Leaving the AT&T Tilt (HTC TyTN II) for the Apple iPhone 3GS

Well, hell, I made the plunge and bought a damn iPhone. I'd avoided the fad for as long as I could, happily sticking with Windows Mobile based devices. But there were just a few little features that I really liked about Apple's phone that didn't exist anywhere else, so I decided I had to have one. I've had it for a couple of months, now, and I decided I would share a comparative review between iPhone and Windows Mobile (specifically, the AT&T Tilt).

 
The AT&T Tilt

I've had this device since about August 2008. Actually, it's a rebranded HTC TyTN II, and the only differences are that it is missing the front camera that the original OEM device has and some of the keys on the keyboard are in different places. Other than those, the Tilt is still a TyTN II.

It came with Windows Mobile 5, but a ROM upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 was already available by the time I got it out of the box. It's powered by a 400 Mhz Qualcomm MSM7202 processor and sports a 256 MB Flash ROM with a 128 MB SRAM. It includes a genuine hardware GPS radio (not the typical tower-based positioning that most "GPS" phones use), is 3G capable, and has the usual Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It has a built-in 3MP CMOS camera on the rear, and the original OEM TyTN II had another on the front (for video calls). All of this made the device quite heavy, but I like heavy devices, and I used a Bluetooth headset for phone calls anyway, so weight really wasn't an issue to me.

When I bought it, it was to replace the separate HP iPAQ hx4700 and basic, company-owned Nokia phone which occupied both pockets nearly all day, every day. The Tilt had become a useful business tool. I had TomTom software, which I used to help me find clients and job sites all over the state. I had a data plan with AT&T, so I used Opera Mobile often and I had Mobile Outlook synchronizing with the company Exchange servers. I can't even begin to tell you how useful GPS and Internet access was to me being able to job more effectively (even though the GPS sometimes took several minutes to get a lock on the satellites).

The device has a hidden keyboard, which is revealed when the screen is slid out to the left. One of its trademark features is the ability for the screen to tilt upward while it's extended (hence the rebranded AT&T name). The slide/tilt mechanism is made of metal and felt pretty sturdy. The keys on the keyboard are easy to use and most were dual-function (such as special characters) thanks to the function key. CAPS can be turned on by pressing Shift twice, and same goes for the function key

There are a few buttons along the sides of the device. There is a roller on the left, easily accessible by a thumb or index finger, which also doubled as a button, useful for scrolling and selecting. There is also a dedicated camera button which not only activated the built-in camera, but also had a middle position which would activate the auto-focus, with a full press actually snapping the picture. The power button is flush with the surface, making it nearly impossible to turn the device on or off by accident. However, trying to locate the power button by feel is sometimes a puzzle.

The camera, although 3MP, was actually junk. In indoor, medium- to low-light situations, you were guaranteed blurry and noisy pictures (same goes for videos). Outside in the daylight, pictures came out great! I assume this had something to do with the software-based auto exposure or white balancing, because the camera display would be choppy except when used under outdoor light, where it was nice and smooth. In other words, if the display was slow and choppy, I knew I was about to get a crappy picture. It's a good thing that a camera isn't very important to me, otherwise, I would have been rather unhappy.

The battery life was fairly decent, but as with all mobile devices, it depended upon what radios were enabled and other usage. Because of my usage pattern and the data package I was paying for, I rarely used the Wi-Fi, so I kept it disabled. This resulted in the phone lasting nearly two days with moderate use on one charge, which was impressive. But if I left the Wi-Fi on, it would usually be about afternoon time when it needed a charge. Spare batteries could be found on eBay very easily and for around 20 bucks.

The device was usually responsive, no matter what I was doing with it. I don't recall experiencing too much lag, but occasionally, applications would crash or the entire device would freeze. Since it's a Windows device, and I'd had a few others before it, this was nothing new. The application which crashed the most was cprog.exe, which was the phone application. Of course! Why wouldn't the most important application be the one to crash the most? This was bad because if it crashed while it was in my pocket, I would never know about it until I had realized that it's been half a day without any phone calls. Other times, Microsoft Voice Command would continue to announce an incoming call even after I'd answered it. Poking the thing in the eye (jamming the stylus into the reset hole) always fixed this, but it took a few minutes for the thing to fully reboot.

Software for Windows Mobile can be obtained from literally hundreds of online stores (my two favorite places were Handango.com and PocketGear.com). Most software developers offer a free trial. However, in my experience, it seems like the magic number is typically around $20-30.

Video playback and any 3D graphics display (i.e. TomTom) performed poorly. Rumor has it that the Qualcomm MSM7202 had an integrated ATI Imageon graphics processor, but HTC didn't include a video driver for it, so the graphics was comparable to running your PC in Safe Mode. This was a major debate all over the Internet – it even sparked a class action website -- and in some cases HTC completely denied that such hardware even existed. Regardless, it crippled the Tilt, and that's what prevented the Tilt (TyTN II) from being the best Smartphone on the market.

With all of this, there were only a couple of issues which kept me from being completely happy. The first wasn't HTC's fault, but Microsoft's. ActiveSync had been replaced in Windows Vista with Mobile Device Center. Anyone who's ever used ActiveSync knows that sometimes things go wrong. Well, WMDC was no better -- sometimes it simply failed to recognize that a device was connected at all. Yet, other times, I was met with totally cryptic error messages. Usually, rebooting my machine and/or the Tilt got around this.

Toward the end of 2008, I had become an iTunes user, and a very happy one, too. That was also about the time Apple implemented iTunes Plus, which increased the sound quality (by doubling the bitrate) but more importantly, removed the DRM (digital rights management, basically a way to make songs only play on “licensed" computers and devices), which meant songs could now be played on anything (not just iPods).

I used Pocket Player, which could play the .m4p and .aac songs I purchased from iTunes, but getting the music onto my phone was a bit of a hassle. It was faster to remove the microSD card and use a card reader on my PC than is was to use the USB cable directly to the phone. Then, I had to wander through the folders in my iTunes library and manually copy the songs I wanted onto the microSD card. This wasn't too hard, but too often I just didn't feel like messing with it, but when I did, I could never remember all the songs I wanted to copy. If I had an iPod, I could simply sync with iTunes the songs which were checked with minimal effort. But I would never use an iPod enough to justify buying one, and besides, I wanted ONE device to do it all; going back to having two devices was not what I wanted. So, my music selection was usually rather stale on my phone which caused me not to play it very often.

 
The Apple iPhone 3Gs

After my sense of reliability for Windows Mobile began to decline, I started to think about my options (if I even had any). By this time, the iPhone had been out for about two years, and during that time, I'd become slightly interested. When I first heard that Apple was making a phone, back in 2006, of course, I was interested. After all, the demonstrations in the TV commercials were impressive. But I soon found out that the iPhones had relatively poor call quality, and at the time, software applications couldn't be added like it could with my Windows Mobile device. So, I turned away from it... until the time I started to build a grudge against my otherwise nifty Tilt. Now, the iTunes App Store has thousands of applications, most for less than a couple bucks.

Even before I bought one, I regarded the iPhone as more of a toy than a tool. Just take a few minutes to browse the App Store in iTunes, and you'll see more games and crap than anything else. But, my needs haven't changed much and are relatively simple: I need a calendar, address book, task list, music player, and web browser -- and it must be reliable. Well, toy or not, the iPhone seemed like the only viable alternative to Windows Mobile.

I bought a factory-unlocked (which means I can use any SIM card, not just AT&T's) iPhone 3Gs off eBay from a guy in Australia. At first, it was a real treat. The capacitive touch screen was a dream, compared to the resistive type found on most touch-screen devices. You could do stuff simply by gliding your fingers across the icy glass surface -- no fragile membrane to scratch! And the weight was just right -- not so heavy that it could be used sink a battleship, but not so light that it felt like a cheap child's toy, either. It felt sturdy, and the casing was nearly seamless -- very well-designed.

The [S] in the name stands for "Speed", says Apple. This iPhone is identical to its predecessor, the iPhone 3G, except it has a faster processor (600MHz up from 412MHz), 256MB of RAM (up from 128MB), 3MP camera (up from 2MP), up to 32GB of storage, larger battery (1219mAh up from 1150mAh) and improved battery life, and a new compass. Of course, it has the accelerometer and a proximity sensor.

Apple doesn't release specs to the general public because, they say, it goes against their efforts of designing user-friendly products. They say that the users should not be concerned with technical specifications as long as the product does what it was designed to do, and does it well. Bravo, Apple, that's a good point. But that doesn't stop people from getting their hands on an iPhone and tearing it down to see what's inside.

From what I have read, the 600MHz Samsung S5PC100 Cortex A8 ARM processor is actually designed to operate at 833MHz, but I don't see at this as Apple cheating me – I'm fairly certain that if the clock were set to full speed, we'd see much shorter battery life and more heat. It's hard to argue with physics.

The screen is generously large – 3.5" diagonal, yielding 480 x 320 pixels. It doesn't have a keyboard, of course, but the on-screen keyboard is actually very easy to use! Bluetooth and Wi-Fi always "just work" and are insanely easy to configure. Apple's products have always been known for being easy to use and reliable, and the iPhone is no exception. In fact, it is becoming apparent that Apple designs their products based on how it will be used, and then designs the technology to fit (unlike most other electronics, where the interface is designed around the features).

Syncing my contacts, calendar, and music with my Mac are insanely simple and worry-free. There is one downside to buying software from the iTunes App Store: if you want to try a piece of software, you have to just buy it. If it doesn't work out, sorry, you just lost your money, so in that respect trying to get the most suitable software is somewhat of a gamble. But, there is a trade-off: most applications are only a buck or two, so if the software doesn't live up to the glamorous screenshots you saw in the App Store, you're only out a large coke. However, some software authors offer "lite" versions of their pay-for apps for free. Usually, they lack some features and/or have advertisements. I suppose one could use the lite versions as trials, and then pay for the real deal if they really liked what they saw.

I thought I'd throw this in somewhere: the iTunes store is the only (legitimate) source of software. However, you can "jailbreak" your iPhone and gain the ability to install applications from sources outside of the App Store, but I'm not going to cover that here. So if you want to stay legit, you can only get applications from one place. This is certainly easy, of course – it's right there in iTunes. Apple, I'm finding out, is rather restrictive with its developers, sometimes denying applications without any apparent reason at all. However, I can't really say because I don't have firsthand experience with this; I've only read about it, but I'm unable to cite any sources. Yet you have to think: Apple can pretty much to whatever they want, since they are the only (legitimate) source for applications.

The user interface on the iPhone is so intuitive, yet, not over-complicated or even over-simplified. It's hard to do this and make it visually stunning at the same time. But there are some behaviors within the iPhone OS that are slightly annoying.

The first is that only one application can be running at one time (except for iPod). For most applications, this is no big deal. But for those which play music, use time-based features, or use Internet connection, this is a bit of a setback. For example, I have the Sirus XM application which lets me play music from my paid Sirius subscription, but I can't play solitaire while listening to Lewis Black because Sirius will close once I exit to the Home screen. Now, the iPod is the only application that is allowed to run in the background (and I would expect that). Perhaps having applications close when they aren't being used helps increase performance or security, but still, it's a bit of a drawback. But I suppose that if I weren't used to being able to multitask in other platforms, then I would even notice the lack of it on the iPhone.

While here in Qatar, I rarely use the phone -- there are only a few other employees that I would ever talk to, and that's rare anyway. So while I'm here, this is mostly an iPod. But once I return to the states, I'm sure I'll return to regular use (minus the Ener-Tel usage, I guess). So in the meantime, the battery is only half-drained after my twelve-hour shift, and that includes turning on Airplane Mode (which disables all the radios). So I really can't speak to battery life, yet, but you can find plenty of articles online which do.

The iPhone still lacks the popular SD card slot and a user-serviceable battery. However, with an internal flash up to 32GB, most people won't even miss the SD slot. But the sealed battery, which is something Apple is now doing to their laptops, is still quite annoying and makes me wonder just what the big idea is. If the battery is sealed inside, you have to pay Apple to replace it (if you want to keep the warranty intact). Hmm.

 
Conclusion

If it weren't for the easy synchronization with iTunes, I probably would have gone with an Android-based phone. The interface reminds me of an iPhone, but without actually being an iPhone. Of course, I know nothing about Android other than from what I have gathered from some screenshots. But I assume that anything based off Linux has got to be reliable and perform really well.

Overall, I'm happy with what I get from the iPhone, but I do miss my AT&T Tilt a little. Even though it was a little unreliable (thanks, as usual, Microsoft), it was still a fantastic device. I can't say the iPhone is better, because it does have some shortcomings when compared to my Tilt, but I can say it does meet more of my needs than the Tilt did.

Only one thing about the iPhone really leaves a sour taste in my mouth: closing it so that applications can only be installed if they are purchased from iTunes. I'm not sure if this is Apple's way of ensuring quality control, or a guaranteeing profit for doing nothing (probably both). When you look at it that way, this is one aspect where Windows Mobile has it beat.

One more thing about the iPhone: it's not all it's hyped up to be, and perhaps I was falling into the fad more than I thought I was. It's still an excellent product, but if syncing with iTunes falls low on your list, then you should also consider some of HTC's Windows and Android-based Smartphones. But keep this in mind: there is still NO perfect Smartphone.