HTC Tilt 2 (Touch Pro2) Review

I upgraded to the HTC Tilt 2 from the HTC Fuze last week. The Tilt 2 is AT&T's variation of the HTC's Touch Pro2 phone.
This will not be a typical review. I will discuss what I do and don't like about the phone and compare and contrast with previous HTC phones. Please read on for the whole article.

The Tilt 2 is an excellent business phone with multimedia capabilities. The phone is an excellent upgrade to the HTC Fuze that was released in the first half of November last year. First thing I would say is that if you are a fan of the Fuze, or the phone that came out the year before that, the Tilt, is that the Tilt 2 is a natural step up from it. Where the Tilt to Fuze upgrade brought a much improved hardware and software platform, the upgrade from Fuze to Tilt 2 is just as grand.
The Fuze was the first out of the three that had Touchflo 3D which I find to be a great "skin" to the Windows Mobile OS. Touchflo was significantly improved in the Tilt 2.
HTC Tilt 2 Home Screen with Touchflo:

Another aspect of software that was changed in the Tilt 2 is the Windows Mobile version. This device launched with Windows Mobile 6.5 which is quite the improvement over the 6.1 and 6.0 that shipped with the Fuze and Tilt, respectively. There is a wealth of information on the Internet(if you know how to find) about these topics so I will not go into detail except to say that I like what HTC and Microsoft have done with their software upgrades.

Hardware wise the Tilt 2 is a mix of all that was great with the Tilt and Fuze. Taken from the Tilt is the style of the phone (tilting screen and all) and from the Fuze the hardware running inside the phone. Little do people know is that the Fuze and Tilt 2 are nearly identical in hardware, down to the amount of memory and the CPU. I am perfectly fine with this as HTC has finely tuned the Tilt 2 compared with the Fuze. The screen is also much larger, nearly fitting the body of the Fuze within it. HTC has again created another fine physical device.

My use of this phone is primarily for communicating through various messaging systems and email. Microsoft's Facebook app is installed on this phone by default which I use throughout the day to keep up with friends and family. I also use Twikini for keeping up with Twitter. For email (in addition to calendar & contacts) I use Google Sync. These programs and service all work great and there are currently hundreds of other apps that could be downloaded through the also included 'Marketplace' application.

There is little I do not like about the phone. My only complaint about this phone, short of not including an integrated headphone jack (which is actuall not one of MY complaint anyway), is that when AT&T and HTC were deciding what programs they would install on the phone for us they piled it on a little heavy. There are several demos for games that I will never play, and even worse, there is no way to remove them from the phone. I will soon solve this problem thanks to the great XDA-Developers community, but I wish there was an easy way for basic users to remove these useless programs.

Overall I am very impressed with the HTC Tilt 2 and I would encourage anyone interested in this phone to just go out and buy.... I mean go to a local store and use one just to confirm how nice of a phone this really is.

More screen shots on from my phone available in my Flickr HTC Tilt 2 Set