The real star of the wireless show is Cingular's 3G network. Cingular was actually the first provider in the US to offer 3G service, but at this time, the 3G network is not available in all areas, mine included. If you're in a large, metro area, such as Chicago, New York, etc., you should be in a 3G area. Fear not though, coverage is always expanding.

The 3G network provides access to UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)/HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access). What does this mean? Basically, wireless broadband. I'm hours away from any 3G access, but others have reported speeds ranging from 50-125Kbytes/second.

In my GPRS region, I'm getting speeds of around 170Kbits/second, or 17Kbytes/second. Honestly, I don't think this is bad. Having the ability to connect to the Internet anywhere is a plus, regardless of speed. And if you're in a crowded coffee shop, this may be faster than you can get with their Wi-Fi hotspot.

The 8525 comes with Voice Speed Dial, from Cyberon, the same company that makes Voice Command. This is definitely a handy little app. Just program one of your buttons to activate it, and you can make calls and launch programs by speaking the voice tag that you assigned. A very nice feature.

The bad
Few products ever get by without at least a little criticism, and the Cingular 8525 is no exception. For the most part, they're all really little nits that I'm picking.

I guess my biggest complaint would be the stylus. Although contoured to match the corner, it's the same stylus from the 8125. It's quite short and collapses in on itself. This is done to make it fit inside the casing, but take up as little space as possible. I don't like it.

I'm no stranger to collapsing styli, my LifeDrive stylus collapsed. But it was spring-loaded, so it stayed extended much easier. The 8525's is just too short and has a tendency to collapse while being used. It needs to have another extendable segment, or just plain be longer. And if it's going to extend, it should be spring-loaded. Figure S shows the styli from various handheld devices.

FIGURE S


The 8525 and 8125 styli are very short. Roll over picture for a larger image.

Next is a button issue. The Messaging and IE buttons are on either side of the phone speaker, meaning they get pressed rather easily when talking on the phone. On the 8125 they were at the corners, and they should have been left there.

Another button problem is the installed button mapping utility. This may actually be part of the OS, but not all of the buttons can be remapped. And of those that can, they can only be remapped for Press, not Press & Hold.

The inability to program the buttons was even a complaint by users prior to the PTT update; they didn't like having a button that did nothing. I don't like it either. And I don't use the OK/Close button on the left side either; I just haven't developed the habit. By disabling the Messaging and IE buttons so they don't accidentally get pressed, and not using either the PTT or the extra OK/Close button, half the buttons on the device are useless.