The Cingular 8125, like the T-Mobile MDA, is a rebranded HTC Wizard. It runs Windows Mobile 5.0, is Quad Band GSM, has built in 802.11g, Bluetooth, 1.3 Megapixel camera and a slide out keyboard.
The phone itself is smaller than you’d think from looking at pictures, but it is pretty thick. This is not a RAZR by any means. But it fits very nicely in the hand, both open and closed. The screen is great, even on the dimmest setting. Like all mobile devices, I’d recommend getting a screen protector to help avoid scratches.
You’ll probably want to use bluetooth for your headset, even though the phone comes with a stereo headset. The mini plug on the phone is smaller than a standard plug, which makes it more difficult to find a different headset without using an adapter. I’ve used a couple of different jabra BT sets that work just fine. You’ll also want to spend some time getting the voice dialing setup, as it works wonderfully and trying to dial from a touch screen never works that well. Phone quality is good – I haven’t dropped calls in San Diego, Los Angeles or Seattle. The speakerphone is great, given the stereo speakers built in to the device.
Windows Mobile 5.0 is a decent platform so far. I’ve only had one bad hang on the device, which was really more my impatience than anything else (it didn’t like the 1100 new messages in one of my IMAP accounts – the result of an error on a dev system). The interface is fairly easy to customize, and is generally snappy. Like all Windows pocket operating systems, you really need to be aware that closing programs doesn’t shut them down. A judicious sweep through the running programs list once in a while is very useful. The speed of the interface is also very good.
I’ve only used a few programs with it so far, including a pocket ssh / telnet app, pocket remote desktop and pocket vnc viewer. I just tried installing the mobile version of Opera last night, but haven’t had a chance to play with it yet. SSH and telnet are my main non-email uses for the phone right now, and both work fine. The keyboard is OK for both, but neither it nor the screen really compare to my Nokia 9500. Given the size difference in devices that is to be expected though. Other apps that I know people have used with a Wizard based device include Skype, a wifi radar program and several different PIM applications. I’ve just found a SIP phone client that I’m waiting to try out once I get my * server back up and running.
Built in apps that I’ve gotten good use out of are pocket outlook and windows media player (there is just something very cool about driving down the road listening to streaming internet radio stations over GPRS via your phones stereo speakers). Pocket IE is actually much better than I remember on older Ipaq devices (but I haven’t used an Ipaq in two years).
On to the downside. The wifi implementation is ok, but takes a while to connect once activated. The battery life is poor. The phone doesn’t support push email with Exchange servers. The camera sucks bad enough that if I was buying it again, I’d get the 8100 version with no camera.
There are fixes for all that though. Cingular has some other quirks, like the phone ships with 802.11g deactivated, only allowing 802.11b. There is a registry hack that fixed that. Cingular also preconfigures the device with their proxy server, which works fine for GPRS connectivity to web sites, but doesn’t work at all with WiFi connections. There are font smoothing issues in landscape mode that can also be fixed with a registry hack. As for the push email and battery life, I have been told by people who have upgraded the phone to a version 2 firmware (from another Wizard phone, not Cingular) that wifi is better, the communications manager is better, the battery life is tremendously improved and push email is works. I haven’t decided whether or not to upgrade my phone using a non-Cingular firmware yet, especially since Cingular says they are releasing their version of that upgrade soon. We’ll see.
I don’t know if T-Mobile has any of those issues or not. I don’t think that they are shipping an upgraded firmware version yet, but I could be wrong.
As for the USB or Bluetooth Internet connectivity, I’ve now tried both and they work fine. Not as fast as my 3G card, but acceptable for travel or temporary access.
In general I very much like this device. Are there things that I would change? Sure. But for the most part, this is a great phone for anyone who needs to use multiple email accounts, access the Internet, run some apps, do some remote sys admin work, etc. The only phone coming out soon that I might swap it for is the Nokia 9300i (but given that phone is a Europe only phone, I probably won’t do it at this point.
I hope that answers any questions. If not, let me know and I’ll try to elaborate on anything else you have questions about.
On 4/4/06 5:59 PM, "Frank Keeney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In general do you like it?
Is there anything really bad about it?
The description says you can use USB or Bluetooth for laptop Internet
access. Have you tried both?
Frank Keeney
> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of Andras Bellak
>
> I don't have the MDA, but it works fine on the Cingular 8125,
> at least on my WIndows box. I haven't tried hacking it to
> work on a Mac yet.
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