many at HowardForums and XDA-
>developers, I did NOT let the AT&T customizations run at the first startup-
>instead, I soft-reset it during the 3-second warning countdown. Supposedly
>those customizations are a major source of bugs.

Do you mean sticking the stylus into the recessed reset button when it
says it's about to customize? And that will simply abort the
customizations? Can the customization CABs and whatnot then be
deleted (and if so, where are they on the device)?

>I'd check with AT&T and see if the last WM6 update is still available and
>"downgrade" to it (with the threat of returning the Tilt as leverage.)

I will consider this. I shouldn't *have to* consider it, but I'll
consider it.

Thanks for the response.

Jonathan Kamens

Posted by Todd Allcock on October 28, 2008, 8:31 am
Please log in for more thread options
At 28 Oct 2008 10:46:19 +0000 Jonathan Kamens wrote:
> >However, following the advice given by many at HowardForums and XDA-
> >developers, I did NOT let the AT&T customizations run at the first
startup-
> >instead, I soft-reset it during the 3-second warning countdown.
Supposedly
> >those customizations are a major source of bugs.
>
> Do you mean sticking the stylus into the recessed reset button when it
> says it's about to customize? And that will simply abort the
> customizations?

Yes and yes.

> Can the customization CABs and whatnot then be
> deleted (and if so, where are they on the device)?


No, the cabs are part of the ROM image of the device. On my old MDA they
were in a hidden folder called External_ROM that you could see with 3rd
party file managers. On the Tilt they seem to be strewn about the \Windows
folder. Some are named with "Cingular" or "C_" in front of them, like
"C_GetTeleNav..."


> >I'd check with AT&T and see if the last WM6 update is still available and
> >"downgrade" to it (with the threat of returning the Tilt as leverage.)
>
> I will consider this. I shouldn't *have to* consider it, but I'll
> consider it.


I agree, but sometimes it's easier to be pragmatic. The Tilt is far from a
perfect devicem, but after two and a half years with my Wizard, I find it a
much more stable device, and after reports like yours and others, have no
intention of rocking the boat and upgrading to WM 6.1.


> Thanks for the response.


Good luck!



Posted by mobilelawyer on November 2, 2008, 1:16 pm
Please log in for more thread options
On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:13:28 +0000 (UTC), jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us
(Jonathan Kamens) wrote:

>(From
>http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2008/10/27/att-tilt-continues-the-tradition-of-crappy-windows-mobile-phones/)
>
>So, I know that I said
>(http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/2008/03/10/i-am-so-switching-to-palmos-or-blackberry-when-my-windows-mobile-phone-contract-expires/)
>that when my phone contract expired I was going to switch to PalmOS or
>BlackBerry, because the software on the AT&T 8525 (a.k.a. HTC Hermes)
>was so sucky.
>
>But when push came to shove and I needed to buy a new phone (because I
>dropped the old one for the nth time and the LCD broke), I looked at
>all the options and decided, despite my misgivings, that I was going
>to have to go with the Tilt, AT&T's Windows Mobile 6.1 replacement for
>the 8525. Here's why:
>
>* As cool as it is, the iPhone is ruled out because tethering my
> laptop to the network through my phone is a non-negotiable feature,
> one that the iPhone doesn't offer (well, it does if you jailbreak
> it, but I'm not willing to jailbreak a phone paid for by my employer
> and make myself dependent on features that the vendor doesn't
> support).
>
>* PalmOS and Blackberry are both ruled out because none of the AT&T
> PalmOS or Blackberry OS phones support 3G. Given how heavily I use
> the network through my phone, EDGE-only is simply not an option.
> There are other reasons, too, but this is the biggest one.
>
>(I'd love to go with the Google Phone, but it's not available yet from
>AT&T and I don't know if an unlocked T-Mobile Google Phone would be
>fully functional on the AT&T network. Even if it would be, I'm sure
>it would take me a buttload of time to make it work, and that's time I
>don't have. Really, I just want to be able to buy a PDA Phone from
>AT&T that does what I need out of the box and doesn't suck. Is that
>too much to ask? Apparently, yes, it is.)
>
>And so, although my gut was telling me that I was not going to be
>happy, I went ahead and ordered the Tilt. "How bad could it be?" I
>thought to myself. "Surely in Windows Mobile 6.1 they will have
>addressed the stability problems in Windows Mobile 6.0, right?" Yeah,
>right, pull the other one.
>
>I've had the Tilt for less than two weeks. Not only is its stability
>no better than the 8525's, it's actually markedly worse. In fact,
>it's so bad that shortly after I got it, I started keeping a lot of
>all the things that go wrong with it. Here is the list of the bugs
>I've encountered so far. These are not subjective, vague complaints
>about the interface of the phone, they are real, honest-to-goodness,
>nobody-can-argue-with-them bugs. They are severe functional defects
>in major functionality that people use every day. Most of them are
>issues that I have encountered multiple times and continue to
>encounter on an ongoing basis.
>
>1. Messaging (IMAP) redisplays messages that have already been read
> and deleted by the user.
>2. Internet Explorer stops being able to resolve DNS host names
> (unfixed from WM 6.0).
>3. The phone forgets to display reminders for upcoming appointments.
>4. The "Today" screen goes blank and doesn't come back until you
> power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM 6.0).
>5. When I tried to change the notification preferences for new email
> messages and save the new settings, the phone claimed that the
> settings was invalid because of a corrupt ring tone, even though
> the ring tone was not in fact corrupt and I didn't change it
> anyway (this is probably a race-condition bug; I've only seen it
> once).
>6. The power button regularly "double bounces" when I use it to turn
> on the phone screen, i.e., the screen comes on and then
> immediately turns off, and I have to hit the button a second time
> to turn it back on.
>7. Icons suddenly disappear from the "Settings" screen, and the only
> way to get them back is to power-cycle the phone (unfixed from WM
> 6.0).
>8. When you are in the messaging application and you turn off the
> screen in the middle of a Send/Receive, the Send/Receive fails
> (unfixed from WM 6.0).
>9. I configure the backlight to dim when I've been idle for 1 minute,
> but it keeps switching itself back from the 1 minute setting I
> configured to 10 seconds.
>10. Every once in a while the phone spontaneously reboots.
>11. Once, the messaging application was suddenly unable to send
> outbound SMTP messages. To fix it, I viewed the server settings
> for the account, paging through them without actually changing any
> of them, and after doing that SMTP started working again.
>12. I've seen multiple crashes from the tmail.exe and shell.exe
> applications.
>13. I've seen at least one fatal exception from the PocketPC2003.exe
> application.
>14. The LED on the phone is supposed to blink yellow when there are
> new email messages, but it regularly fails to do so (unfixed from
> WM 6.0).
>15. The phone occasionally turns off WiFi or BlueTooth spontaneously
> for no obvious reason.
>16. Every once in a while the phone stops displaying the network
> status when you tap the bars icon in the title bar.
>
>Good grief!
>
>What can I do? Is there, somewhere on the market, a phone I can buy
>that will work with the AT&T 3G network (my employer's preferred
>vendor); supports these features out of the box, or at least with a
>minimal amount of tweaking; and doesn't suck?
>
>* Phone (obviously!)
>* Laptop tethering via BlueTooth PAN and USB
>* WiFi
>* 3G with fallback to EDGE when 3G not available
>* IMAP email (send, receive, display HTML, view IMAP folders and move
> messages between them)
>* Outlook email (send, receive, display HTML, view folders and move
> messages between them, Calendar and Contacts synchronization)
>* Decent HTML browser
>* Useable keyboard
>* Touch screen a plus but not a requirement
>* 320x240 or larger screen
>* Notes application
>* Camera (still a must, video a plus but not a requirement)
>* Google Maps or equivalent with GPS support (built-in or external
> BlueTooth)
>* Support for reading Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents a plus but
> not a requirement
>* Text file editor
>* SSH client a plus but not a requirement
>* Remote Desktop client a plus but not a requirement
What about the Treo Pro?
I like mine, but you will have to be satisfied with a 320X320 screen.
It is sold unlocked, and I am currently using it on AT&T.
mobilelawyer
at your service

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