The Cingular 8125 could have been the perfect Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone

But it is not… quite far from it. Why ? Even with his price tag ($599 without a carrier subsidy ?),  the Cingular 8125 (aka the HTC Wizard) has been under-spec’ed and has a few flaws:

• There is not enough RAM available to the O/S to run a number of applications concurrently. Which leads to the impossibility to take  a picture, or gets Windows Media Player to stop playing a podcast because it is out of memory.
• The default ROM program is  hog, and needs to be updated manually to get better performance and multi-tasking (see below).
• The lens is of dreadful quality for a 1.3 MegaPixels camera. I can only get blurry photos out of it, just a notch better from my previous SMT 5600.
• The phone suddenly slows down to a crawl, freezes or even f…ing reboots on its own. I know that this is the signature of a Microsoft product, but people please! I have had to rip open the phone a couple of times to remove the battery and reboot (2 minutes) to make an urgent phone call (true story).
• Navigating Windows Mobile 5.0 with one hand works mostly OK, but a few functionality or programs require the stylus or holding the phone with two hands. Not great when you are trying to make a call in the car or walking in the street holding a bag in one hand. After all, it is still a phone!
• ActiveSync 4.1/4.2 does not work as an Internet conduit (at least I have not been able to configure it) which means that you can’t receive email when you are synchronizing your phone with your PC.
• Getting Wifi to be used instead of GPRS is just too much work.

Not everything is bad though, and it is still the best phone on the market as far as I am concerned. When the O/S has not eaten all the RAM available, the sliding keyboard is of fantastic quality and the large screen makes the Cingular 8125 a great alternative to the Blackberry IMHO. Note that you need to upgrade your Exchange Server to SP2 level in order to be able to benefit from Push Email – where an out of band message is received by the phone when a new email is available for download, as opposed to having to poll the server every few minutes.

A couple of great resources I have found for that phone family are this blog and this developers forum. The latter is where I read that this ROM that ROM was a great one for this phone. Note that this process is not guaranteed to work in all cases, so be very careful.

Whilst I am at it, I have been asked by many people where my Exchange server is hosted: Mailstreet is the answer, and if you open a new account, you’ll get access to Microsoft Exchange SP2 by default (as well as a promotion doubling your storage capacity via this link).

Comments

[Ken Berger]

I've been testing the Verizon XV6700, basically the CDMA version of this phone and w/ twice the chip speed (400mhz). It's been a mixed ride w/ a happy ending. At first, I immediately loaded it up w/ MagicButton, did a bunch of registry hacks and other things that forums recommended. Performance was horrible and I needed to reboot constantly. Then one day I simply hard booted, started over, even put back some of the reg hacks slowly and now... I LOVE THIS DEVICE AND SOLUTION. This device does have twice the chip speed as yours, and EVDO is noticably faster than EDGE/GPRS. Don't know how much difference those 2 factors make or whether they'd change your results. But I can certainly have a few apps running and all is well.

As far as hosted MS Exchange providers, these guys are a small company but excellent: http://4smartphone.com I've spent a lot of time talking w/ the ceo and they really know their stuff and deliver. Very cheap with minimum of just 1 mailbox account.

Also noticeable is this project, looks like you can build your own open source exchange-type server: http://www.funambol.com/

-Ken

[lenkov]

I had similar experience with my t-mobile MDA, but I found that the following things could help:
- my phone was getting very slow after the first attempt to download my email. After some research I found out that some mails with attachments are causing that and after I remove them from my inbox -- this never happened again.
- I put 2.21 version of the ROM (not 2.17) and this seems to fix many of the problems. Unfortunately this triggers somehow the sim protection, so I have to pay to unlockit (to get my t-mobile phone to work with my t-mobile sim card).
- I put some software that allowed me to use the volume control as scroller and this helped a lot in the one-hand experience.
- Installing a software that will close the program on pressing [x] (instead of minimizing it) helps a lot with the memory issues.

It's a very nice toy, when you get it to work..... I am about to install SSH client on it (will see how stable will be after that)...

[Chris Heuer]

So bummed to hear this - have been looking for a replacement for my Treo 650 for a long time and still nothing decent... though I saw Zander demo the Motorola Q on CNBC yesterday - I hope it might finally deliver -

[Kevin Burton]

I'm less than happy with most of the phones out there as well. A lot of people like the Blackberry 8700c... the 700p looked like it *might* replace my Treo 650 but it just isn't what I wanted.

It really sucks that there aren't any decent phones out there.

[Joe Roseto]

i have a question for anyone who might be able to answer it. i have a user who just received an 8125 and i am seeing some intersting things on it that i am wondering about. is there an upper limit on how many contacts can be put on this device before it causes big problems, like not being able to make or receive a phone call.
we only keep 1 weeks worth of email on this device and 3 weeks back of calendar information on it.
this person has 4560 contacts. might this be the problem?
his storage has 25megs of space.the programs memory has about 11 megs.
during his initial sync the process stopped at about 80%. any help would be appreciated thanks

[Colin Lowenberg]

IMPORTANT:

Every problem mentioned here has been solved and is no longer useful up to date information. Update the phone to the latest firmware and software, install smartskey with the overclocker, Disable the internet proxy, and well figuire out how to get push email setup and you are good to go.

[Bernie Jansen]

I am using the older HTC platform in the PPC6700 and have similar issues. Try clicking the WM "Ok" button in the top right corner with your thumb! This is definitely far from a single-hand device. The things you didn't mention are limited battery life when running on WiFi or the 60+ seconds to boot the device! At least the Treo700w has the ability to originate calls while WM is booting

[Jeff Douglas]

Can't sync ACT v6.0 contacts using AS v4.1 to 8125 via USB cable. Tired all settings. Looks like it's working during the sync as it steps through the number of contacts, but when completed the contact folder on the 8125 is still empty. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[cramix]

i just got a HTC 8125. how do i backup my contacts no my PC??? ActiveSync just backs-up the pic, videos, etc...but not the contacts????

HELP PLS......

[Doralv]

Anyone find a solution to syncronizing Act! with the 8125 yet?

[AJ]

Does anyone know how to setup email on the Cingular 8125 so that the email alos stays on the server so that I can download it later to my PC?

Thanks.

[Dennis]

AJ.. to set it up where u can get email from both mobile device and pc, I used IMAP instead of POP