AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6800 and Samsung i760: The 2007 Windows Mobile Lineup

By the fall of 2007, three carriers were racing to put a similar idea in front of business-minded phone shoppers: a touchscreen smartphone running Windows Mobile with a slide-out physical keyboard tucked underneath. Mobility Today covered all three at once in a photo-led piece — the AT&T Tilt, the Verizon XV6800, and the Samsung SCH-i760 — and that original coverage still survives in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, giving a genuine window into how these devices looked before any of them had officially launched.

The 2007 Fall Windows Mobile Lineup

In 2007, "smartphone" for a business buyer generally meant one of a few shapes: a BlackBerry with a fixed keyboard, a Palm Treo with a compact touchscreen-and-keyboard combo, or a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone built around a stylus. The AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6800, and Samsung SCH-i760 all took a specific version of that last approach — a touchscreen up front and a full QWERTY keyboard that slid out from underneath — and each carrier brought its own hardware partner and its own timing to the idea that same fall.

Windows Mobile 6 Professional

All three devices ran Windows Mobile 6 Professional, Microsoft's touchscreen-oriented Windows Mobile 6 variant aimed at Pocket PC Phone Edition hardware, distinct from Windows Mobile 6 Standard, which targeted keyboard-and-D-pad phones without a touchscreen. Windows Mobile 6 Professional bundled Pocket Outlook, Pocket Internet Explorer, and Office Mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with support for Exchange ActiveSync and Direct Push email — the features that made this software platform, rather than a simpler feature-phone OS, the obvious choice for carriers courting business customers in 2007.

Why Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboards Mattered

Before capacitive on-screen keyboards became the default, typing a real email on a phone generally meant one of two things: a fixed keyboard built into the phone's face, or a resistive touchscreen paired with a stylus and handwriting recognition. A slide-out QWERTY keyboard offered a third option — a touchscreen for browsing and stylus input when closed, and a full physical keyboard for longer typing when opened — without permanently sacrificing screen size to a keyboard that sat there all the time. That tradeoff came at a cost in thickness and weight, but for a mobile professional expected to answer real email on the move, it was a genuine selling point across all three of these devices.

The AT&T Tilt / HTC Kaiser / HTC 8925

The AT&T Tilt ran Windows Mobile 6 Professional on a Qualcomm MSM7200 processor clocked at 400MHz, with 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, driving a 2.8-inch QVGA (240x320) touchscreen — specs confirmed both by PhoneScoop's published listing and by Mobility Today's own original article, which quoted the same CPU, RAM, ROM, and resolution figures directly. Its most distinctive hardware trait was in the name: rather than a keyboard that simply slid out flat, the Tilt's screen physically tilted upward at an angle above the extended keyboard, aimed at making the display easier to read while typing on a desk or in a lap. Other confirmed specs include a 3-megapixel autofocus camera, HSDPA 3G with EDGE fallback, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and a 1,350mAh removable battery. GPS was a launch feature, bundled with AT&T's TeleNav navigation software — though contemporary discussion at the time, including a question in Mobility Today's own comment thread, shows real uncertainty about whether the built-in GPS receiver would work with third-party mapping apps or be locked to TeleNav specifically. It was later confirmed to work with other GPS software rather than being locked to any single app.

From HTC Kaiser to HTC 8925 to AT&T Tilt

Like many HTC devices of this era, the Tilt carried more than one name depending on where in its lifecycle you encountered it. Inside HTC, it was developed under the internal codename Kaiser. AT&T sold the hardware under the model number 8925, and marketed it publicly as the AT&T Tilt — a name explicitly tied to the tilting-screen mechanism. It's worth being precise here: the original HTC TyTN was an earlier, separate 2006 device, and the Kaiser-based hardware covered in this piece is more accurately understood as a later, distinct generation sold under the TyTN II name in some international markets, not a simple continuation of the original TyTN's specs. It's also worth not confusing the original AT&T Tilt covered here with the later AT&T Tilt 2, a different device released roughly a year afterward with its own separate hardware.

The Verizon XV6800

The Verizon XV6800 paired a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, running on a Qualcomm processor in the same 400MHz class as the Tilt, though built around HTC's separate Titan hardware platform rather than the Tilt's Kaiser platform — the two devices share a general spec tier and era but are not the same underlying hardware. Confirmed specs include EV-DO data, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, a camera in roughly the 2-megapixel class, and a removable 1,500mAh battery. The XV6800 launched running Windows Mobile 6 Professional.

The HTC Titan Platform and the Sprint Mogul Connection

The XV6800 wasn't Verizon's hardware alone — it was a carrier-specific version of HTC's Titan platform, the same underlying hardware that shipped on Sprint several months earlier as the Sprint Mogul (also sold as the PPC-6800). Sprint's Mogul reached the market around June 2007, running Windows Mobile 6.0 on the same general Qualcomm 400MHz-class processor with 64MB RAM and 256MB ROM. Mobility Today's own original photos actually captured this relationship directly — one of the outlet's exclusive images grouped the Sprint Mogul alongside the AT&T 8925, Verizon XV6800, and Verizon i760, visually underscoring that the Mogul and the XV6800 were close platform siblings arriving on different carriers.

Launch Specs vs. a Later ROM Update on the XV6800

It's easy, looking back, to credit a device with every feature it eventually gained — but the XV6800's launch specification and its later software state weren't identical. At launch, the XV6800 shipped with Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional. Windows Mobile 6.1 arrived later via an official carrier ROM update commonly referred to as "MR1." That same update is also what activated assisted-GPS (A-GPS) functionality on the device's Qualcomm chipset — and even then, access was initially restricted to carrier-approved applications like VZ Navigator rather than opened to any GPS software a user wanted to run. In other words: Windows Mobile 6.1 and functioning A-GPS were both later additions to the XV6800, not features present in the phone as it originally shipped in Verizon's boxes.

The Samsung SCH-i760

The Samsung SCH-i760 ran Windows Mobile 6 Professional on a Samsung processor at 400MHz, with a 2.8-inch QVGA (240x320) touchscreen, confirmed by PhoneScoop's published specification sheet. Its defining design choice was a side-sliding keyboard arrangement built around two separate input surfaces: a small dedicated numeric keypad visible on the phone's front face for quick dialing, and a full QWERTY keyboard revealed by sliding the body sideways — a layout distinct from the Tilt and XV6800's simpler slide-to-reveal keyboards. Confirmed connectivity includes EV-DO data, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0, alongside a 1.3-megapixel camera with LED flash. Reported dimensions and weight vary slightly between sources — figures in roughly the 4.5 x 2.3 x 0.8-inch, 5.3-ounce range appear consistently, including in a Mobility Today reader comment posted at the time citing the same approximate size.

Verizon's Rollout Schedule for the i760

Contemporary coverage from October 2007 confirms the SCH-i760 became available for online ordering on October 19, 2007, followed by in-store availability on November 2, 2007 — a staggered rollout, rather than a single simultaneous nationwide launch. Pricing was reported at roughly $350 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a new two-year contract. Worth flagging directly: this is the Samsung SCH-i760 specifically, and shouldn't be confused with the separate, later Samsung i730 or the various Samsung Omnia-branded devices that followed in subsequent years — different hardware under superficially similar naming.

Three-Way Spec Comparison

Spec	AT&T Tilt (HTC 8925)	Verizon XV6800	Samsung SCH-i760
OS at launch	Windows Mobile 6 Professional	Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
Processor	Qualcomm MSM7200, 400MHz	Qualcomm, ~400MHz class (Titan platform)	Samsung processor, 400MHz
RAM / ROM	128MB / 256MB	~64MB / 256MB	Not consistently confirmed across sources
Display	2.8-inch, 240x320, tilting mechanism	2.8-inch, 240x320	2.8-inch, 240x320
Keyboard style	Slide-out QWERTY, tilting screen	Slide-out QWERTY	Side-slide QWERTY plus external numeric keypad
Camera	3MP, autofocus	~2MP	1.3MP with LED flash
Cellular data	HSDPA 3G / EDGE (GSM)	EV-DO (CDMA)	EV-DO (CDMA)
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	802.11b/g / Bluetooth 2.0	802.11b/g / Bluetooth 2.0	802.11b/g / Bluetooth 2.0
GPS at launch	Yes, with bundled TeleNav	Present in hardware; usable A-GPS added later via update	Not confirmed as a launch feature
Confirmed availability	Officially announced Oct. 4, 2007; on sale Oct. 5, 2007	Online Nov. 28, 2007; in stores Dec. 5, 2007	Online Oct. 19, 2007; in stores Nov. 2, 2007

None of these three devices is a clear across-the-board winner in this comparison — each carrier's hardware partner made different tradeoffs around camera resolution, keyboard layout, and GPS availability, and the right choice for a given buyer depended heavily on which carrier's network they were already on.

3G, Touchscreens, Wi-Fi, and Exchange Email

What tied these three devices together as a category, more than any single spec, was a shared bet on what a 2007 business smartphone needed: some flavor of 3G data (HSDPA on GSM networks, EV-DO on CDMA networks), a touchscreen for navigating a stylus-driven interface, Wi-Fi as a faster and often cheaper alternative to cellular data, Bluetooth for headsets and file transfer, expandable microSD storage, and Exchange ActiveSync support for corporate email, calendar, and contacts. That combination — rather than any one standout feature — is what carriers were pitching to IT departments and mobile professionals that fall.

Why Enthusiasts Tracked Release Dates So Closely

Windows Mobile enthusiast forums and blogs in 2007 paid unusually close attention to leaked photos, FCC filings, and rumored release windows for devices like these three, and Mobility Today's own comment section is a good illustration of why: readers were comparing device dimensions down to hundredths of an inch, debating GPS software compatibility, and asking pointed questions about keyboard color schemes days before any of the three phones had an official launch date. Part of that intensity came from real uncertainty — Windows Mobile devices in this era routinely slipped their rumored release windows by weeks or months, as happened with all three phones covered here, so confirmed availability dates carried genuine news value rather than being a formality.

The 2007 Windows Mobile Lineup vs. iPhone, BlackBerry, and Palm Treo

It's worth placing this lineup in its broader 2007 context rather than treating Windows Mobile as the only game in town. Apple's original iPhone had launched that June with a capacitive touchscreen, no physical keyboard, and no third-party native app store yet — a genuinely different design philosophy from all three keyboard-equipped devices covered here. BlackBerry devices of the same period leaned almost entirely on a fixed keyboard and push email that IT departments already trusted, without a touchscreen at all on most contemporary models. Palm's Treo occupied a middle position not unlike the i760 — touchscreen plus keyboard in one body — but in a more compact, non-sliding shape. None of these categories had definitively "won" in late 2007; the smartphone market was still actively experimenting with input methods, and it would take Apple's later App Store and subsequent iPhone models, alongside the rise of Android, to settle the direction the broader market eventually took.

Revisiting Mobility Today's Original Coverage

Mobility Today's original article, titled "EXCLUSIVE: Photos AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6800 and Samsung i-760," was published by David Ciccone on Sunday, September 23, 2007 — weeks before any of the three phones had an official carrier launch date. The piece was framed explicitly around obtaining exclusive photos, opening with "We were lucky enough to get our hands on these photos of some of the new Fall lineup," rather than describing hands-on testing of physical review units. Six images accompanied the piece, showing the devices individually and in group shots alongside each other — one of which, notably, also included the Sprint Mogul for size comparison. The article's text focused mainly on the visual size difference between the i760 and the Tilt, calling out "the width of the Tilt vs the i-760" as a "Huge difference in size." Alongside the photos, the article listed a short spec block specifically for the AT&T 8925: a Qualcomm 7200 CPU at 400MHz, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, a 240x320 display, BlackBerry Connect, TeleNav, Sprite Backup, ZIP file support, and Push to Talk — matching the same figures independently confirmed elsewhere in this piece. No comparable spec block was published for the XV6800 or i760 in the original article; those devices appeared in photos and captions only. The surviving comment thread adds a few more sourced details, including reader-reported dimensions and weights for all three devices and a brief exchange about whether the Tilt's GPS would be limited to TeleNav — useful context, but sourced from commenters rather than the article itself. Because this was explicitly a photo piece rather than a full review, there's no surviving evidence in the original text of hands-on impressions, benchmark testing, or a stated release-date prediction from Mobility Today for any of the three devices, and this article isn't claiming that depth existed where the surviving record doesn't support it.

FAQ

What was the AT&T Tilt?

A Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone sold by AT&T in fall 2007, built around HTC's Kaiser hardware, with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard beneath a touchscreen that tilted upward at an angle.

Was the AT&T Tilt the HTC Kaiser?

Yes — HTC Kaiser was the internal development codename for the hardware AT&T sold under the model number 8925 and the marketing name AT&T Tilt.

What was the Verizon XV6800?

A Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional smartphone Verizon launched in late 2007, built on HTC's Titan hardware platform, with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8-inch touchscreen.

Was the XV6800 related to the Sprint Mogul?

Yes — both devices were carrier-specific versions of the same HTC Titan hardware platform, with the Sprint Mogul (PPC-6800) reaching the market several months before Verizon's XV6800.

What was the Samsung SCH-i760?

A Verizon-exclusive Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone with a distinctive slider design combining an external numeric keypad with a full QWERTY keyboard revealed by sliding the body sideways.

Which of the three devices ran Windows Mobile 6?

All three — the AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6800, and Samsung SCH-i760 — ran Windows Mobile 6 Professional at launch.

Which of the three devices had physical keyboards?

All three had slide-out physical QWERTY keyboards, though the i760's design also added a separate external numeric keypad not present on the other two.

Did the AT&T Tilt have GPS?

Yes, GPS was a launch feature bundled with AT&T's TeleNav navigation software, and it was later confirmed to work with other GPS software as well, not locked exclusively to TeleNav.

Did the Verizon XV6800 have Wi-Fi?

Yes, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi was included at launch. Windows Mobile 6.1 and working assisted-GPS, by contrast, arrived later through an official ROM update rather than shipping at launch.

When did the Samsung SCH-i760 launch?

It became available for online ordering on October 19, 2007, followed by in-store availability on November 2, 2007, at roughly $350 after a mail-in rebate with a new two-year contract.

How did this lineup compare to the 2007 iPhone?

The original iPhone, launched earlier that year, used a capacitive touchscreen with no physical keyboard and no third-party native app store yet, a markedly different approach from all three keyboard-equipped Windows Mobile devices covered here.

Which carrier had the stronger fall 2007 lineup?

Each device made different tradeoffs — camera resolution, keyboard layout, and GPS availability all varied — and the available historical record doesn't support declaring one carrier's device a clear overall winner.

Looked at together, the AT&T Tilt, Verizon XV6800, and Samsung SCH-i760 capture a specific, short-lived moment in smartphone design: three carriers, three hardware partners, and one shared bet that a touchscreen and a real keyboard belonged in the same device. Mobility Today's own September 2007 photo coverage — published weeks before any of the three had an official launch date — remains a genuine, dated snapshot of that moment, even if it never claimed to be more than exactly what it was: an exclusive first look at photos, not a finished review.