Installing Y! Go (Yahoo’s Mobile App) on the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone

I just installed Yahoo’s mobile app, called Y! Go, on my AT&T Tilt. It’s pretty handy. Yes, I could already get my Yahoo mail on my phone, but you get a much better interface with Y! Go. You also get access to all your other My Yahoo! account features, like weather, stocks, news, etc.

In order to install it, here’s what I did.

1. I went to yahoo.com and searched for yahoo mobile app. Then you are taken to this page http://mobile.yahoo.com/go.
   
2. You click the “get yahoo go” link in to top, and enter your cellphone number. Yahoo sends a you a text message with a link to complete downloading the app.
   
3. You click the link, and press accept.


4. You then are asked where to save the application (if you have a memory card installed)


5. You select where to install it and the applicatin is installed.

This is by far the easiest app I’ve installed on my AT&T Tilt cell phone. All other apps require you to download a file on your computer, hook your phone to the computer, and go through Active Synch to complete the installation. The Y! Go app does not require this type of installation, and the installation process itself is very user-friendly.

As I explorer more of the features of Y! Go, expect more blog posts regarding it!

I’ve pasted a couple of screenshots of the interface below, so you can get a idea of what the application looks like while it’s running on the phone.

How to install a CAB file on the AT&T Tilt Cellphone

Most programs or apps you choose to put on your phone will be either an .exe or a .cab. EXE can usually be installed by doubleclicking the icon on your computer desktop while the phone is connected through Active Synch, but Cab files are a little different.

Here are instructions to intall a CAB (.cab) file to a Smart Phone like the At&T Tilt:

1. The first step is to move the .CAB installation file you downloaded to your smartphone. First, sync the smartphone with your Windows PC. After synchronization, select the Explore feature from ActiveSync's main screen.
   
   The Explore feature allows you to browse your smartphone's internal storage like you would browse your computer's hard drive(s) in My Computer or Windows Explorer. Once the Mobile Device explorer window is open (see below), go to your Windows Desktop, or wherever the .CAB file is stored. Right-click it. When the menu drops down, select Copy. Return to the Mobile Device explorer window, right-click somewhere in the window, and select Paste:
   
   
2. The .CAB file will be copied to the smartphone. Allow this process to complete. Disconnect your smartphone's sync cable. On your smartphone, open File Manager in the Start Menu:
   
   
3. Find the .CAB file you copied to your device in File Manager. If you followed the instructions above, the file will be located in your \My Documents folder. When you find it, select it:
   
   The .CAB file will unpack and install itself on your smartphone and add an icon to the Start Menu:
   
   Once the software has been installed, feel free to delete the .CAB file from your smartphone's memory if you wish.

AT&T Tilt Cellphone - Free App Download

We found a great, totally free applicatin for the At&T Tilt cellphone. It is called "Live Search" and the link to it is http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/ppc-download-live-search-mobile.html.

Some of it's features are:

• Local information and navigationFind local businesses and restaurants, and click to call them
• Turn by turn driving directions
• Explore interactive maps with satellite imagery
• View current traffic information and find cheap gas1 stations
• See movie showtimes by theaters
• Web search from any Windows Mobile device with Internet access Search the full Web
• Find the latest news items
• Search images and photos
• Get instant answers for weather, stocks, maps, etc
• Speak your questions—no need to type
• Browse business listings by categories

If you need help installing a program on your At&T tilt cellphone, be sure to read our blog on that topic!

Also, one helpful note I will tel you - the program installed seamlessly and automatically launched, but did not work initially. I kept getting "can not connect to server errors". I fixed it by opening Internet Explorer, making sure a web page came up, and then launching the Live Search app. It worked just fine!

AT&T Tilt Cell Phone Freezes or Locks Up - How To Restart the AT&T Tilt Cellphone

Perhaps you're wondering what to do if your AT&T Tilt cell phone freezes or locks up. I’ve had my phone since October 2007, and it’s only happened to me a few times, so this is a pretty infrequent occurrence, but still a problem none-the-less.

When the AT&T Tilt cell phone becomes frozen, unresponsive, or appears to be locked up, it can usually be resolved by holding down the power button (located on the top right side of the phone and shown in the screenshot below) for about 3 seconds.

What normally happens next is a message displays on the screen, saying “Your are about to power off and you may lose data. Do you want to continue?” When you click yes, the AT&T Tilt cellphone will turn off.

This worked for me almost every time. One time it was completely un-responsive, and the only way I could restart the AT&T Tilt cell phone was to take the back casing off and remove the battery. See the image below of how to take the battery out of the AT&T Tilt Cellphone.

This is an alternative way to power off the phone if the power button on the AT&T Tilt cell phone doesn’t seem to work.

Removing Programs From the AT&T Tilt Cellphone

Recently, we installed the Opera Mobile browser, thinking it would allow us to see Macromedia Flash on the AT&T Tilt Cellphone. Since the current version does not let us view Flash, and is very similar to the Mobile Internet Explorer Browser on the phone, we are going to un-install (or remove) the program.

In order to remove a program that is installed on your phone, first connect the phone to your computer. Upon plugging the phone in, the Microsoft ActiveSynch window should appear. Choose "Tools" the "Add/Remove Programs" as shown in the screenshot below.

Now you will be shown a list of programs installed on the Tilt. Uncheck the box next to any program you want to remove. Since we are removing Opera, you will notice the Opera checkbox is unchecked in the screenshot below. Uncheck the program you wish to remove and then click "OK".

You will then see a message (shown below) that it is removing the program, and then the window will close by itself.

You will not get any more confirmation that the removal is complete, even though it has been removed.

Viewing Web Pages on the AT&T TILT Cellphone - Using Both Opera Mobile and Mobile Internet Explorer

Now that Opera Mobile is inatlled on the phone, I went to a few websites, just to see what it looked like on the AT&T Tilt cellphone. None of the sites I went to could be viewed on the phone without both vertical and horizontal scrolling. The viewing of the web pages in Opera Mobile (at least this version) seems to be very similar to Mobile Internet Explorer on the phone.

We were surprised that the Opera Mobile browser doesn’t handle to page scrolling the same way as an iPhone does. It could have shown me a shrunken down version of the page and then let me skrink it down or zoom in, like the iPhone my coworker has. (My coworker is jealous of the fact that the AT&T Tilt Cellphone has a keyboard, and the iPhone does not, so I can type URLs much easier than they can).

Having to scrolling around to view web pages in the browser is not very user-friendly, and it makes reading content very hard.

Another note about viewing web pages using the Opera Mobie browser is that ost websites detect Mobile Internet Explorer, but not all are detecting Opera Mobile, and we see the straight up site geared for a desktop computer as opposed to a cell phone sometimes when using Opera Mobile instead of being forwarded to the mobile version of the site, which we would have bene if we were using Mobile Internet Explorer instead.

Viewing Web Pages On The AT&T Tilt Cell Phone – Installing Opera Mobile On The AT&T Tilt Cellphone

We are revisiting the topic of viewing web pages on the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone. We are on the Opera website, under downloads, and looking at Opera Mobile.

The option you need choose to get Opera on your AT&T tilt cellphone is not very clear on this page, but this is the version of Opera Mobile For the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone - Version 8.65 - Windows Mobile 5/6 PPC, Professional, Classic. When you click this link, you are taken to the page we’ve seen before where you must choose the “MSI” option and download the file.

Before you click the file, make sure your phone is connected to the computer via Active Synch. Then open the file and run the installer. Here are screenshots of the installation process:







The computer will tell you it has installed and tell you to check your phone to see if you need to do anything else. At this point, I looked at the tilt phone and it said, "The program is from an unknown publisher. You should only install if you trust its publisher. Do you want to continue?" We clicked “yes” and the next question I was asked was did I want to install this program on the device or on the memory card. Since I have enough free space to use the device (this information is displayed on the phone screen as well), and not everyone has a memory card, I chose to install it on the device.

After an animated loading screen, the phone now says, "Opera software Opera.CAB was successfully installed n your device". I clicked OK and the phone went back to the main page. I then went to the "Start menu, and choose programs. I now see Opera Web Browser located in the list. I clicked it, and the phone flashed its loading graphic, and then launched the browser.

I was first informed that this was a 30-day trial, and then it asked if I wanted to set it as the default browser. It then asked if I wanted it to automatically import my bookmarks from Internet Explorer. After this, the Opera browser opened.

The Opera Mobile browser is successfully installed!

The first thing I did was try to access a web page and the phone informed me that it wasn’t online. This was resolved by disconnecting the phone from my computer.

I then went to www.google.com to make sure I was online. I next went to a website that I know has Macromedia Flash on the main page, because that is one of the main reasons we wanted Opera Mobile; we were told it could run flash files. The flash file did not play on the phone when I accessed the website.

I found this page that says Opera Mobile version 9.5 is capable of displaying full Flash media content. Upon going back to the Opera page, version 9.5 isn't an option to download. Reading more on the Opera website it tells us that Opera is currently in version 8.65 , which is the version we installed on our phone. The Opera website says (see this page) that opera mobile version 9.5 was released in February of 2008, and debuted at the Mobile World Congress 2008. If you read further down this page, we see that is says “Opera Mobile 9.5 will be available on all major platforms including Symbian, Windows Mobile and Linux, as both a standalone browser and as a SDK. The public beta release of Opera Mobile 9.5 will be announced separately.”

This is unfortunate! We really wanted to see Flash run on the AT&T tilt cellphone. We have to resolve ourselves to keep checking the Opera site to see when Opear Mobile 9.5 is realeased to the public.

Drivers for the AT&T Tilt Cellphone

Here is a link to the Active Synch software you need for your AT&T tilt cell phone: Active Synch

Here is a link to read more about installing Active Synch on your computer: Installing Active Synch

Lost the CD For the AT&T Tilt Cellphone ?

If you lost your CD for the AT&T tilt cell phone, you can still download the software that you need. It took us quite awhile to track down the link to the Active Synch software, and we are glad to easily provide it to you now. Please click here to download the software needed for the AT&T tilt cellphone.

Software Needed To Connect The AT&T Tilt Cell Phone To My Computer

We misplaced the CD that came with the AT&T Tilt Cellphone so we had to get everything we needed from the internet.

When we first hooked the AT&T Tilt cell phone to the computer, it automatically came up with Windows “Found New Hardware” wizard. That’s the good news. We let Windows search for the driver automatically. Here is a screenshot of it searching.



After about 30 seconds, it said it did not find any results. That’s the bad news.

We scoured the Internet for drivers for the AT&T cell phone and for software for the at&t tile cell phone, and the only thing that came up was our website. So we decided that we would thoroughly investigate this for you and have come up with a few links and lots of information that should help save you time.

We searched the AT&T site and their support forums and were not able to find a link to the software we needed. We had several highly intelligent people search Yahoo, Google and MSN for the drivers.

We then went back to the AT&T site, and clicked phone/device support, instead of trying to search for it in the answer center, then we choose the network AT&T and then picked the manufacturer “AT&T”. We then selected the Tilt (Model Number 8925). Then it brought up the phone device support page for the tilt cell phone (which you would think would be a link on the main page, instead of being so buried in the AT&T website).

On this page we saw the most unobvious selection of all – a link to HTC’s Site. We clicked this, and it opened up the HTC Smart Mobility web page. It seems that these are the people who actually make this phone - it is a little unclear. Next we went to select a specific product (please see screenshot this selection was confusing). We selected AT&T as the carrier and then chose the phone (8525/8500).



After making this selection, you are taken to a new page. On this page you need to click “Software Downloads” from the left hand side of the page. A new page will load and then you must scroll down to the very bottom of the page and you will see a link for “download”.

Before we clicked the download link we read that upon installing this all the data (music, pictures, files) on the phone would be deleted. That’s bad news. More bad news is that the site says the installation can take up to 30 minutes and you shouldn’t use your computer of the phone during that time.

We clicked this download link and after the file saved, we went to install it. Here is the screenshot before you start the installation process.



You can see that it say that it says it is going to delete all the data from your phone. We noticed on the website that it said before you begin this process you needed to have an Active Synch connection from your computer to the AT&T tilt cell phone.

We searched for Active Synch and came to this page on Microsoft’s website. We downloaded the Active Synch Software. See the screenshots of the very easy installation process below.












After completing the installation, we see that it says that we are now ready to begin installing programs – which was the overall goal we had. It seems that we do not even need to continue with the installation of the software from HTC that was going to delete all my data.

Connecting My Tilt Cellphone To The Computer

It is very easy to connect the AT&T Tilt cell phone to the computer. Basically, you attach the cable from the phone and plug the USB end into the computer. Here is a screenshot of the connection:

Using the Burst Setting for the Camera on the AT&T Tilt Cellphone

When you start the camera on the AT&T Tilt Cellphone, there are a lot of different options to choose from, like video, picture, motion, burst etc. Today we are going to talk about the “burst” setting.

In order to change the current picture setting, first notice the top left of the screen, which shows the current setting. This area is highlighted in the image below. To change settings, click the arrows on the right or left and you will be switched to each of the different picture setting options.



When you have the setting on burst, the camera will take 3 pictures in 3 seconds when you click the camera button. You only click the camera button once, and the AT&T Tilt Cellphone takes a “burst” of pictures – 3 to be exact.

It is easy to accidentally change the picture setting when you go to take a picture, and not know that you’ve changed it. I went to view a picture in my photo library, and each picture had 3 copies. I then went to the camera and noticed that I had accidentally changed the picture setting to burst. I hope this is helpful in case anyone is wondering why their AT&T Tilt Cellphone is taking 3 pictures instead of 1.

Viewing Web Pages On The Tilt Cell Phone - Opera Web Browser - Part 2

We are now revisiting the topic of installing the opera Mobile browser on the At&T Tilt cellphone. We had an unsuccessful first attempt.

After trying the same steps on my phone, I see on the opera.com website (please note that I'm using a desktop computer becuase the Opear site does not appear as intended on the AT&T cellphone) that in order to download the browser, I am supposed to download the file from Opera.com onto my desktop computer first, then connect the phone to the computer, and then double click the file on my computer's desktop.

I do not have the cord to hook my phone to the computer with me, nor the CD with me now so it looks like I can't install the browser at this time.

Stay tuned for another blog called Installing Opera Part 3, where hopefully we can finally get this will finally work!

SDC/512 Kingston 512 MB MicroSD Memory Card

This little piece of hardware is a must have for any owner of the AT&T Tilt Cell Phone. You can own the Kingston 512 MB MicroSD Memory Card, Model Number SDC/512 from Amazon.com for under $10 bucks. This memory card and adaptor will allow you to store your beautiful pictures on it and get them printed out or transfered as easy as with a regular digital camera.

Remember this is a two piece device so when you get it don't be shocked at the size. You should be able to slide out the bottom piece (the one without the gold leads and pull out a smaller version of the SD card (thus the micro SD name). This smaller piece is what goes into the AT&T Tilt Cell phone.

There should be a little black pull tab called Micro SD under the silver buttons on the bottom of the closed AT&T Tilt Cellphone. Once you gently pull this away you will see you can click in the Kingston 512 MB microSD Memory Card ( SDC/512 ). Just make sure you insert it face up.

I will try and post about how to transfer files from your AT&T Tilt Cellphone to the Kingston 512 MB MicroSD Memory Card ( SDC/512 ) in another post.

The Quality Of Pictures From AT&T Tilt Cellphone

The quality of the pictures you can get from the AT&T cellphone is amazing, if you have the settings right. The optimal setting for the best quality pictures is the maximum that the cell phone can do, which is a 2048x1536 pixel image. The pictures linked in this blog we taken at an even lower setting tan this – they were taken at 1600x1200 pixels.

Here are samples of 2 pictures taken from my phone, one is of our new puppy, and one of what she did to the blinds. Don’t worry, I promise not to turn this into a photo blog; I’m just showing sample images from the phone!

The images that come off the phone are very large, please click the thumbnails I created below to open the full-size “from-the-phone” image in a new window.

In case you’re wondering how I got these pictures off the phone, I sent them in a multi-media (not text!) message on the phone to my email account. I then saved them from my email to my computer!

In the very-upcoming future I am going to have an Micro SD card on the phone, so I will be able to transfer the images in a different and more efficient way. Stay tuned for an entry on this at a later date!

Viewing Web Pages On The Tilt Cell Phone - Opera Web Browser - Part 1

We tried to download the Opera browser for the AT&T tilt cell phone today. It was an undertaking that I was trying to put off but not being able to surf the web like a computer on such an advanced phone like the Tilt Cell phone was frustrating. We decided to go with the 30 day free trial to see how hard it was to install and because some of the questions we were unsure of the answers on. We found no relative results when searching for Installing Opera On AT&T Tilt Cell Phone.

The first step was to go get the browser (www.opera.com). I thought that I would just go to the website and download the browser on the phone. Makes sense right? Wrong.

The first thing I noticed was how user unfriendly the website was for mobile devices. For a company that offers such a sophisticated browser, their website should at least detect that I have a smart phone or mobile phone and send me to a different page. Oh well.

Once we got to the download page, we had to choose between two different versions of the mobile Opera Browser. I was confronted with a question about which version of Windows Mobile was running on the phone. This is not an obvious question for most newbies but most advanced users should not have a problem with this question. The AT&T Tilt Cell phone uses Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 (to find out on most windows mobile devices go to Start, Settings, About).

The next question that is asked is what type of phone do you have. The choices are for a Smart Phone and a Pocket PC. Most average consumers might not know which one to choose. If you have questions I suggest you Google your phones model number. They say that if your phone has a touch screen, you need the Pocket PC version. Since the AT&T Tilt cell phone has a touch screen my choice was easy.

The toughest question in the download process and most confusing was they wanted me to choose what type of device I have. The cryptic options that were presented where:
All Devices (CAB) or All Devices (MSI). This was a little confusing because both say “All devices”. I would suggest Opera put something online or in the download process that explains this choice a little better but we choose the default one, and clicked “download”. The page changed to a blank webpage and appeared to load a new page. I could see progress in the download bar of the browser, and all appeared to be well.

About 45 seconds passed while we waited for the download, I wondered if I should have done this on a desktop machine, and then synched the phone to the computer, and moved the file over this way… Again Opera should have detected my cellphone and sent me to an error page if this is the case. Anyways, I convinced myself to wait it out, sometimes pages do take a while to load on the phone.. The cell phones’ screen did its automatic “sleep” function; we made the display come back on by pressing the power button a couple of times.

A few moments later, the browser appeared to be done. I could see the “Back” and “Menu” buttons on the bottom, which usually means the page is done loading. We were a little confused since nothing ever asked me to install. We went to “Programs” and didn’t see the new browser listed.

We will return to this later, I have invested more than an hour in this install and documentation process so stay tuned

Do Not Pay For GPS

You do not need to pay the monthly fee for the GPS software (Telenav) from AT&T. There is a great program called GPS Utilities (http://www.efficasoft.com/gpsutilities.html) that sets up the GPS connection ($17.95) (Com 4 and 4800) and free Google maps which integrates with the GPS to track your location, give directions, real time traffic, sattelite views, etc. (http://www.google.com/gmm/gps.html) It is awesome. Also, Windows Mobile 6 is a great improvement over WM5. The performance is so good with the new processer and 3G, I could make international phone calls via Skype (http://www.skype.com/download/skype/mobile/) I like the iPhone UI better, but its lack of Voice Dial, the Limited Keyboard, and lack of 3G made it impossible for me to switch to it from my HTC 8125. I did spend 2 hours at the Apple store trying to talk myself into it. I also recommend Bandswitch (http://commmgrpro.com/_wsn/page2.html) to automatically disconnect your data connection and maximize your battery life. I also removed the PTT software and reclaimed the button for Voice Dial (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1570125). I also recommend an alternative to the included dialer because the buttons were too small to use (http://www.paulya.com/Projects/EtDialer/Cabs/PaulyA_E-Ten_Vista.cab) Best phone I have ever had, though I loved my HTC 8125.