Jonathan Kamens
2008-10-27 18:13:28 UTC
(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
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