The amazing best cell phone for travelers

AT&T 8525 Smartphone puts everything you need into mini package

By Lucy Komisar

I was sitting in the waiting room at the Cancun airport writing notes about the Club Med resort I’d just visited. People kept coming over and staring in wonderment. The screen where the words popped up was a 6-ounce Cingular (now AT&T) 8525 smart phone. I touch-typed on a folding 6-ounce keyboard connected to the phone by Bluetooth. And when the file was done, I emailed it to myself. I could also have copied it to a micro SD card or waited to get home and transfer the document by USB cable to my desktop, by infrared to an old laptop or by Bluetooth to a new one.

I have been waiting for this for years! This is the equivalent to the little black dress and a few scarves that you can pack in your carpet bag and eschew all other clothes changes. An exaggeration maybe, but just barely.

From the time that personal computers came on the scene in the early 80s, I’ve dreamed of one I could slip into my pocket or purse. When the internet connected us worldwide through email and the web, connectivity became part of my wish list.

Yet, the bag I carried around by day on trips got loaded down with a pda and keyboard for taking notes as well as with a phone, audio recorder, and camera. And I still had to pay hotel costs to get online with my laptop or search for internet cafés.

This is for anyone who has been waiting for the miniscule device that is an all-in-one phone, word processor, handwriting transcriber, email and internet device, and laptop modem. Also camera, voice and video recorder, and, oh yes, a phone. I’ve found it. It’s called the 8525, whose label as a “smart” phone is an understatement. (An older, slightly cheaper version is the 8125.) It’s made by a Hong Kong company called HTC. It is the most amazing mini-bundle of technological advancement I have ever seen.

World travelers already know they should not get anything but GSM phones, available in the US only from AT&T (formerly Cingular) and T-Mobile. The competing CDMA system used by other US providers doesn’t work in most of the rest of the world. However, you can get the 8525 only from AT&T; T-Mobile does not have a smart phone so advanced.

The phone is a GSM quad band, (US GSM is different from that of most countries), so you can use it any place in the world, either paying the international roaming charge on your AT&T account, or, if you are going to be in a particular country for long enough to make it worthwhile, buying a local sim card and prepaid minutes.

This not just a smart phone, it is a brilliant phone! It is a functional computer, with word, excel and power point. It handles pdfs. It turns handwritten notes into text! And it’s got a slide-out qwerty keyboard much bigger than those of other smart phones with keyboards on the face.

As a journalist, I can’t be without a note taker and a computer to draft my stories on the road. The slide-out keyboard is fine for short notes and emails, but I wanted to be able to touch type at meetings and write long drafts. So I got a Bluetooth Stowaway keyboard – also 6 ounces -- which lets me type word files as if I had a laptop along. The possibility of routinely carrying around the very light 8525 and the keyboard and pulling them out to take notes or write is revolutionary.

Then, suppose you’re in a place where you really can’t pull out of keyboard? You can write in script on the screen and the device will transcribe it into text!

There’s also power point, which answers a business traveler’s need.

The only thing you’re missing, of course, is all your stored files. You can carry some along on SD cards. But you’d need a media reader for your home computer to transfer the data. Alas, the device doesn’t have a way to plug in a USB flash drive.

The 8525 connects to the internet either through AT&T’s own network (the same towers that move your phone calls) or through wifi, whichever you choose to use. It collects your email messages on outlook or via web-based services. You can put in access codes and passwords for any of your email accounts, and the device will get mail from all of them, separating them so you can toggle from one to another by pressing a button at the top of the screen. You can program the phone to get messages every 15 minutes. The 8525 has “push,” meaning messages arrive in your outbox automatically. The device accesses web pages.

How much are you paying for broadband? You can forget it. The 8525 is a “tethered modem.” Which means you can connect your computer via USB, Bluetooth or infrared. I simply used my desktop control panel’s “make new connection” template and followed the manual for how to fill it in. I hit “modem link” on the list of programs and then “activate.” I clicked on the new desktop phone icon the same way I’d do on one with my ISP’s phone number.

My new laptop has Bluetooth, so I installed the HTC Bluetooth modem and opened it, then set the device’s wireless modem to Bluetooth whenever I wanted to get online. I found initially setting up both connections a little complicated and was walked through the setups by on-line help people. After that, no problem.

I was on an afternoon Greyhound bus from Hollywood, FL, to Orlando. Greyhound is not my preferred method of transport, but Amtrak had no afternoon train, so I had no choice. As the sun went down, I discovered that either the bus overhead seat lights didn’t work or maybe the driver didn’t bother to turn them on. But not only was I able to read and work, because of course my laptop’s screen is backlit, but I was on the internet for the entire more-than-four-hour drive!

The device is also a 2-megapixel still camera, a tape recorder and a video camera and player. You can email short videos straight to YouTube!

The difference between the 8525 and the old 8125 phone.

The 8525 can use up to six Bluetooth functions at a time, instead of one. The 8525 has a track wheel to allow one-handed use. The 8525 has wifi b & g; the 8125 has wifi b. The 8525 boasts broadband at 3G speed (as much as 400 to 700 kps. The 8125 is listed as 60-120 with AT&T’s Edge. (Except that I got 320!) The 8525 can carry voice and data simultaneously. So you can talk on the phone while sending email or surfing the web. The 8525 will use a “push to talk” system which goes over the data network and doesn’t use phone voice minutes. It has a 2-megapixel camera instead of 1.3. It has a 400 megahertz processor instead of 200.

Important to remember, this is a computer, not just a phone. You don’t just turn it on and have everything intuitively work. Don’t let that phase you. Think about learning to run the programs and connections on your desktop or laptop. It may take a little time and some phone calls to the help line.

What is the cost of all this?

The 8525 costs from $200 to $350, depending on the model and based on getting a two-year contract. The minimal voice contract costs $40 for 450 rollover minutes (5,000 nights & weekends). A data plan runs from $10 to $80, depending on the features. http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-plan-details/?q_sku=sku1040045&q_planCategory=cat1370011.

Costs abroad are harder to figure. In Mexico, for example, phone calls are 99 cents a minute or 59 cents a minute if you pay a $5 monthly fee. That comes closer to the 30 to 40 cents a minute using a local company’s prepaid sim card which generally costs $20 or $30.

Internet is something else. Using your AT&T sim, internet access costs 2 cents a kilobyte, but how does one figure a kilobyte? I took the 8525 on my 4-day trip to Mexico and used it for email and web surfing at least an hour or two a day. Can’t tell, because the bill was in kilobytes – and it came to $310! So, abroad, you’re better off using an internet café or paying the up-to-$30-a-day some hotels charge. If you have an urgent need to see emails, especially if your company is paying, that may not be an issue. Otherwise, think of the AT&T 8525 as a phone-writing-camera-recorder device for anywhere and an internet device for the US.

Where to get the phone: http://www.wireless.att.com/

The Cingular 8525 (refurbished) at $200: http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=Cingular+8525+(Refurb)&q_sku=sku970018

The AT&T 8525 at $350: http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=AT%26T+8525&q_sku=sku970003.

The AT&T Tilt at $300: http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=AT%26T+Tilt(TM)&q_sku=sku1060009. It has a tilt screen, better memory, faster processor than the 8525. And it’s cheaper. Go figure!

There are many internet resellers, of course. However, if you buy from an individual seller, not a reseller, on eBay, be aware that the warranty applies only to the original purchaser.

by Lucy Komisar