Cingular 8125

If you're looking for an affordable smartphone that has it all, look no further. We've been using the Cingular 8125 ($300) for the last month or so and have been surprisingly happy with it. After our fallout with the Treo 650, we didn't think we'd ever care for another all-in-one device, but the 8125 made us wish we could keep the loaner unit a little longer. After accessing the web with a real browser, managing calendars with ease, using the 1.3 megapixel camera, and taking advantage of built-in Wi-Fi and the sliding keyboard, our Moto RAZR just seemed so boring. [More]

The 8125 is a Quad-band worldphone (GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and packs a ton of features. So many in fact, we quickly got over the 8125's chubby form factor — we started thinking, "Man, this thing has so many features that we're lucky it's not the size of Mandisa." It has a 200MHz processor, a beautiful 2.8" QVGA (320x240) color touch-screen, a sliding QWERTY keyboard that demolishes anything Palm ever created, and integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b). Since it runs Windows Mobile 5.0, you can do tons more on it than a normal cell phone. Mobile email and web browsing is top notch, instant messaging with AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and ICQ is super easy, and the included Windows Media Player plays MP3s well enough that you won't kill yourself if you forgot your iPod at home. Overall, the Cingular 8125 caught us off-guard — we weren't expecting such a great device. But after giving it a shot, we're happy to recommend it to anyone needing the swiss army knife of phones.