AT&T 8525 PDA Smartphone Great for Road Warriors and Stay at Home Types

AT&T 8525

Which cell phone is 3G UMTS/HSDPA as well as GSM/GRPS/EDGE? Which one has a sliding QWERTY keyboard? Which one has a 2MP camera/video and flash? Which one has all this and connection features that include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and infrared? If that is not enough to get your attention, which one can lend your laptop a modem/internet sharing to connect by?

It is the previously known as Cingular 8525 - now known as the AT&T 8525 (also known as HTC Hermes). I guess you could say that this is a phone in transition. When Cingular became AT&T the 8525 was subject to a ROM upgrade. We have been promised by AT&T that the 8525 will receive a free upgrade from Windows Mobile 5 to Windows Mobile 6 sometime in the 3rd Qtr of 2007 (UPDATE:This free upgrade did come through. I really like Mobile 6 better than Mobile 5. Now I can log into webpages and I can read HTML emails. My 8525 is now much more useful to me.)

This is a PDA phone that can really work well for anyone that enjoys working with Microsoft Office programs - Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint that can be viewed and edited on the go.

I started having an issue connecting to my email so after a bit of research I made a few changes. My email is with Earthlink so I originally had my setup as incoming (pop.earthlink.net) and my outgoing (smtpauth.earthlink.net). Now I have changed my outgoing to (cwmx.com). This is the AT&T setting and I have had no problems since.

The Push-to-Talk does not work at this time but that it OK with me. I simply set my email preferences to check my email every 15 minutes and it is always there waiting for me. I could set it to check more often.

Instant messaging options-Yahoo, AOL, Windows Live

Navigation options-QWERTY keyboard (with backlighting), touch screen, Scroll wheel (push to select menu option and call volume), 5 way toggle switch

Micro SD Slot

The 2 megapixel camera has a flash. Resolutions settings include basic, normal, fine and super fine -160X120 to 1600x1200. White balance and saturation settings are available. Photo modes include portrait (with tiny mirror), macro, video (176x144 to 352x288), MMS video, contacts ID picture, themes, panorama, sports and burst.

Clear Vue PDF reader

Call ID with photos

Multimedia options including music (MP#, WAV, WMA, AAC), AMR album art, WMP 10 Mobile, MPEG 4 video streaming, AT&T Video, AT&T Music, XM satellite radio and MobiTV

Battery life has not been an issue for me. It is rated at 4 hours talk time and 8.3 days standby time. There is a battery icon on the main screen and I check it periodically through the day. Most of the time I have 60 to 90% battery life left, and that is after a full day of wearing my Bluetooth wireless headset, checking email and looking at a few websites. I turn the 8525 off most nights but not always. I plug it into power every once in a while just to keep the charge high incase I need to push the phone past normal usage.

Overall I think that this is a good looking very functional PDA Smartphone. It has all phone functions found on any other high end cell phone. I cannot think of many other things that I would want to do that I am unable to do. I love the slide out QWERTY keyboard and I am willing to put up with a bit more bulk and weight for it. This is a rather expensive phone but if you buy it from a site like Amazon you will save a lot of money.

HSDPA = High Speed Downlink Packet Access

UMTS = Universal Mobile Telecommunications System