[Note from Judie: This is Drew's follow-up to his original letter about his first week with the Vertu Ascent Ti. If you haven't already read that, then you might want to check it out.]

I had an opportunity to take a bit of a deeper dive with the Ascent Ti this weekend and tried out some of these other features:

1. Fortress (the over the air backup utility)
2. The camera
3. The music player
4. Software upgrade process

One of the big selling features is the ability to back up your personal information to the Fortress, a military shelter somewhere near Ipswich with a PC in it.. Not being unkind.. Vertu realizes that personal information is a big deal and back ups are important even to the phone elitists.. The Fortress is back up software that performs a sync of contacts, calendar, and tasks OTA to their secure facility.. It does require a password and the service is included for one year as part of the initial purchase.. No idea what it will cost after that. So I had to try it.. I had the settings sent to my Ascent Ti and set up my account and then proceeded to backup my data. I have about 250 contacts and about 50 calendar items per month and I don’t use tasks so that was the going in. The Ascent Ti is WCDMA 2100 3g so speeds about 1.6mbs upload/download and it took about 1 minute to accomplish the full back up so no complaints but no I DID NOT do a restore; too cowardly.. I do wish the service also backed up all my settings as well as that actually takes longer to restore than my contacts and calendar items, but this isn’t Vertu’s fault, but really Nokia as they provide the S40 OS that doesn’t allow for that.

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Those of you who read my comparison of the Vertu Ascent and the Vertu Constellation may recall that in the comments section, Drew and I both mentioned we were interested in the Vertu Ascent Ti. Shortly after that I got an email from him, saying that he hadn’t been able to resist: he bought one! I have just received a report on his first week with the Ti.

photos courtesy of Vertu

Even if you can’t afford one, and at approximately $7,000 not many can, it’s fun to live vicariously through Drew’s purchase…

Hi Judie,

Thought I’d drop an email and give you the first week…

In the box..  The smallest box I’ve ever seen for a Vertu but that’s a good thing..  Inside the main box are two boxes made out of leatherette with magnetic closure..  Inside is the phone, the key to  open the back of the phone, the battery, a USB cable, and a charger.  There is also a manual, the usual marketing materiel, and a CD for Vertu PC Suite (Remarkably close to Nokia PC Suite but not quite.

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