My Cingular 8125



I’ve added a Windows Mobile category to the blog because I have a feeling that I’ll be posting much more about it in the future. I’m retiring the P900 for now as I’ve picked up the new Cingular 8125.

Let me first say a couple of things before I talk about the new device. I am a HUGE Symbian fan which is the OS that runs on the P900 and many other great smartphone devices. You can see some pretty cool ones here. I used to do a good amount of Symbian programming and was truly amazed with the amount of functionality given to developers writing software for the platform. If you’re not aware, Symbian is a conglomerate headed up by Nokia with involvement from many other large phone manufacturers. The main problem I’ve had with Symbian devices is that they’re hard to get here in the states. You can generally find Series 60 devices on Cingular, but for high-end devices such as the P900, which runs UIQ, you’ll find those in the UK. While Symbian has majority market share throughout the word, their uptake here in the states doesn’t seem to be that great. I speak from the fact that most users that have downloaded my BlueGPS application live outside of the US. This makes it tough for software developers here in the states to focus on Symbian programming.

While I’ll continue to play with Symbian programming I will definitely be hanging out in the Microsoft camp. My first introduction to the Pocket PC OS was with the old Compaq iPaq 3600 series devices. I wasn’t impressed with the OS as much as I was the hardware. Times have changed and with the 8125 I’m not only impressed with the hardware, but the software does some truly incredible things. Plus there are some very cool UI concepts that I’ll post about in the future. Whether or not you like Microsoft you have to admit they do some truly innovative stuff. Not quite as much as Apple, but I’ve been waiting for an Apple phone for over a year now. There’s the possibility that when it does come I’ll drop my 8125, but it will need to ship with wifi, bluetooth, camera, mp3 support, qwerty keyboard and that’ll be a good start.

It’s difficult to find another device that does everything the 8125 does for the same price. I’m pretty sure the Treo 700W doesn’t support wifi internally and you need to purchase a wifi SD card to get it. The 8125’s built in wifi is absolutely amazing. I ended up purchasing the 5MB data plan for starters since I’ll be doing most of my internet browing over wifi. Cingular’s current 5MB plan runs $19.99/month which is nothing short of outrageous. I’ll be sure to hop onto a hotspot whenever I get a chance to prevent having to upgrade my data plan.

While I don’t have time to mention all of the cool bells and whistles the 8125 has, I’ll take a minute to mention a couple. Remember a lot of this is implemented at the software layer which is exciting to see. Microsoft’s mobile OS has come a LONG ways and I’m sad to say that Symbian has a lot of work to do to gain developer acceptance here in the states. One of the first things I experimented with was the QWERTY keyboard….absolutely fabulous. My productivity rate just skyrocketed ten-fold.

Of course any next generation needs to have a digital camera. The 8125 only has a 1.3 megapixel camera which is far below where I’d like it to be. I hate to already start talking about my next device, but I hoping not to settle for anything less than 3MP. Anyway, I was extremely impressed with how simple it was to snap a photo and email it off. The camera quality isn’t great, but you can see the full-size image below. Be sure to click on it to see the full dimensions (1280×1024).

I haven’t tried to tweak any of the camera settings so I’m sure there are ways to improve the quality.

Another cool feature is the way the OS handles switching between portrait and landscape mode. Whenever the keyboard is extended the screen is rotated 90 degress to provide a landscape view. I’m looking forward to watching some wide format videos on the device.

The last thing I’d like to mention is something that I found extremely ingenious from a design standpoint. If you look at this picture you’ll notice 3 circles on the back of the device. The one on the left is the flash, the one on the right is the lens, and the one on the bottom is the self-portrait mirror. That totally blew my mind. When I flipped it over I saw my reflection in the mirror and then immediately saw its usefulness. You might be thinking it’s such a small mirror, but I can tell you it does a great job of displaying what you’d actually see if you were looking at the front of the device. Who comes up with this stuff?!?

The only negative thing I can say about the device is battery life, but I was expecting to charge this device every night. With all the technology packed into this device I’m sure it was insanely difficult to optimize the amount of power consumption. If you’ve considered purchasing the 8125 don’t think any longer….just get out there and do it!



One Response to “My Cingular 8125”

1. [db75] » Blog Archive » T-Mobile MDA says:

   March 23, 2006 at 9:42 pm

   [...] I posted a while back about my Cingular 8125. It’s an amazing device and has everything you could possibly need to work on the go. Now T-Mobile subscribers have access to the same device, although it has a little different form factor. The TMO version is known as the MDA. [...]