[8525, TyTN, MDA Vario II, JasJam ROM Development] thedogger:
I'd been running Hermes for almost 2 years years, just got a used Tilt (Kaiser) from a friend for $250 because they want to upgrade to the new iPhone 3G. I've had it now for about a week. It's definitely a better phone in my opinion -- not revolutionary, but incrementally better. Things that are better:

1) better bluetooth radio range - I can wander pretty far away from the phone (15 feet or so) before I get the "crackly" bluetooth sound, my Hermes would get crackly just a few steps away

2) GPS built in - way too fun, already used it several times! (Using iNAV iGuidance 4.0, Google Maps, WiFiFoFum)

3) More RAM - really does make a difference, you can leave programs running, I think memory leaks from bad programs don't bring you down as fast

4) Faster memory card access - when running apps from the memory card, they load faster

5) LED based backlight - it can get way brighter than Hermes, and won't age and dim like the Hermes one over the long run

6) Slightly thinner and sleeker

7) Better radio reception in places that used to be dead zones no matter which radio I used on my Hermes

8) 3MP camera - loads faster, takes pictures a little bit faster, but the quality does vary, the auto-focus algorithm doesn't always work right.

9) That "tilt" function actually works pretty nicely when reading an e-book.

10) The phone wakes up much more quickly when pressing the power button, and the clock is always up to date (my Hermes always took a few seconds to wake up when pressing the power button, and then you had to wait a few more seconds for the clock to update when checking the time).

11) I like the spring-loaded keyboard slider, even the stock ROM is very fast to rotate the screen for the majority of apps

12) Earpiece speaker quality is slightly better.

I'm using the latest stock AT&T ROM, WM6, Rom date 01/17/08. I just uninstalled and/or moved most of the AT&T shortcuts out of the way so it looks like a clean ROM.

Downsides of Kaiser versus the Hermes:

1) I haven't ventured into hacking and updating the ROM on it yet - it looks more complicated than ROMs on the Hermes. You have to flash different SPLs depending on what ROM you are using, different radios don't work at all with various ROMs, there are "radios from hell" that can't be removed without serious hackery -- it's a much more complicated landscape. Our ROM cookers for Hermes do a great job of simplifying this stuff for us.

2) It's a bit heavier than Hermes, even though it's a tiny bit thinner.

3) No CommManager hardware button. I figured out how to remap the PTT button for this with help from the Kaiser forum.

4) Weirdness with AT&T proxy manager. Even on the stock ROM, MediaNET still requires some manual loving to get MMSs to work.

5) I like the feel of the Hermes keyboard just a bit better (subjective)

6) The buttons on the bottom aren't flush -so I accidentally rejected several calls while pulling the phone out of my pocket until I installed S2U2.

7) MS Voicecommand doesn't seem to be as accurate on Kaiser as it was on the Hermes.

8) No LED Flash - I miss the flashlight from the Hermes. I still can use the screen, which gets much brighter than the hermes, but that LED light was cool.

9) Camera frame rate goes way down in low light - pretty unusable. There is some kind of fix for this I'm still looking into.

Programs in use: Haali Reader (ebook reader), GMail & Opera Mini, (both of these with GC Java Pack 1.2.4 - it's great!), Google Maps, Total Commander v2.5, Laridian Pocketbible 4, SBSH Weather, SPB Time, WM5torage 1.8 with Kaiser fix and 'disable concurrency ' and 'disable RNDIS on Activate' selected, Microsoft Live Search 3.0.3047.24749, PocketCM (to put hi-res contact pictures in place), iContact 0.741, BatteryStatus 1.05.127, MS Voicecommand, Mortplayer, S2U2 v1.05, SPB Pocket Plus 4.0.2, VITO Audio Notes Touch 1.02, installed NETCFv35, KaiserTweak (to soup a few things up, which really helped), HTC Audio Manager, MortPlayer, and syncing with an exchange server. I can't believe how stable this is.