Cingular Wireless to Sell First 3G PDA

Cingular Wireless will begin selling a new broadband PDA on Nov. 16, a company executive told eWEEK.

The new HSDPA/UMTS enabled Cingular 8525 includes a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a wide screen, and it also supports quad-band EDGE, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

The device will sell for $399.00 with a two-year agreement. It supports tri-band HSDPA, so it should work anywhere in the world that the wireless broadband protocol is supported.

"This is the first 3G PDA that weve offered," said Mike Woodward, executive director of Cingulars Mobile Professional Solutions.

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"With those high speeds on a device with a nice wide landscape touch screen, youre able to surf the Web really quickly; you can stream media; you can download documents and edit the documents," he said.

Woodward said that the device runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 and features Windows Media 10. "This replaces the 8125 device, which has been one of our top sellers. Bringing on the high speed capabilities makes it that much better," he said.

Woodward added that the 8525 is aimed at mobile professionals. "Because its a pocket PC, there is already a wealth of applications out there," he said, adding that the device includes a VPN from Netmotion Wireless and support for location based services from TeleNav.

Click here to read about Cingulars integration with AT&T.

The 8525 will work with a Bluetooth GPS receiver, which will be available in Cingular stores when the PDA is available, Woodward said.

Designed for multitasking, the HSDPA allows users to perform data transfers and talk at the same time. This will allow users to send a photo and then discuss it, for example.

In addition, it uses Bluetooth 2.0, which means that the device can communicate with multiple Bluetooth devices at the same time. "You can take a phone call as well as use navigation," Woodward said.

"This unit slides together into a vertical aspect and has a crystal clear speaker phone as well," Woodward said. "It supports Microsoft Direct Push. It also supports Good mobile messaging from Good Technologies. For a consumer, we have that covered as well with Express Mail."

Woodward said that it has a camera on board that supports 2-megapixel picture as well as video. "It supports a micro SD so you can take lengthy videos," he said.

Woodward added that the 8525 should work anywhere in the world, including tough to handle places such as Japan.

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