Our good friend George Ponder has just posted a full AT&T 3G Microcell review over at sibling site WMExperts.

Sure, George is still rocking the Mic(rocell, sorry!) with a Windows device, but our iOS fare — iPhone and iPad alike — won’t care as long as they get more bars in more places (and the actual network backhaul behind them).

The AT&T Microcell isn’t for everyone. If you’re satisfied with (or can live with) your current signal reception, then you shouldn’t bother with the Microcell. However, if your home or office location sucks wind with regards to signal reception, the Microcell is a good way to go about improving things.

There’s a lot more to it than just that, obviously, so check out the complete setup, initialization, performance, and impressions over at WME and then come back here and tell us what you think about the Microcell.

By all accounts, Microsoft is set to unveil it’s next-generation mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series (say that 10 times fast!) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona today, and WMExperts will be live-blogging the whole thing.

Join Dieter and Phil starting 9am ET, 6am PT, 2pm GT, 3pm CT for all the Steve Ballmer keynote action!

Over the last 5 weeks of the 3rd Annual Smartphone Round Robin, the editors of our sibling sites, Casey from AndroidCentral.com, Kevin from CrackBerry.com, Matt from NokiaExperts.com, Dieter from PreCentral.net, and Phil from WMExperts.com have all had their chance to review TiPb’s flagship iPhone 3GS. And we’ve just had to sit here and take it, the good and the bad, the raves and the rants. Well, it’s week 6 now, baby, and TiPb gets to retort!

PreCentral.net’s Dieter Bohn

Week 1 saw our Editor-in-Chief, Dieter Bohn, this time representing PreCentral.net, return to the iPhone he’s reviewed about 5 or 6 times already, and… he was remarkably fair and I’m kind of sad there’s nothing much to pick him apart over. Thanks for nothing! One of his negatives is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, though:

I will admit to being a little tired of the iPhone’s design. It’s iconic and singular, but honestly it doesn’t feel as ‘high end’ as it once did. Not that the Palm Pre or Pixi is the picture of luxury, but sometime soon Apple will need to remember that phones are fashion and fashion changes.

iPhone 3G was indeed a departure from the original iPhone 2G; it lost the aluminum and gained a new, curved-for-thinness form. And people got really upset their cases didn’t fit any more, their docks didn’t fit anymore, and accused Apple of changing just to force people to re-buy all their accessories. Then the iPhone 3GS came out, new model same as the one before, and people got really upset that it wasn’t refreshed. Fashionistas complained one could tell they had the new model. Both the iPhone casing and the iPhone home screen wouldn’t be hurt for an update, but Apple won’t win either way.

As for Dieter’s conclusion:

We try not to pick winners in the Smartphone Round Robin, but rather talk about user needs and preferences. If you need apps and music, right now your choice is iPhone. If that’s not big and you care about openness and multitasking, webOS has a serious leg up. What’s sort of amazing is that most users don’t need to dismiss either out of hand.

I’d add the mobile web to that. iPhone Safari still hasn’t been exceeded and there’s a reason iPhone-optimized sites are still what other mobile WebKit clients want to pull. The point itself is spot on though — iPhone is owning the app and media space while BlackBerry owns messaging, and Android, Palm, Nokia, and WinMo battle it out over “openness” and “in-between”. Multitasking we might get in a future update (iPhone 4.0?) but it’s tough to see Apple loosening their ties on the App Store until and unless competition forces them to. Geeks and philosophers notwithstanding, some users and some developers prefer the level of trust a “gate-keeper”-style store provide (though Apple could certainly do better on the consistency side).

WMExperts’ Phil Nickinson

Week 2 brought us Phil Nickinson, editor of WMExperts.com, and again he was frustratingly fair. He also raised some good food for thought:

Some of the best conversations surrounding smartphones these days have to do with Apple’s singular vision. It designs the phones. It keeps a tight fist on the manufacturing process. It largely controls the marketing of the devices. Even the act of selling an iPhone is controlled by Apple. Want to use the iPhone? You have to connect to iTunes at least once. Apps? Only (official) way to get them is through Apple’s App Store. Everything, at least at some point, must pass through Apple. Do not pass Go, head directly to Cupertino.

I’ve been toying with the over-simplification that iPhone involves surrendering control to Apple in exchange for user-experience, Android involves surrendering privacy to Google in exchange for free services, and BlackBerry involves surrendering serenity to RIM in exchange for constant connectivity. There’s no perfect device or perfect model; everything is a compromise, and for a large swath of users, that’s a good deal. They don’t want to control (or have to worry about managing) their device — they just want to easily use it.

Phil’s conclusion:

We don’t believe in iPhone killers. That’s a phrase that was coined by writers who couldn’t think of any other arguments to make. No, we’re not looking for Windows Mobile 7, if and when it’s announced and later released, to “kill” anything, save for maybe the bad taste that Windows Mobile 6.5 left in a lot of mouths. But even that isn’t entirely fair. Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6.5 and for the most part delivered exactly what it promised. No more, no less. A stopgap to hold things over until WM7.

Actor and gadget aficionado Stephen Fry uproariously so elegantly phrased:

Does anybody seriously believe that Android, Nokia, Samsung, Palm, BlackBerry and a dozen others would since have produced the product line they have without the 100,000 volt taser shot up the jacksie that the iPhone delivered to the entire market?

That the iPhone jumpstarted a complacent smartphone industry in 2007 is undeniable, as is the impact its made since. In that context, the media contrivance of “iPhone killer” makes sense. Until something makes that same original-iPhone-in-2007 level leap, it’s likely the media will keep comparing everything to the iPhone. Steve Jobs was recently rumored to have said Google’s Android wants to “kill” the iPhone, and likely the Windows Mobile team does as well. They have to if they want any hope to be competitive. No doubt the iPhone G4/4.0 team at Apple wants to kill the iPhone 3GS/3.0 as well. That is one of the keys to Apple’s success.

AndroidCentral’s Casey Chan

Week 3 had Casey Chan, editor of AndroidCentral.com share his thoughts on the iPhone 3GS, and forget the conclusion, he starts with the bang:

Ah, the iPhone. For better or worse, the iPhone has become the starting point for many consumers looking to buy a smartphone. In a sense, it’s become the standard for everyone to measure themselves against. Because of its position at the forefront of consumer’s minds and the fact that it’s in everyone’s pocket, that’s completely fair. But because of Apple’s sometimes senseless decisions in dealing with all things iPhone, it leaves the rest of us a little uneasy.

Our own Chad Garrett likes to say the iPhone is the first smartphone for everyone upgrading from the RAZR and there’s some truth to that. With the iPhone, Apple mainstreamed the smartphone — they took it from a power device for power users with a powerful requirement for tweaking, managing, and messing around with, and carefully packaged a subset of important features for the masses. That means that, for any particular user — and especially for a power user — there’s a high chance that subset doesn’t include an important feature.

That’s Apple’s modus operandi, however. They’d rather start limited and add slowly. They’d rather leave something out completely than add in something they don’t think just works well enough. They’re masters of always leaving something else on the table for the next update. And they’re laser-focused on those features they consider essential for the user they’re targeting.

And yes, it drives us all nuts, even as they’ve sold 70,000 devices on the iPhone OS platform and used it to familiarize everyone with the next-step in multitouch iPhone OS UI — the iPad.

CrackBerry.com’s Kevin Michaluk

Week 4 was our best frenemy forever, CrackBerry.com‘s own Kevin Michaluk and he embraces the same yin/yang theory about iPhone/BlackBerry as TiPb:

I’ve said it many times over the past two years, be it in blog posts, on our CrackBerry podcast, or to individuals asking advice on what device to buy, that if you want the absolute no-compromise best smartphone solution that you keep a BlackBerry in one pocket and an iPhone (or iPod Touch) in the other. Though both Apple, RIM and every other manufacturer and platform in the smartphone space for that matter have the aim of developing the one device you need (in other words they’re trying to be both Yin and Yang), I still think as of now it takes two devices to have Best of Class everything. A device like the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the ultimate communication and productivity tool, which excels in areas that matter both in enterprise (security, deployment, IT management) and to people who run their business and their lives depending on the phone, maximizing every minute of their day (one-handed speed of use, battery life, push everything, etc.). Apple hit the market with a compelling touchscreen experience that’s both intuitive and enjoyable to use that fits into the Apple ecosystem of products and services (ie. iTunes) and took it to the next level by causing a revolution in the mobile app space. So while the BlackBerry is still the ultimate communication / utilty tool, the iPhone arguably remains the ultimate convergence device.

Kevin being Kevin, however, he can’t resist tweaking us either. The Man who, in the first year called the iPhone 2G the iSmudge (before BlackBerry copied its black and silver design) and in the second year called it the Ah Frak Phone (on the eve of the BlackBerry Storm launch no less), decided this year he’d call the iPhone 3GS the douchebag phone (he owns one — as do almost all the Smartphone Experts editors).

NokiaExperts’ Matt Miller

Week 5 closed things out with NokiaExperts.com‘s Matt Miller, who like Dieter is a multi-handset mobile gadgeteer with a lot of experience and a global point of view. His take:

As a guy who has used every smartphone operating system I am also quite frustrated with the iPhone OS because I know Apple can do better as they have shown glimpses of in the past. One of the main things people mention with the iPhone OS compared to other smartphone operating systems is the lack of multi-tasking with 3rd party applications. [...] Personally, the major thing I want to see in the next version of the iPhone OS is support for some kind of Today or status screen where I can put widgets or parts of applications on a single screen so my key information is glanceable without having to dive into applications. [...] Another area I would like to see addressed is notifications. Palm’s webOS and Google Android have the best implementation of notifications while the iPhone’s is pretty poor.

Setting aside that these are some of the most popular reasons people still Jailbreak their iPhones, Matt (and the other editors who took similar issue with iPhone functionality) will likely find many TiPb readers agreeing with him, yours truly included. Only built-in Apple apps can multitask, only your latest push message is shown on the Lock Screen (if you haven’t already dismissed it), and that same one message/dismissal is the crux of the notification problem.

This brings everything sharply into focus. Apple prides itself on making software “5-years ahead of the competition” (see iPhone virtual keyboard). They would rather not provide a solution than provide one that they don’t think answers the problem simply and elegantly (see cut, copy, and paste appearing only in iPhone 3.). They would rather provide a highly focused subset of functionality for the mainstream than to check off every power-user want (see everything all of us, er… want). Every version of the iPhone adds features that were considered “missing” to the previous version, either as technology and development resources allow, or Apple deems us sufficiently learned on what came before, and sufficiently motivated to buy what’s next.

So, if RAM and CPU are at the level where multitasking will almost never crash the Phone app and Apple decides they have the UI for it they want, if Dashboard goes mobile but can remain uncluttered and Apple-esque in execution and DashCode joins the iPhone SDK, if… well, given the rapid rise of push notifications, there’s no if — we need better alert handling — we just might get some or all of these things in iPhone 4.0.

Conclusion… Coming Soon

Week 6 is my turn. The iPhone 3GS comes home to TiPb and given everything every other editor has written about it, and everything I’ve written about the Nokia, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone, and Palm webOS, I have to re-examine and re-review the iPhone 3GS.

While that may not be conclusive, it will be TiPb’s conclusion for this year.

Phil and Mal over at WMExperts.com were gracious enough to invite me onto the WMExperts podcast today to kick my apps discuss my Windows Phone Review, as well as all the weeks news — including whether the iTablet or Windows Mobile 7 wins the prize for most rumored, unannounced product of the year.

Check it out!

From the Forums is a great way to see what all of the current hot topics are on the TiPb forums. In order to create any new threads of your own or reply to any of the existing threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is a simple process that will only take a few minutes out of your day, so if you have not already already done so, head on over and register now.

• It’s week 2 of the Smartphone Round Robin and that means Phil from WMExperts is a guest in our forums, go easy on him and help him out with all of his questions he has regarding the iPhone!
• Whether you have a 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, or 32 GB iPhone – how much free space do you currently have?
• Wondering what the latest and greatest iPhone apps are in the App Store today? We have a forum for that. Visit our iPhone App Announcement forum.
• Think of a world where the iPhone simply does not exist (I know it’s painful but try…) What phone would you choose to be your daily driver?

See you on the forums!

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Join Rene, Chad, and special guest Phil Nickinson of WMExperts for iPod touch G3 vs. Zune HD, iPhone 3.1 and iTunes 9 redux, and all the week’s news. Listen in!

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

With our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn off in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, the inmates site editors are left running Around SPE this week. So, while he’ll be breaking news and giving us some hands-on observations on all the new software and hardware on display, we’ll be keeping you covered here at home, starting with a quick recap of where we are right now:

CrackBerry.com

The BIG new this week comes from the CrackBerry Podcast. Kevin was in NYC on for a RIM Business Solutions Press Preview. While there, him and Craig recorded a podcast and for the first time had an employee from Research in Motion on the show. Joined by Mike Kirkup, Manager of Developer Relations, they tackle a bunch of topics from the upcoming App Store to OS 5.0 and whether or not Flash support will appear in a BlackBerry browser and more! Listen Here.

More after the break!

Android Central

We also wondered why Google would comply with Apple’s request to leave multi-touch out of the G1. Hint: It has something to do with maintaining a great relationship with Apple. Read: Google still wants to play nice with Apple to get iPhone eyes on Google AdSense.

Nokia Experts

Some topics of interest this week on Nokia Experts includes the amazing Nokia Maps 3.0 beta update, Nokia 5800 firmware update, Nokia E63 availability in the US for just $279, and the announcement of the Nokia 5630 with 600 MHz processor.

PreCentral

We also had more Touchstone details to emerge when Adam Kaufman, a Product Manager at Palm started answering questions on Facebook.  Plus, many people are wondering if the Palm Pre made an appearance on the TV show “Knight Rider”.  

The iPhone Blog

Maybe jailbreakers, as the EFF asking the US government to grant it an exemption from the DMCA has Apple declaring jailbreaking illegal. (Oops, we just jailbroke live for xGPS on the last podcast!). Lastly, Google gave us Spreadsheet editing, but did Apple deny the Android multi-touch and… a 3.5mm headphone jack?!

TreoCentral

We also learned this week that the Sprint Treo Pro is now targeted for a March 15th launch, and that some Sprint stores are now getting re-stocked with new Treo Pro’s with the new ROM on board. And even though the Sprint Treo Pro is delayed, it was great to hear that Palm’s stock has neared double-digits.

WMExperts

TiPb isn’t the only Smartphone Experts site working our tails off this week. Our editor-in-chief, Dieter Bohn is pulling the live-blogging trifecta, going straight from Macworld to cover Steve Ballmer’s CES kickoff tonight at 6pm PST for WMExperts AND for the (very much anticipated) debut of Palm’s next generation NOVA hardware and OS for TreoCentral — not to mention everything AndroidCentral. Never to be out done, CrackBerry Kevin (with a full on CrackBerry Crew!) will push any and all BlackBerry news they get their cracky hands on. Check out all our sites throughout the day for the latest, greatest, most Smartphone-geeky coverage.

[This is an official Smartphone Experts Round Robin post! Every day you reply here, you're automatically entered for a chance to win an iPhone 3G, Case-Mate Naked Case, and Motorola H9 Bluetooth Headset! Full contest rules here!]

The iPhone 3G doesn’t have a task manager. It doesn’t have a registry. It doesn’t have a sliding keyboard. It doesn’t have a start menu. It doesn’t have Pocket IE. And most egregiously of all — it doesn’t have a stylus!

Will that be the feature that breaks our Editor-in-Chief’s Windows Mobile back? Or will the ultra-modern OS and buttery smooth UI restore his childlike sense of wonder? Head on over to WMExperts to read his ultimate opinion, and — if he deserves it — give him a bag of hurt, TiPb style!

Be sure to comment both here and on Dieter’s review — on all of our sites — so you can try to win as many smartphones and accessory bundles as possible!

What’s next? Crackberry Kevin gets my beloved iPhone this week! Will he even know how to type on a touchscreen? (No Storm jokes!). He’s asking for your assistance in TiPb’s iPhone Forum, so you get another chance to win over in his thread. And I’m off to WMExperts for the (gulp!) HTC FUZE. Help me!

Sibling site WMExperts, which — while Dieter doffs his WinMo cap and rounds his robin reviewing the iPhone — brings us Phil Nickinson’s exception to iPhone OS 2.2‘s Podcast Download feature.

Okay, it’s not cut and paste, lack of MMS, no unified inbox, no Flash, etc. etc. In all fairness, it’s an interesting look at some of the things we here at TiPb complain about as well, pointedly the 10MB cap for podcast downloads over the 3G network (you have to switch to WiFi for anything larger, same as the App Store has enforced since iPhone OS 2.0):

It’s this kind of manipulation from Apple that keeps a good many of us from wanting to deal with the company (and frustrates many who do). It’s not that the hardware’s not sexy. It’s not that the software is lacking. It’s that lines are being blurred, or destroyed. Apple makes the hardware, and AT&T provides the service. There’s too much collusion going on. If AT&T wants to set a 5-gigabyte cap on my data, fine. But don’t tell me how to use those gigs. And don’t use Apple as a proxy to do so.

The only problem with the argument? The inclusion of Apple.

Look no further than the very next day on WMExperts, when Dieter posted a rant of his own, asking people to help save GPS on Windows Mobile, which we’ll paraphrase thusly:

It’s this kind of manipulation from [Microsoft and the OEMs] that keeps a good many of us from wanting to deal with the company (and frustrates many who do). It’s not that the hardware’s not sexy. It’s not that the software is lacking. It’s that lines are being blurred, or destroyed. [Microsoft and the OEMs] make the [software and hardware], and [Verizon] provides the service. There’s too much collusion going on. If [Verizon] wants to [lock down the GPS that's not fine]. [And] don’t tell me [I have to pay to subscribe to Telenav in order to do it]. And don’t use [Microsoft and the OEMs] as a proxy to do so.

See what we’re getting at? Targeting Apple and the iPhone — which hits the rabbit-eared AT&T 3G towers like Elmer Fudd with a rail gun — for redirecting high-bandwidth traffic to WiFi, when Verizon is locking out GPS entirely is platform division at the expense of a united front against a common enemy. It’s the WinPot calling the iKettle black in a cupboard full of charred cooking ware, and it misses the main culprit: the carrier fire.

Now, while Apple has done more in it’s brief 1 1/2 years in the mobile space to break the carrier locks than Microsoft or any other megacorps have done in a decade it’s still not enough. Just imagine what could happen if Microsoft put their own, still ginormous weight behind reform. Imagine if Google, rather than taking the carrier-centric, business-as-usual Android licensing route put their “don’t be evil” mantra where their handset was? Imagine if RIM, rather than letting carriers rip WiFi from the Blackberry Storm, stood up told the carriers just where exactly they could push their odiferous demands? Imagine if Apple told AT&T to invest a little in infrastructure cause unlimited means unlimited and podcast downloads they are a coming!

Those are the rants I want to see more of, and in more places.

Go get ‘em, tigers!

PS: Particularly perplexing with the current 10MB cap on podcasts in iPhone OS 2.2 is that they only apply to direct downloads. Hitting the title, on the other hand, will begin to stream the podcast over 3G (or WiFi) without any such limitations or restrictions. What’s up with that? Anyone know if streaming traffic is any different for the 3G network than download traffic?

figure 1: It is with a heavy heart that Pogue informs us that the latest Windows Mobile phone from T-Mobile blows.

David Pogue has an excellent article on how the iPhone really broke down a bunch of barriers in the smartphone world, the best he claims, is “the way Apple took veto power away from the cellphone carriers.”

So yeah, that’s just the first sentence. The unfortunate part of the article is that most of the rest of it is a review for a T-Mobile Windows Mobile device. The good news is this: if you want to think about how awesome your iPhone is compared to a poorly-implemented Windows Mobile device, the second half of his article will really interest you. There’s a silver lining in every cloud, right?

For the past few days, I’ve been working with the AT&T Tilt, a Windows Mobile smartphone. I’ve used Windows Mobile before, so this isn’t quite the new experience that the BlackBerry Curve was, but I haven’t used the latest version of Windows Mobile (version 6) either. I used WM5 with a Treo 750 for a while, but I ended up dealing with a bad bug that prevented calls from ringing. That was pretty much a killer for the device, and I stopped using it.

And that would be the end of the story, but for the Smartphone Round Robin. And here we are again.

First, Some History

When I last used Windows Mobile, I was frustrated at the lack of real estate — I was used to a 320×320 screen from the Treo 680 (which I’ll be using again next week), and the 750′s 240×240 screen felt really small. When the pixels are limited like that, the seemingly glaring excesses of the Windows Mobile interface… the bars across the bottom and top of the screen, plus the right scroll bar: I was not a happy camper with how the real estate was divided. Dieter of WMExperts told me that WM6 was basically WM5, but with less bugs. The user interface, the way that Windows Mobile presents itself to people using it, was pretty much unchanged, and I figured that maybe I’d check out Windows Mobile again once their new version, Photon, was available. This was all pre-iPhone, so my options of escape were a bit limited.

But, that was a different device, a different Windows Mobile, and a different time. Which leads us, finally, to the Tilt.

About the Tilt

The tilt is a Windows Mobile slider, meaning that it has an iPhone-like front, except that it slides up along the middle to reveal a full-sized keyboard along the front. The form factor, except for the sliding part, is a lot like the iPhone. Oh, and the double-thickness. The iPhone is perhaps a centimeter longer, but half the depth.

The Tilt is huge — not a device that you can use with just one hand. And there are buttons all over the place — one for the camera, one for power/sleep, one for push-to-talk, two OK buttons, and a scroll wheel. Then there are phone, hangup, mail, browser, start, left menu, right menu, and (another) OK key. Then there’s the 5-way directional pad. Many, though not all, of these keys are present yet again in the slider keyboard.

The Size is Deceptive

The battery life on the Tilt is a bit of a disappointment. With the iPhone, I’m used to leaving wi-fi on pretty much all of the time. I recharge the phone about every two or three days. With the Tilt, battery life is great — as long as that Wi-Fi is off, and I don’t have any programs chewing up bandwidth in the background. I suppose this could be said of any phone, but given the size of the Tilt, I kind of expect more battery life out of it.

Given the size, I also kind of expect more speed… response on the Tilt is a bit sluggish, which kind of surprised me. I don’t know if it’s a RAM issue or a processor speed thing, all I know is that the Tilt is kind of pokey. Windows Mobile ships with its own special version of the spinny beach ball that indicates that something is going on. You can’t do anything while the ball spins, the mobile is pretty much locked.

Those are the bad things about the Tilt, off the bat. I’m still not a fan of Windows Mobile, I still find myself lamenting that the UI is bad. The start menu is too small to be thumbable accurately, for example.

Redemptions

But there are good things about Windows Mobile, there always have been. One thing that I do like about Windows Mobile is the power of it all. Real multi-tasking is a boon. Of all of the smartphones that everyone has been using over the Smartphone Round Robin, the Tilt is the only one that really has it. If you want to have GPS mapping going while you browse the web whilst music plays in the background, have at it. The Tilt may not be especially responsive during that time, but it will work.

Windows Mobile also has “a real file system.” With that real filesystem come a lot of benefits. For most things, it means “real apps.” If you want to download something to your phone, have at it. If you want Outlook on your phone, it’s there. If you want to make powerpoint documents or spreadsheets or word documents, it’s all there, ready for you to use. It’s a very powerful system.

For Every Gripe, an Equal and Opposite 3rd Party App

And though there are a lot of things that I don’t like about the way Windows Mobile looks and behaves, there’s a slew of programs out there that attempt to fix it.

I don’t like the Today screen, for example. I miss having a useful background image, and I don’t like the way that the standard information is presented to me. There are programs out there that fix that — the most notable one is probably SPB Mobile Shell, which I use to replace the default ‘Today’ screen.

The browser is really bad, too. Pocket IE is pretty much a joke — it’s incredibly slow and absolutely offsets any speed gains you get from using the Tilt with a 3G network. Opera Mobile to the rescue! It’s not as good as MobileSafari on the iPhone, but it’s a sight better than Pocket IE. You can use it to replace pretty much everything that PIE does — download files, the whole shebang. Opera Mobile is one of the reasons that I’ve been looking forward to using the Tilt.

I also think that the software keyboard on the Tilt is very bad — it’s tiny and requires frequent use of the stylus. I’m pretty certain that there’s an iPhone-like keyboard available. One of the times that I tapped the keyboard with the stylus, though, I got a menu where I could pick and choose from several less-bad software keyboards. The keys are still infintesimal on most of them, but there’s a choice. And some of the helpful forum users have pointed me to other software keyboards that might be better, and I’m pretty sure that there’s an iPhone software keyboard clone floating around on the itnernet somewhere.

Nothing to Reference

One of the things that sets Windows Mobile apart from the other smartphones we’re all testing is that Microsoft doesn’t actually make the device — they just make the software. The rest is all up to HTC, or Palm, or Motorola, or anyone who decides to ship a Windows Mobile smartphone.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it’s a platform — it means that anyone that wants to build a smartphone and has the hardware know-how can build one, because they don’t need nearly as many people to get the software side of things working. Since all of these hardware companies are using the same software platform, it means that it’s a lot easier to get better apps to use and games to play with — it gives Windows Mobile a lot of legs, in terms of what you can do with it.

The downside to all of this is that you don’t necessarily get a strong design edge out of this method of doing things. It’s a lot like Microsoft in the computer world — maybe your average beige computer box is kind of ugly, but that’s not Microsoft’s fault, they just did the software.

And HTC’s Tilt, though not by any means a bad-looking device, shows all the symptoms of this problem. There are huge buttons all over the place, but the hardest one to find and activate is the sleep button. The red phone button, which we’ve all been taught with countless featurephone designs, should turn the device on, or at least wake it up from sleep. Looks like someone missed that, as the red phone button does nothing. It may be that there’s a way to swap those buttons in software — if there is, please post.

Endless Customizability

One of the other things about Windows Mobile that struck me is that there’s endless customizability. I’m willing to bet that many if not all of the things that I can find that I don’t like, there’s an app or tweak or registry edit that fixes it. All that matters is that you have the time, knowledge, and/or money to throw at the things you don’t like about Windows Mobile. And that you have a parachute for the learning cliff.

“Man… Microsoft, you gotta get that browser fixed… Like, right now.”

It has to be said that this video compares “Windows Mobile version 6″ to “iPhone version 1.” As I said in my review, I have no plans to return to any of my previous Palm OS or Windows Mobile smartphones. Many of these shortcomings will be fixed with software updates. The big question is pretty much “when?”