Cingular 8525

Cingular power users, your mobile office has arrived. The first smart device to use Cingular's new HSDPA high-speed network, the new Cingular 8525 hand held is an unparalleled global roaming phone, and equally valuable standing alone or acting as a modem for your laptop.

The 8525's rounded form and slide out keypad are pretty familiar it looks like a slightly sleeker version of the Cingular 8125. It's about the same size and weight, just 6.1 ounces with battery.

The 8525 has a better array of physical buttons than the 8125, with dedicated "OK" and menu keys and a scrolling jog dial on the side along with the 8125's mail, camera, Internet Explorer, phone keys and soft keys.

The 320 by 240 color screen is pretty much the same as on many other Pocket PCs out there.

Slide the screen to the side and rotate the 8525 to use its QWERTY keyboard, which isn't great, but it'll get the job done. The keys are close together, like the 8125's, but they're also oddly smaller than its predecessor. Thankfully, the keypad lights up blue so you can type in the dark.

The real news here is the phone's HSDPA support, so let's get to it. With speeds averaging 863 kbps when I was using the 8525 as a PC or Mac modem, this is the first Cingular smart phone that connects you to wireless broadband in the 34 metro areas where Cingular has HSDPA service.

HSDPA is about as fast as Verizon and Sprint's EV-DO system for downloads, and it will be even more swift than EV-DO for uploads when Cingular enables 384 kbps upload speeds early next year. (Sprint's new EV-DO Rev A network will be the fastest of all though, but they haven't announced any smart phones for that network.)