A few weeks ago Cingular released their newest smartphone simply called the Cingular 8525.  It sucks.  You know why?  Because I don't have one yet.  Heh.  Truth be told, if I had money or if I didn't just buy the Cingular 2125 a year ago, I'd immediately go out and buy this smartphone.

The 8525 is a HTC Hermes variant, and comes with a 2.8 inch touchscreen, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, and Cingular's first phone to support their BroadbandConnect service.  This service offers download speeds of 400-700Kbps and can sometimes reach into the Mbps range.  Upload speeds can reach 384Kbps.

Like all smartphones today, the 8525 comes with Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 which includes Pocket Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and Outlook.  This is nothing really new or different from my 2125, but with the QWERTY keyboard and broadband like download speeds, the 8525 should be a hell of a lot easier for Internet surfing and e-mailing.

Other things I really like about this phone includes it 400Mhz processor.  That's over double the speed of my current phone.  Plus the 8525 comes with built in wireless connections for 802.11 b and g, which is missing from my 2125.  Also the phone includes a 2.0 megapixel camera with flash.  My current phone only has a 1.3 megapixel camera sans flash.

Next year is when my Cingular contract expires and if I decide to re-sign for another 2 years, then I can get this phone at a fairly cheap price.  Although I'm sure there will be a better phone at that time.  But until then I guess I just have to stick with my old phone and continue to drool over this one (unless someone wants to buy me an 8525 for Christmas).