I’m just going to unzip my honesty trousers and say I’m jealous: mere hours after reporting that the AT&T Tilt will go on sale in the US (for the princely sum of $299.99 with a two-year contract, natch), I find out that ZDNet’s Matthew Miller has been playing with the smartphone for almost a week. Some things are plain unfair. Anyway, Matthew has not only grown to appreciate the Tilt’s myriad talents, he’s even come to appreciate AT&T by proxy.

Having returned his iPhone, Matthew’s AT&T account was due to close today; he’s now arranged to keep it open and is planning on picking up a Tilt for himself. As he concludes, the HTC-produced handset might just be the ideal halfway house between a subnotebook and a normal smartphone:

"I think I am more productive with the HTC Advantage and its large VGA display, but the Tilt is an amazing Windows Mobile 6 Professional device that has a smaller form factor for those who make lots of calls and don’t want to carry something as large as the Advantage around"

So what do you think, could the Tilt sway you away from Apple’s door or is just too sensible to be sexy?  Let us know in the comments.

First impressions of the AT&T Tilt [The Mobile Gadgeteer]