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AT&T Tilt Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Mark Brezinski Published on October 25, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

Synchronization (6.33)
The Tilt can sync up with your computer via ActiveSync or Vista's Windows Mobile Device Center. Synchronizing is as easy as installing the software, connecting the phone to your PC via Bluetooth or USB, and running the sync program. We didn't have any trouble doing this.

As was just stated, you can sync the Tilt via Bluetooth or USB. Synchronization encompasses your contacts, appointments, tasks, and bookmarks, as well as any files. The ability to synchronize virtually anything is very good functionality.

The Tilt can be synchronized using the aforementioned ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center. Both programs use Outlook, so you'll need it to sync up your files straight out of the box. If you use a Mac, try Missing Synch

Alerts (8.0)
Windows Mobile 6 phones have good alert functionality. When your appointment or task becomes due, a window pops up at the bottom of the screen. When it does, the left soft button dismisses it, and the right soft button opens a menu. The menu contains a fairly elaborate set of snooze options. You can have the Tilt remind you again five minutes before the event, or snooze for five, 10, or 15 minutes, an hour, or a day. There are also options to dismiss all and view the event. The only part we were a bit let down on is if you miss the initial alarm. The phone won't auto-snooze or continue to sound its alarm for a long period of time, but it will alert you again at the start of the event. On the whole, though, the Tilt has good alerts that you aren't likely to miss.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
The Tilt can synchronize over the air via ActiveSync, which covers your PIM information. If you have access to an Exchange server, you can also configure the Tilt to synch with this.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.07)
We measure the ease of adding a new contact by timing how long it takes to do so. We do several trials with different sets of information, and then average the times. The Tilt took about 19.74 seconds to input a simple name and number, which is quite slow. The Tilt's poor showing is again due to the lag inherent in using this operating system. Also, we slid out the QWERTY keyboard, which causes a ton of lag as the screen transitions from profile to portrait. As a general rule, you should allow yourself at least 30 seconds for entering in a contact, just to be safe.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
AT&T Tilt	19.74	5.07
Nokia E90	17.48	5.72
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.10	7.09
HTC Mogul	14.70	6.80
Palm Treo 750	16.10	6.21
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (6.0)
The Tilt provides all the sorting and searching goodness we've come to expect from Windows Mobile phones. You can choose to organize your contacts by first name, last name, or company. You can also additionally filter them by category, or by letter by clicking one of the alphabet boxes lined up along the top. There is also a search feature that allows you to search based on the first few letters of a contact's first or last name. We would've liked additional fields to be searchable through this method, but as it stands, the Tilt has better search and sorting functionality than many phones in its class.

Fields (8.2)
There are 41 fields you can fill out for your contacts. This is quite a lot. Name only gets one field, but counts a space as a separation point between the first and last name. Though there are basic fields like company and address, there are also more uncommon ones, such as government ID and assistant name. If you have a job where remembering a client's anniversary and the names of his two kids will get you an advantage, you'll love the Tilt's contact management capabilities. You can also keep notes on a contact, and it receives its own tab as opposed to just being tacked on with the rest of the fields. The only field we would've liked to see included was a customizable field.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (4.67)
The Tilt supports speed dial — up to 99 different numbers can be assigned. We were also pleased to see support for voice dialing via voice tags. This allows you to record your own voice tag for each contact, ensuring it is an accurate system. Unlike some Windows Mobile devices, the Tilt does not come with Microsoft's voice command software. We don't consider this to be a major drawback, however, as we have not been impressed with the accuracy of this software in previous tests.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (13.40)
We again measure time here, testing how long it takes to add a calendar item. Our sample calendar item simply consists of a title, Lunch, a time range (noon to 1 p.m.), and a reminder (15 minutes before). Fortunately for the Tilt, it automatically gave our event this time range and reminder. Therefore, all we had to do was open a new appointment and name it. This took about 7.46 seconds, which is relatively fast. Given how little we actually had to do, however, it isn't very impressive; a lot of the time was spent waiting for the Tilt to catch up.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
AT&T Tilt	13.40	7.46
Nokia E90	16.37	6.11
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
HTC Mogul	7.22	13.85
Palm Treo 750	6.76	14.79
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (7.13)
The Tilt's calendar, like all other Windows Mobile phone, has five different views: day, week, month, year, and agenda. You can cycle through them by pressing the left soft button, which was much easier than the usual menu dive necessary in most phones.
The day view is similar to that on BlackBerry phones. Along the left are numbers indicating the hour, and the main portion of the screen is dedicated to appointments. Appointments take up blocks of space equal to their length, and their names and locations are displayed. Clicking on an appointment opens it up for further perusal.
The week view is also pretty standard. Again, hours are lined up on the left, but the main chunk of the screen is divided evenly among the days. Appointments are represented by boxes of purple highlighting. Moving the cursor over an appointment displays its title, location, and duration at the bottom of the screen.
The month view isn't very good. It displays six weeks at a time, and days with appointments are dog-eared with an orange triangle in their bottom right corner. Saturdays receive blue numbers, while Sundays are red.
Very few business devices have the year view, most likely because it's not that useful. Still, for checking dates, it is nice to have. What would have been even nicer, however, is some kind of indicator of the number of appointments you have on any given day, or even a separation between free days and those with scheduled events.
The agenda view is the best one, and is really useful. All appointments are listed with status, title, duration, and location. The top bar displays the date of the event, highlights its spot in the week, and boxes the current day if it's in the same week. Below that is a list of numbers where the time is blocked out. The agenda view basically takes every useful aspect of the week and day views and combines them.

Overall, we appreciate the range of calendar views available on the Mogul and really appreciate the improvements made to the agenda and weekly views. Power users will find the Mogul's calendar application gives them powerful tools to organize their time.

Fields (11.0)
The Tilt has a good assembly of fields for creating appointments. There are the obvious ones, such as subject, location, start/end, reminder, and recurrence. The reminder and recurrence offer better than average functionality, however, allowing you to set very specific parameters for each. You can also assign a category, set the appointment's status and sensitivity, and invite contacts. Though certainly not an exclusive ability, the Tilt provides excellent PIM cross connection functionality by including the ability to invite contacts in the main set of fields. Finally, in a separate tab at the bottom, you can jot down a note or two regarding the appointment. In summary, the Tilt has a very good calendar application.

To Do/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (5.63)
Again, we turn to our trusty timer to find out how easy it is to add a task on the Tilt. We were able to input our sample task in about 17.77 seconds, which is an average score. As we had to traverse menus, we again noticed the lag. As with most of the Tilt's software, you'll spend the majority of your time waiting as opposed to fumbling through an awkward interface; everything is arranged coherently and can be easily accessed.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
AT&T Tilt	17.77	5.63
Nokia E90	10.07	9.93
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
HTC Mogul	16.02	6.24
Palm Treo 750	16.90	5.92
Apple iPhone	N/A: Can't make tasks	0.0

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
The Tilt allows you to sort your tasks by status, priority, or either the start or due date. In addition, you can filter tasks by category. Overall, this is better task management than you'll find on BlackBerry or Series 60 devices.

Fields (9.0)
Again, while the basics are covered (title, due date, reminders, recurrence), the Tilt offers more advanced fields like priority and category. Again, we were happy to see the recurrence and reminder fields were capable of very precise settings. Another good showing from the Tilt's organizational software.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.63)
The Tilt took an average of 13.79 seconds to type out our test note. The notes application is actually conveniently located in the Start menu, and the interface certainly helped achieve this time. The only reason this time is a bit slow is because of the bouts of lag during menu navigation. The predictive text helped counteract the lag, but we had to be careful about when we used it. The first time we typed in our sample note, the words would appear after about half the letters were typed; the second time, they appeared after the first letter. To keep our trials consistent, we typed out the same amount of letters each time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
AT&T Tilt	3.63	13.79
Nokia E90	16.73	2.99
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.20	4.10
HTC Mogul	12.56	3.98
Palm Treo 750	11.65	4.29
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (3.0)
The Tilt's note interface is a bit different and complex if you're not used to Windows Mobile phones. Opening a new note yields a series of horizontal lines. From here you can either type out your note, bring up the voice recorder, or open Draw mode. Overall, this is a nice array of features to cram into a notes application, but we would've liked to see some sort of search functionality.

Note Formatting (2.0)
The Tilt isn't very big on formatting notes. You can zoom in and out, but that's the closest you'll get to changing the font size. Again, while the drawing and voice note integration are nice extras, we feel Windows Mobile should have included all the basic features first before moving on to more advanced ones.

Voice Memo (3.0)
As alluded to, voice notes are integrated into the notes program. You open up the recorder via the menu button. You can either make pure voice notes, or insert sound clips into text notes. This is a bit cumbersome, and while we appreciate the integration, we would have preferred a separate voice notes program.

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