And that’s very good. I was expecting a whole lot from the Cingular 8525 – as I’ve owned and been a big fan of its little brother, the 8125. After using the new 8525 for a week, I am happy to say I’ve not been at all disappointed in the new device.

The 8525 – Cingular’s version of the much-heralded HTC Hermes – has been as good, or better, than expected – a very impressive device for power users and business users.

Read on for a rundown and review of the 8525, some more pics and screengrabs, and a lot of comparison of the 8525 to the 8125 …

Light On Accessories & Software Extras:

The 8525 is not going to wow you with its range of included items in the box. There is no case, and just a pretty basic set of accessory items – which are an AC charger, headphones, mini-USB sync cable, spare stylus, Y cable for simultaneous charging and headphone use, and a Getting Started Guide.

Many people will not be too impressed with the lack of at least a basic slip case for a phone of this caliber.  While I can see the point there, I’m not overly concerned about that – as included cases are very rarely ones that will be kept or used often (for me anyway).

There is also not a lot of additional software included with the 8525 – with only a small handful of extra applications with trial versions either on the phone already or on the companion CD. There are trial versions of MobiTV and TeleNav. Those are about the most notable ones.

No Longer Thick As a Brick

The 8525 looks marginally slimmer than the 8125. More importantly, it feels *much* slimmer and lighter than the 8125.

This is a very pocketable device. It is not ever going to be mistaken for a Q or one of the ultra-slim device models – but they don’t pack the power spec and slide-out keyboard of the 8525!

The 8525 also gains in overall style points in my book.  The rounded edges of the device and darker grey styling, as well as the new button arrangement, all help to make this a relatively elegant looking device.

Performance as a PDA

Performance as a PDA, running applications and so on, has been excellent on the 8525. if you’ve used an 8125 (or another device with one of the slower 200mhz processors) you will definitely note the zippier speed in launching and switching between running programs.

The device also boots up considerably quicker than the 8125. So far it has been very stable – I have soft reset it once during 8 days use so far – and even then it was not completely hung, just slowed down and lagging a bit.

3G Data Access

This is one of the biggest selling points for the 8525, access to Cingular’s 3G network as it rolls out. And this has definitely been one of the most impressive things about the device so far. I have been more than a little surprised that the 8525 is finding UMTS networks nearly all the time – at home, at my office, at nearly all the client sites I go to, and round and about town generally. I am based in Austin, Texas and I have yet to find an extended area within Greater Austin where I could not find UMTS.

Speed test results have varied from around 250kb (when signal is quite weak) to around 700kb when the signal is good. Needless to say, this has made web browsing a much better experience on the 8525.

Camera – A Pleasant Surprise

The 2.0 megapixel camera on the 8525 does a nice job. I am not a great or heavy user of the camera, but have been impressed with its shots when I have used it so far.

Phone Quality & Battery Life

This is a good, solid performer as a phone. In one week of pretty heavy phone usage, for work and at home, I’ve not had any dropped calls. It gets a good, strong signal most of the time, and has even got a fair signal at one client site that is in a sort of ‘dip’ location where it is generally very difficult to get any signal.

Call reception and sound quality is good at both ends, and the speakerphone works well.

Battery life has been good, not great. The device has always made it through a business day, which is really always the first requirement for a converged device. The lowest the battery has been at the end of a long work day was around 18% – and that’s after a day of push email, fairly heavy phone usage, web browsing, RSS reader / feeds updating, and very heavy usage of note-taking and task management programs.

On both phone and battery performance, the 8525 is very similar to, not noticeably superior to, the 8125.

Usability & One-Handedness

Top marks here for the 8525. From an ease of use and ease of one-handed use perspective, this is a great device to work with!

The scroll wheel positioned near the top of the left-hand side of the device is excellent for scrolling through web pages, documents, and contacts.

The addition of a Today button and OK button adjacent to the D-pad, as well as the two hardware buttons that map directly to the Windows Mobile Soft Keys, make this very, very slick to work with.  The addition of these buttons means that you very rarely need to use the stylus for any navigation purposes – you can OK your way out of dialogs and settings screens, use OK to select items, use the new hardware buttons mapped to Soft Keys to avoid having to touch the screen very often for those, and you also have a second OK button for closing apps, located just below the scroll wheel.

The keyboard is also an absolute pleasure to work with on the 8525. I have never been a big fan of using the keyboard on a mobile device, but this particular slide-out keyboard, wit large, well-spaced keys, is really winning me over. The backlight for it is unbelievable as well. It is a fiercely bright and powerful blue, and it makes you want to find things to type continually once you see it. 

The addition of the OK and Today buttons on the keyboard, and nicely done hardware buttons mapping to the Soft Keys, also make keyboard usage nicer. It also does have the on-screen indicators for when CAPS or Shift is on.

There are a couple of little things that are awkward about usage of the 8525. The stylus is not very easy at all to remove and reinsert from its housing. And the placement of the hardware buttons surrounding the D-pad is a little too tight, making it relatively easy to press the wrong button at times.

Conclusions:

The Cingular 8525 is a great device for power users. This device has it all – great one-handedness, excellent slide-out keyboard, 3G data access, a slim enough and stylish enough form factor for devices in this class, and very solid and impressive performance as both a phone and a Pocket PC.

If you’re coming from an 8125 or HTC Wizard device, you’ll immediately appreciate the improvements in key performance areas as well as the more elegant design.

If you’re just looking for a powerful and top-class Pocket PC phone device with 3G and the whole nine yards on specs, then this is also a great choice.

Yup, had been anxiously awaiting the 8525 – and not disappointed, well worth the wait …

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