For the past year or so I have been waiting impatiently for the opportunity to get my hands on a new smartphone. I had my sights set on the HTC Kaiser (aka TyTN II now). First, there were delays in HTC releasing the phone. Then, after even more delays, the phone was released in Europe and it started showing up on eBay for around $800. Which translated into more delays for me, because unlike some others I kind of draw the line at about $350 when buying a smartphone. If it costs more than that, it'd better be damn near perfect (or a gift/perk that I'm not paying for).

So this Friday AT&T released their own version of the Kaiser, which they called the AT&T Tilt (aka AT&T 8925), for a much cooler $299 (after a couple of rebates, with a two year contract). It looks like most AT&T stores only got a couple/handful of units, which where sold fast. I was lucky and found a store that still had a unit in stock. I signed up for the new contract and took home the Tilt.

As a phone, The Tilt has the things that matter to me in a smartphone - not Palm, GSM/world phone, 3G, Qwerty keyboard, integrated GPS. Ever since the first Kaiser specs where leaked more than a year ago, I assumed that the Kaiser will be my next smartphone. As I am writing this, I had the Tilt for more than two days already, and put it through its paces. The things that matter to me are all there, and they work fine; they really do. Since most people that read a review on a familiar piece of hardware skip straight to the downsides/"what's bad" points, here is what I found annoying though:

Speakerphone The speakerphone is tiny and mono. Previous versions of the AT&T 8x25 series (8125, 8525) had stereo speakers, and some pretty decent ones at that. The Tilt/Kaiser replaces the stereo sound for a tinier and distorted single speaker. The maximum volume on the device is on the low side. What is more annoying is that the speakerphone is placed on the back (as opposed to the stereo ones which were placed on the sides), making its sound feel even tinier when the phone rests on the desk with the LCD up (ie, the way everybody keeps their smartphones when on the desk).

Jog wheel on the left side. The jog wheel is very useful when scrolling through long documents/web pages. As it is rotates, it clicks to give you some tactile feedback. The clicks are too wide/far apart - I can only get it to click 3-4 times with a single flick of my thumb. So instead of a simple and time saving gesture, using the jog wheel becomes an annoying and frustrating thumb exercise.

PTT Button On the left side there is also a button for AT&T's push to talk service. If one does not use the PTT service, there is no way to remap that button to do something else. This is an OS limitation (as (un)configured by AT&T in their shipping WM6 image). I am sure some Windows Mobile hackers will figure a way around this very soon.

Front camera The original Kaiser has a second camera on the front of the phone, enabling video conferences over the 3G speeds. AT&T removed that feature for the Tilt. Not just the video conference feature, they removed the entire front camera. They incurred additional development delays and branding costs trying to roll back the technological progress made by HTC when they designed the Kaiser. The mind boggles.

D-Pad and button clusters On the front of the Tilt/Kaiser there is a cluster of buttons all bunched together to form some sort of elliptical shape which some designer thought to be cool. The thing is not very functional. I prefer to have discrete and separate (with good tactile feedback) buttons instead of having to always concentrate and look carefully at what button I am pressing. I am sure I am going to develop dexterity over time, but as of now I think this design is neither user friendly or functional.

Telenav is the default GPS driving application installed, sporting a trial 30 day subscription. While driving, the Telenav maps suck. That is because they don't really show any sort of extra detail, other roads that you are crossing or passing by. Most of the time what you have on screen is a blue line shape on a yellow background telling you to turn left/right on a particular street. When you take an exit off the interstate, it's like the interstate ceases to exist after your exit - nothing is drawn past your exit point on the LCD map - just your blue line curbs sharply to the right. By not having any sort of other references, it is hard to quickly understand whether you're supposed to take the first, second or third left. Re-routing takes forever when you make the wrong decision - better off making a U-turn and getting back to the original route. I'll finish the 30 days free trial of Telenav so I can have more to whine about. At the end I am going to buy one of the real GPS routing applications for the Windows mobile.

Other notes from my first days with the Tilt:

• Google Maps and Microsoft Live work just fine with the internal GPS;
• The Tilt is heavier than its predecessors. It feels very compact and very tightly put together, but most likely I'll have to change my habit of carrying it in my shirt pocket;
• This is my first cell phone that comes loaded with a host of crapware, courtesy of AT&T. A Ms Pac-Man demo game that has poor and very loud sound effects, and which is limited to 15 secs of playtime. Some My Space crap - on a phone geared towards business users. A couple more loud and obnoxious games. Some full length music tracks encoded at the astonishing 32kbps or 56kbps rates. Thankfully, those where easy to uninstall. Preloading crapware is THE one element of the "PC revolution" that I'd rather skip on the smartphones.
• Telenav drains the battery fast. A 40 minute route took the battery from 100% to 74%, according to the device's power meter. The return trip took it from 61% down to 32%. Not sure if this is because of Telenav or just that a GPS driving application keeps the CPU pegged with screen redraw requests as one drives along. Regardless, one definitely needs a USB car power cable when using the device as a GPS.

With all that being said, I am definitely keeping the Tilt. It is very functional, it syncs great with corporate email/calendar/contacts, it has the features I need and a form factor that I can live with. It is built on platform that keeps hackers interested in improving it through various software enhancements, and Microsoft isn't as draconian and close-minded towards their developer community as Apple seems to be towards their iPhone developers.

I got the Tilt because it covers the core functionality that I craved to have integrated into a single device. My next smartphone purchase will be based on design advantages over the Tilt, making things more configurable, better battery life, reduced weight, that sort of thing. I just hope that it won't be another 2 years before I find something worthwhile to spend money on...