I gave up yesterday and purchased an iPhone from the Apple Store in University Village.

When I say “gave up” what I really mean is that “one of my kids cracked the LCD screen on my AT&T Tilt“, which isn’t a warranty item.  So I had to get a new phone anyway.  I didn’t want to have to beg some teenager at AT&T for a refurb replacement for the low, low price of only 50% off, so I indulged and upgraded to the phone I really wanted since Christmas, when Santa Claus brought one for my wife.

And I’m still impressed as hell with the iPhone’s usability.  It’s so stunning an experience that it makes me wonder why iTunes is such a relative dog from a UX standpoint.  Different teams, I guess.

A quirk:: my nice Shure headphones won’t fit correctly into the iPhone’s headset jack.  It’s a 2.5 mm opening, but it’s recessed enough that it won’t fit snugly.  I paid $10 for a Monster extender that will adapt my short plug *cough* to the deeper recess on the iPhone.

I’ve already found a great Twitter client, iTweet.  I tried Hahlo based on some web recommends and found it to be confusing.  iTweet is a nicer experience.  Over EDGE it still performs well enough to be a constant companion.

Next steps: figure out how to tether for my demanding moble-worker lifestyle (hah!), and how to get Google Apps set up on my e-mail client.

I’ve had my AT&T Tilt for just over a month now.  Today was the first time it hung.  I used to have to reset my Cingular 8125 every so often, so I wasn’t THAT surprised, but since this device has been so flawless so far I have to admit I was a little taken aback.

Slipped off the battery cover, took out and replaced the battery, and all is well.  So far.

I’ve just finished setting up an iPhone for my wife, which I Santa Claus delivered on Christmas Day. I had been only half-following the iPhone hype since the summertime, convinced that the Windows Mobile phones, such as my newish AT&T Tilt, were superior.

I was wrong.

The iPhone is the most incredible piece of electronics I’ve ever seen. It’s sleek, fast, feature-rich, and the usability — well, let’s just say that I’ve never seen a more intuitive, friendly device in my lifetime. Most people would sooner have trouble figuring out a Pong paddle than with the iPhone.

My AT&T Tilt, while a superior phone in the Windows Mobile world, comes off like a chump. I can’t think of a single place where the Tilt is the clear winner.

In particular:

• Networking is a SNAP.
• E-mail configuration is a SNAP.
• Keyboard typing is immensely helped by the instant-feedback feature.
• The web-browsing experience is AMAZING.
• Contact management features are FANTASTIC.
• Navigation (with gestures and only one hard button) is SUPERB.

I’m wondering how long it will be before I sell my Tilt and get an iPhone. Seriously, I have no need for my Tilt that the iPhone doesn’t fill.

• Remote Desktop? That’s such a drag on Windows Mobile that I don’t even use it anyway.
• Office Mobile? Don’t use it.
• OneNote for Windows Mobile? Too constrained to be useful.
• Do I miss not having a stylus?  Not so far.  With the advances in gestures, I can’t think of why I would miss it.

I’m very simply blown away. Great job Apple!

I’ve been using Google Reader a lot lately on my new AT&T Tilt.  The tilt function really does help with lengthy browser sessions — it’s much more ergonomic than the 8125/8525 “flat” configuration.  I’ve been using the keyboard to do quick navigations, using the “fn lock” capability to get to the numbers on the keyboard – press the Fn key twice.  The Tilt has a nice amber status light to let you know that Fn is on.

However, the # (pound/hash) key doesn’t work.  I’ve checked to see if this is a problem with the keyboard mapping fix I had to apply to the cooked ROM, but it’s not that — it may be a problem with Mobile IE, or something else entirely I haven’t yet figured out.

Still messing around with my new AT&T tilt. The Pocket Screen Capture utility from cetoolbox.com that came with the cooked ROM from Dutty has been giving me grief because there’s no apparent way to change the default capture storage location. It defaults to \temp\ which, oddly, comes up as a “protected operating system folder” and (possibly for that reason) I can’t sync it or create a shortcut to sync it to my main computer.

An e-mail to support@cetoolbox.com bounced after a few days (*cough* abandonware), so I thought that I might try editing the registry manually on the theory that the path might be set as a registry key.  But how to edit the registry on Windows Mobile 6?  I first looked at the xda-developers forum, where someone mentioned that they use the PHM Registry Editor. It’s over 5 years old, which was a big red flag, but I tried to install it anyway — with no luck. The local computer install worked, but it wouldn’t complete the process to install the application on my phone.

I then went with SK Tools from SKKV software, which got a lot of glowing reviews. It cost me $14.95 at Handango but it’s a pretty neat set of applications. However, I found that there were no registry keys associated with Pocket Screen Capture. I can’t say I was surprised.

Finally, I gave up and spent $5.95 for SmartSS+ by Lou Terrailloune, which seemed very configurable. WARNING: This app is not totally compatible with my AT&T Tilt. Handango tells you that when you order. It may be a problem with Windows Mobile 6 generally. The specific problem is that the Options screen doesn’t scroll, and there are a few options that you can’t “see”, including the all-important registration code that removes the watermark from your screenshots. However, I was able to braille my way around and get the registration key entered, and the app seems to work fine. I can now get my screenies synced to my computer automagically, which saves time for blog posts. Another big plus: SmartSS+ will automatically save to PNG format.

Here’s a screenshot of SmartSS+:

I’ve been having this problem with my Tilt wherein the phone would ring twice and go immediately to voicemail. Unless I had my phone right in front of me, or had my Bluetooth headset on, I was missing calls right and left. Annoying.

I had called Cingular / AT&T wireless customer service a couple weeks ago per the following instructions on their website:

QUESTION:
How can I adjust the number of times my wireless phone will ring before the caller goes to voicemail?
ANSWER:
Contact Customer Care at 1-800-331-0500 or dial 611 from your wireless phone to change the amount of time your phone will ring before going to voice mail. The adjustments made by Customer Care are based on the traditional ring heard by the caller, not the unique Ringtone you hear from your phone.

… but when I called back this AM, my ring delay before voicemail was still stuck on 10 seconds. BAH! I had them update it (again) to 20 seconds, and now I get three full rings. I think I’ll call back and ask them to bump it up to 30 seconds, which is the maximum.

I love the new TouchFlo interface on my AT&T Tilt with the cooked ROM.  The weather app in particular is very handy for those rainy Seattle days weeks months.  However, the default temperature display is in Celsius, not Fahrenheit — makes sense, since the guy who created it lives in the UK.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me how to change the settings so that it would show degrees Fahrenheit. After several desultory attempts at poking around, I got serious and figured it out.

Navigate to Start | Program Files.  Click on Touch Flo.

Click on TouchSettings.

Click the Weather tab.

Voila!  Hope this helps a few of you find this setting.

A few posts ago I outlined a quick series of steps to get e-mail connections working on my new AT&T Tilt. In the back of my head, I have been wondering if switching to “MEdia Net” would result in additional charges on my wireless bill. In my experience, branded services = extra cost. Today I called AT&T and asked them about it.

It turns out that I have the Media Max 200 Bundle, which gives me:

UNLIMITED MEdia Net
With MEdia Net, you can browse the mobile web, check your Email, get your sports scores, movie times, weather and news right on your mobile phone. Plus, you can access the latest ringtones, games, graphics and AT&T Mobile Music.

= Unlimited browsing.

(Pet Peeve: the fact I can’t link you directly to a page on AT&T’s website that displays the various data packages available.  This gets into the whole issue of URL addressability, which is sort of a hot-button issue for me).

I had a small hiccup when setting up a POP3/SMTP connection to our corporate e-mail server.  The default connection was for “The Internet”, and it wasn’t working.  When I switched it to “MEdia Net“, things started working.

But what’s with the oddball capitalization?  “MEdia Net” Looks like a Counter-Strike player name from 2001.

This may be one of the most usable new parts of the Dutty TouchFlo cooked ROM for my new AT&T Tilt:

Those of you familiar with Windows Mobile 5 or Windows Mobile 6 will remember the “Unlock” button the center-right portion of the screen that you had to tap with a stylus (or, much less effectively, with your thumb while you are driving – ugh).  The new lock/unlock mechanism on this cooked HTC TouchFlo ROM works like this:

1. To lock, simply press the hard power key on the right side of the phone.
2. To unlock: press the hard power key to “wake up” the display, then SLIDE this button you see above from the left to the right.

Sliding is so much easier than the old “button press” method there’s really no comparison.  You can do it with your eyes closed, and it works way more often.  Locking is easier too: the old “scroll down on the home page” method is gone, replaced with a hard key.