Cingular 8525 business phone: Part 2

Scheduling - Very good

As dated as Outlook is starting to look on Windows Mobile 5.0, there is no denying its robust scheduling capabilities. The Cingular 8525's dual-orientation screen is especially well suited to the calendar app. In the week view, with a vertical orientation, you can fit twelve hours on screen at once. The phone supports dragging to change times or create new appointments -- nice, although an undo feature would have been useful. Also, Microsoft should seriously consider updating the alerts feature in the calendar to allow for customized alerts by appointment. Cingular's Xpress Mail also includes a calendar that syncs from your desktop, but it is not nearly as versatile as Outlook. The today screen, with plenty of room in the vertical orientation, showed all our busiest day's appointments, and the sharp screen rendered small text with ease.

Productivity - Good

Like other smartphones we've tested running the PocketPC edition of Windows Mobile 5.0, the 8525 boasts the ability to view and edit Office documents -- a big plus in our book, although the phone is still held back by the limitations of Office Mobile. While the 8525 did a great job preserving the formatting of our documents, we found zooming in and out to be a hassle, requiring numerous taps on the menus. We wish this function had been mapped to the clickwheel, especially on PDF files. In addition, there is no search function on PDFs, which makes browsing larger files more difficult. Cingular's Xpress Mail required as many steps to download attachments as Outlook, and was a bit less dependable owing to its reliance on your PC. Typing on the device should have been easier, but again, our test phone's buggy keyboard made Word almost useless.

Multimedia - Good

The Cingular 8525 comes bundled with the mobile TV app MobiTV (we couldn't get the app to run on our test device, but we hope to test it once we get our hands on a production model), while music lovers will appreciate the mobile version of Windows Media Player. The phone includes a microSD slot, conveniently located on the side of the device, as well as a 2-megapixel camera. The camera was average for a phone, with no autofocus, though it does include an LED flash. Video quality was also average, though we would have liked to see VGA recording for the 8525 to be competitive with upcoming Nokia N-series devices. The mobile Internet Explorer handled every Web page we threw at it, including the lengthy New York Times home page. Browsing performance was fast over HSDPA and Wi-Fi; in fact, HSDPA performance was even better than 802.11g.

Laptop sidekick - Excellent

As a wireless companion for your notebook, the Cingular 8525 does just about everything. Though our review unit didn't come with drivers for tethered modem support, our Cingular rep promised these would be included with the shipping phone. The handset charges via USB, so you can leave the charger home, and it includes both Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g support. The 8525 even keeps IrDA; nice, if you know anyone who still uses infrared. Built-in GPS is lacking, but the included TeleNav software works with separate Bluetooth GPS devices.
11/6/2006 10:44:59 AM
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