AT&T 3125 - Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphone Edition 200 MHz - RAM: 64 MB - ROM: 128 MB 2.8" TFT ( 240 x 320 ) - camera - Bluetooth - GSM 850/900/1800/1900 - AT&T

Some history: I have owned a cell phone from the days of the Motorola "brick" to the Motorola flip phone to the first Nokia candy bar phone with a Palm Pilot to the Audiovox 5600 which integrated my Palm functionality and a phone into one device.
By far, the Nokia was the best phone. I had reception everywhere - even where noone else's phone worked, but I had my Outlook contact on my Palm. I wanted one device so I got the 5600. It synced great, but reception was poor. I couldn't use it from my home or work. I also missed the protection of a flip phone.
Now I have the 3125 for about 2 months. Reception is great. I use it at home, work and everywhere there is coverage (I hike a lot.) Syncing is great and it is a flip phone so I can toss it in my pocket without calling some random number.
I wanted a device that works as a phone first and then as a PDA. The 3125 does both well. It is a basic mobile computer for simple tasks. With a bluetooth keyboard you could do a lot.

Pros:
Reception almost as good as my analog Nokia of 10 years ago.
Clear bright display - easy to read
Easy to hear and to be heard. Speaker phone works well.
Nice big tactile keys that automatically light up when needed.
Much improved navigation keys (left, right, up, down, enter)
Bluetooth with a Plantronics earpiece has good range and audio works well for the listener and talker.
Battery life is better than the 5600. Not as good as the Nokia or Palm which would easily last a week. Color displays suck lots of power.
Easy menu navigation - hint: you can hit the 1-9 keys to navigate the 9 icons.
Voice recognition works once trained (bluetooth and phone).
My old applications from 5600 work.
Bought a 3rd party case that works well ($7)
4 band phone works in all countries using GSM. I used mine in China with a China Mobile SIM. hint: call Cingular and they will unlock your phone for free!

Cons:
Proprietary connector - can't use std headphones.
Themes supplied have too much junk. My biggest beef with the themes were the large icons and space taken by "advertizements" like MSN or Cingular. To solve the themes issue, I edited the xml files. You can also buy programs to modify the themes.
Had to buy SmartNotes program to sync with Outlook Notes.
MicroSD card is under the SIM card.
Cingular staff and instruction manual don't tell you much. I had to figure out a lot on my own.
No on-phone help - my old Nokia had menu help 10 years ago.

Notes: I am a PC user (not a Microsoft fan, but surprisingly like windows mobile). I use Outlook for contacts, calendar, email, and notes. I sync my phone with all of these.

This phone works amazingly well in most aspects. The call clarity is great and the menu system works very well. I especially find the hot bar menu system on the start screen very convienent. The mp3 player function workds remarkably well and with a 2 gb smartchip, this think becomes a monster media device. My one grievance is the camara on it. It lags horribly when you try and take a piture that is not staying perfectly still. In all, I highly recommend this phone.

Summary: If you do not need a full-on Blackberry and want to have wireless access to Outlook this is a great phone.

First my goals from this product: I'm definitely not a 'road warrior' and do not plan on having a Blackberry grafted permanently to my hand, but I do work away from the office one day a week or so and I wanted to keep an eye on emails, have access to my Outlook contacts whenever I need it, be reminded of upcoming Outlook appointments without having to log onto email from a PC. I wanted to be able to do this automatically, not syncing from a PC with a cable. I also wanted a fairly normal-looking flip phone and one that was not too bulky. I did not need a keyboard - I planned to be more of a reader than a writer of emails etc.

This phone meets those needs perfectly, though with one flaw outlined below. I have the unlimited data plan ($20/month) and it syncs very nicely with Outlook. It will download as many messages as the memory allows, starting with the most recent. Without any add on card this means about 20+ depending on what else you have loaded (e.g. music, photos etc). If you need more you can buy cards starting at around $30 to up this capacity. When you open the phone you get a well designed summary screen which shows how many messages are waiting (all types) and shows the next appointment today and tomorrow. Contacts come over well from Outlook, and you can dial directly from contacts. There is a good and simple search system for finding contacts. Sound quality is fine, as are connections - typical for Cingular, as good as previous Nokia phones, much better than with the Motorola phone I used to have. The screen is high quality though small, and web browsing is as easy as is probably feasible given the lack of keyboard and small size of the screen.

The only real problem is that this phone accidentally reboots ALL THE TIME. It reboots about 5-10 times a day, typically when put in a pocket or dashboard, when picked up for answering etc. The reboot procedure lasts the best part of a minute and is jarringly noisy so this is a major flaw. The apparent cause is an over sensitive safety switch on the battery/SIMM card cover designed to cause the phone to turn off to protect the card when you open the back. There is a simple fix (involving putting a piece of folded paper over the switch) which apparently works (tried it today, so far no reboots). The web site discussing this is here (solution towards the end)
(.......)

Apparently newer phones don't have this problem so Cingular's maker may have fixed this by now.

Assuming this is the case this is a highly recommended phone for people who don't want a full on Blackberry but want some of the functionality.

This little phone does everything I've ever wanted in a phone. It's running Windows Mobile, so it interoperates nicely with Office products, and it is easy (like a pocketpc) to add new software and sync with outlook - unlike many other phones, it actually includes a sync cable. No need to purchase music or ringtones, you can simply copy an mp3 or other sound file directly from your computer, and it just works. Makes a great little mp3 player too, and includes headphones. If you're familiar with Visual Studio, you can easily write your own software. Oh yes, I highly recommend finding the Star Trek communicator ringtone mp3 and installing it... this phone is just not complete without it; not only is this phone otherwise referred to as the Star Trek phone, it also has much the same form factor as the old trek communicator, but is much more high-tech, and it is just really nifty (and unobtrusive) to have that classic tone go off. A couple of minor caveats: unless you can find some bluetooth headphones you're stuck with the ones that come with the phone, which have pretty good sound but I find the wires get tangled a lot, plus they could use an audio suppression filter to cancel-out the external world. Then there's Window Mobile (and PocketPC's in general) issue of not having a means of cleanly exiting the programs; periodically you'll need to pull-up the Task Manager and shut-down the various apps that are running. I recently was in the midst of loading a cart of fertilizer at Lowes and inadvertently bumped a button (phone was in my pocket), and suddenly had music playing, and it took a minute to figure-out how to shut it off. Awkward. Still, I love this phone. And once you get it be sure to grab some free apps like those provided by Google Mobile (search plus google maps with traffic, and even gmail) and then of course you can get weather from the Weather Underground. It even comes with a pretty-decent Solitaire game.

The external LCD screen on the phone cracked mysteriously. This seems to be a design flaw. Do a web search ( "Cingular 3125 cracked LCD" ) and you will find a number of owners who have had this problem. The descriptions are all the same - no one dropped the phone, they just generally pulled it out of their pocket and it was cracked. The crack appears on the *inside* (internal side) of the screen so it is not the result of physical damage by the user (no external facing dents/marks etc) .

Users posting in web forums report that the damage is not covered by Cingular. They also report that the phone is not insurable.

Phone screen broke for me 2 days ago - rendering the external screen useless. I will go to cingular this weekend and see if I can get a replacement.

I have used smartphones over the past few years, including the Palm 650, Motorola mpx220 (a predecesor flip smartphone), IMate Jam, and the Cingular 8125. Now I have the 3125 with which I am very pleased. My contract was up and it was time for a new gadget, so I decided to go back to a flip smartphone. I loved the 8125 for its QWERTY keyboard, and other smartphone/PocketPC functions, but I found it to be too bulky. The 3125 is a great alternative and different from the ubiquitous RAZR.

This is my primary phone (no land line here), so my first prerequisite is that it functions well as a phone. Sometimes when companies try to pack too much functionality into a phone, its the call quality that tends to suffer. I live in the Metro DC area and have been generally pleased with radio reception, clarity, and battery life. I conduct regular 1+ hr conference calls on this phone using a Cardo Scala 700 bluetooth handsfree, and have had no complaints from other attendees of poor call quality. There have been occasions where I've placed or received phone calls that start out as "squawky", and I've had to either call back, or the other party calls me back. Then everything is fine. I don't know if this is attributed to the phone or to the network, as my friends using different phones have experienced the same thing on Cingular. Lately, I have not experienced this problem at all.

I haven't fully maxed out the battery life. The phone charges via USB. I work with a laptop, so I tend to have the phone synced via USB most of the time if its just laying around.

I haven't used the Windows Media Player for this phone, so I cannot speak to that (it just eats battery life anyways.) The unit does come with a stereo earbuds.

I like MS smartphones in general because they sync seamlessly with my Outlook (upon which I'm heavily dependent.) I find it so much easier to manage my contacts/calendar/tasks via Outlook and to sync/carry the info around on my phone. I've tried other phones which require proprietary software to interface with Outlook. It can be a pain to manage. So much simpler to just sync via ActiveSync.

I do use the web-browsing functionality to check my work email via the phone's Internet Explorer with no probs. Google has a nice Java midlet that lets you access your GMail without having to go through either the Cingular XPressMail program or through the smartphone's MS Outlook.

Having gone from the 8125 to this phone, I quickly embraced T9 texting (since there's no QWERTY.) I found the transition from QWERTY to T9 to be fine.

The camera delivers pictures that are very clear and crisp. No complaints there. Its a camera phone, so I don't rely on it as a primary camera. It serves well to capture those random moments in your life. You can access the pictures by connecting your phone to your computer and using ActiveSync to browse the phone folders.

I gave this phone only 4/5 stars because of the following:

Quirk 1: The phone syncs/charges via USB cable, but the end that attaches to the phone is not your standard USB device connection. It is proprietary to this phone. With the IMate Jam and the 8125, you can sync/charge using a standard USB cable (the same one that you may use for your mp3 player, camera, or other USB devices.) Its just mildly annoying because its just one more cable amidst the existing sea of cables. I don't know why HTC took this step backwards.

Quirk 2: This phone does NOT support the MS Outlook Notes function! There is a function on the phone to create voice notes. You cannot create notes on your desktop Outlook and then sync them over to your phone. This is very annoying because I used this function quite a lot with my 8125. I use it for shopping lists and other silly reminders. My work around this is to create notes under the TASK function. Not very pretty.

All in all... a great phone despite the above minor shortcomings.

I love the idea of a smart-flip-phone. I even like that it doesn't have a tiny little qwerty keypad to fumble with. The size of this phone is perfect. Call & sound quality are above average. The speaker phone is loud and sounds good. The 3125 feels solid and fits the hand just right. Maybe it's just me but I have a hard time finding the right buttons on the keypad without looking. It would be nice to be able to feel where you are. The screen looks great although customizing the desktop is limited. Unlike other versions of windows mobile, you can't create or download themes.

This phone is very useful as a productivity tool. You can sync it with outlook via cable and it also offers, for free, Xpress mail service which will allow you to check your e-mail and calender when you are away from your pc. In addition to business, I have gotten in the habit of entering all of those details that my wife tells me and setting reminders on the phone. This information also syncs back to your pc so that no matter where I am, I'll get a reminder about those little details and therefore I don't get yelled at anymore.

This phone works as an mp3 and video player. Many video formats don't work. I'm not sure if it's because of codecs but It doesn't allow you to install codecs. The sound quality is great with the included earpieces but it doesn't have a standard earphone jack so you can't use any other earphones. The video quality is poor and becomes distorted when you change to fullscreen. I wouldn't expect anything more out of a flip phone. The built in video camera is useless because the videos come out blurry unless you have a very still subject and it's well lighted. It takes decent stills for a phone.

Programs are occasionally slow, particularly if you are running more than one program. I am disappointed with the internet speed. Since this phone was recently released, I don't understand why they didn't make it 3g capable.

One big complaint that I have is with the micro sd card. It is often unrecognized. I have to turn the phone off, open the back cover, re-seat the SD and sim cards and then power it back on. I suspect that the connection to the card is lost just from the constant movement that happens when you carry the phone. This happens every 2-3 days. My phone is only 3 months old and I wonder if the problem is only going to worsen with age.

I recommend this phone for someone who wants to sync with outlook, while being able to listen to tunes and play games on the go and who wants a unique phone to show off. If you want a great phone but don't need windows mobile, consider the LG CU500.

Great phone! I've had it for 3 weeks and have no complaints. I've been living without a cell phone for a couple years before I bought this one. My wife and I were sharing a Motorola E815, but she usually carried it. On the few days when I did carry the Motorola, my pockets were overloaded because I also carry a Palm Tungsten E2, from which I manage my appointments and track my tasks (to-do list). My Palm also allowed me to play free, downloadable talking books from the library using pocket tunes.

I was attracted to this Cingular 3125 because it combines the ability of the Palm (sync with Microsoft outlook, play talking books and window media files) with a phone. The 3125 is very small and flat, in comparison to carrying my palm and the Motorola. It fits in the pocket very easily, and I carried it that way for a while until I found a nice generic case at compusa that fits on my belt. It's the "foneGear #00409" model.

Battery life is very impressive. I charge it on the weekends and it runs all week, though I do turn it off at night. As a teacher, I consider cell phones intrusive. Because I'd rather talk to people around me face to face, than talk through an electronic device, I only make/receive about 3 calls a day, and I didn't buy the data package. Getting this phone without the data package took some doing. Everyone, including the cingular stores, cingular online and even Amazon wanted to force me to buy the phone with the data package. This means it would have been $40 a month for the line, and an extra $20 to $40 a month for the data package, for a total of around $80 a month. For a guy who was living on a limited teacher salary, and was used to no cell phone at all, that was unacceptable.

I work on computers for a living, and I pack my laptop around, so there was no need for the stupid data package. Finally, I found an online store that would allow me to buy just the phone for $150 (no rebates involved), as long as I agreed to a 2 year plan at $40 a month. They are a large national brick and mortar store, think: "bb".

The phone is very well put together from an engineering standpoint. The hinge is tight, all the buttons work, it's a very understated design, all black, and that suits me fine. The camera works, but it's nothing to write home about. I have a digital rebel xt if I need to take serious pictures. As others have mentioned, the screen quality is excellent. I'm new to windows mobile, coming from the palm operating system, but so far I'm very impressed. I love the ability to explore the operating system, just like it was a flash drive when it's tethered to my laptop. I couldn't do that with my Palm as it has a bizarre folder structure. Windows Mobile also has a very cool feature wherein it remembers what functions you've use recently and presents you with those icons on the "desktop", just like my laptop does off the start button. It also works as a modem for my laptop, something Verizon had disabled on our Motorola.

I thought I would miss the ease of text entry coming from my Palm, but the t9 text entry system on the 3125 is amazing and very fast. Another nice function is that when you start entering numbers to dial a call, it jumps into your contacts and call history and makes educated t9 guesses at who you are trying to call, searching both numbers and names simultaneously.

The only software I've added so far is the Papyrus software which improves on Mobile Outlook and allows me to more precisely set alarms on appointments and tasks. I also bought Facade, but uninstalled it as it seemed unnecessary. Windows Mobile has an excellent system of setting up sound profiles such as silent mode, and normal mode. Everything is customizable regarding whether it vibrates and rings, or vibrates, then rings, and whether or not an appointment alarm will ring, vibrate, both or neither. I was also easily able to copy in an mp3 file from my laptop to use as my custom ring tone. It's simply drag and drop with windows explorer from the laptop.

As I did not buy the data package, I can't comment on all the fancy connectivity stuff like doing live email and internet surfing on the phone. If I need to, I can do that stuff through the "pay for use" option, or "pay by the minute" as it's called. I got online once that way and it worked, but seemed pretty slow. The phone has a decent onboard antenna. I live way out in the country on a peninsula in Puget Sound and cell phone coverage can be very spotty here. Verizon has the best coverage out here, but they don't sell this phone, and they have a reputation for dumbing down their phones capabilities so you have to buy more stuff directly from them. I'm happy to report that my 3125 does work here at the house, if a little spotty, so it must have an above average antenna. It works perfectly in Tacoma, even inside my office, which has no windows and is buried in a concrete building.

I bought a 1 gig micro sd card locally for $60 and now have my music collection on the phone. You definitely don't want to be swapping cards a lot as it's fairly scary accessing the slot. When you slide the cover off the phone, note that the Sim card slides out to the left out from under the metal band, they don't tell you that... I guess you're supposed to be able to figure that out but I was afraid I'd break something on my brand new phone. To access the micro sd card holder, stick your fingernail under the top of the metal holder and lift gently. It hinges at the bottom, though it's not obvious unless you use a magnifying glass.

All in all I couldn't be happier with my new toy. If this changes, I'll update this post as time goes on.


Although this phone has so many great details that are mentioned in other reviews, I could not believe the cheapness of the plastic!

This phone could have been just a GREAT design and durable as well as I especially like the clock on the cover. Instead, Cingular offers a phone that cost over $300 with all the bells and whistles and terrific technology ....with plastic like a kid's phone. I couldn't believe it and when I mentioned it to the reps on the phone, they stated that all the customers were saying how disappointed they were.

I mean, how much more would it have cost Cingular to spend a few bucks for quality materials? If you drop this baby even once, you had better kiss it goodbye...

All in all a very good phone but there are a few things that can cause major problems. First, don't carry it in your pocket if you don't have to. I found out the hard way that the heat from your leg will cause moisture to build and very easily ruins the flash memory resulting in the phone completely freezing as soon as the start-up process completes. The compact design with so many features makes the phone very sensitive to anything outside of room temperature. Luckily it happened to me within 2 weeks of getting this phone and Cingular was more than compliant in replacing it for me. Also, DO NOT use a microSD card in it. Upon putting it in, the phone will ask you if you want that to be your default storage drive. But that's all it will ask. Then one day down the road when you turn the phone on, a message will pop up asking if you would like to format the newly found memory card. It's a trick question because no matter what you select, it erases everything on the card and corrupts it turning it into nothing more than a very expensive piece of plastic with shiny gold bars on the back. I know what you're saying. "Just put the microSD into the full-size adapter it came with, insert it into your card reader and re-format it with your PC." WRONG! Upon finishing the format process, Windows will tell you that it can't format the selected card. And please don't think this is an isolated incident. Two others I've talked to had the same thing happen. I'm just the only one posting it. AVOID THE MICRO!!! Just follow those two guidelines and everything will be just fine and the phone will operate with ease.

This is an amazing phone. Being able to sync via Outlook and run Windows Mobile apps on a flip-style phone is perfect.

I was skeptical at first because I was afraid the Windows Mobile OS would be buggy. However after using this phone for a couple weeks, it has proven to be much more reliable than I originally anticipated.

This phone offers the best of both worlds - a nice compact flip-style phone you can put in your pocket that can run Windows Mobile.

The only thing I wish it had was 3G data speed.

You get the most bang for the buck with this phone - I highly recommend the 3125.

I had an older Nokia cell phone, which was reliable but didn't have very much connectivity and the phone info was always becoming obsolete, and I had a PDA. I used the phone for emergencies, travel on business, and little else. I used the IPAQ PDA to keep up with calendar and appointments and to read ebooks, but it was bulky.

The 3125 has changed my life, and makes more information available constantly than I would have believed possible. It is also a great device to use "one-handed" when you are carrying something in the other.

I've owned mine a week, and it has already dramatically changed how I use my cell phone. I now tend to use it in preference to my home "land line", and its light weight and great design make it easy to keep with me constantly.

This is well on the way to replacing both the phone and the PDA. First of all it is a Windows Mobile 5 implementation(and most importantly from my perspective), you can can quickly synchronize seamlessly with your Outlook 2003 contacts, calendar, and tasks. I doesn't seem you can edit a task, but everything else is wonderful. You don't have to buy any special software or adapter, and this phone recharges from the USB connector.

Voice quality is much improved over my previous cell phone, and also reception in marginal area. I have the Cingular Internet Service (Edge Network), and it amazes me that it is readily available anywhere I've been--even when the signal has been weak. It won't ever be my preferred mode of surfing the web, but to find a business or restaurant or quick map in a strange city is quick and easy.

Here's the other key feature for me that was a wonderful surprise -- the keypad. First of all, I have large fingers, and blew off the Blackberry and new IPAQ phones once I handled them because the keys were just too small. I didn't even love the numeric keypads of most cellphones. However, these keys are flat, large, and give good tactile feedback. You know when you press them, and you don't do it accidentally. The T9 method of text entry is surprisingly easy to master and fairly fast, so you don't miss either a keyboard for limited typing or a stylus. The directional selector that substitutes for a mouse is similarly quick and effective to use.
The small screen means I won't be reading Ebooks on it, but otherwise, I have found the visibility to be very good except in extremely bright direct sunlight. Also, I selected "large fonts" in the setup, and find I can read the "contacts" and similar information WITHOUT my glasses. What a pleasure that is. The bluetooth implementation is also good.

All in all, I have found this to be a really great design. I have a lot of gadgets, but there are very few which have impressed me as much after living with them.


This mobile phone replaced a Nokia 6270 I bought approximately 6 months ago (I have reviewed that phone on Amazon also - please read the review if you are considering purchasing that phone). Here are the highlights of the 3125:

Pros:
(1) Design is excellent - The phone is thin enough to easily fit in pants pockets without being obtrusive or feeling heavy. Buttons located on the exterior of the unit require sufficient force so that they aren't accidentally activated while handling the phone. While the exterior is low profile and slim, it is also textured with small ridges in strategic touchpoints (sides, back battery plate, etc) that enhance your grip. Nice touch.
(2) Screen - Very clear; graphics quality is excellent. I have not used the browser function yet, but it appears the screen resolution would provide a decent experience.
(3) Keypad - Well designed despite the lack of independent buttons. I'll have to admit, the 'sheet metal' implementation of buttons on the RAZR is what turned me off. It felt like buttons would be accidentally pressed and the design would not wear well, but the Cingular 3125 seems to have struck the right balance. Keys are easy to use and have good feedback.
(4) Menu system - Straightforward for a Windows-based phone with such a variety of features. It is never easy to pack that many features onto a menu structure that fits intuitively on the screen of a cell phone, but they've done a respectable job of it. My biggest hurdle was pairing a Jabra headset; I didn't get that a 'menu' function on the bottom of that feature would reveal Bluetooth pairing options, but it added a whole layer of new functionality. Seemed a bit unituitive, but maybe I was just didn't get the paradigm in my first couple tries.
(5) Reception - Comparable to other Cingular phones I've used; seems to be effected by the same weak spots.
(6) Battery life - A pleasant surprise! I talk a lot on my cell and two hours of calls had little effect on the battery (down by 1 bar). My Nokia would have been nearly drained.
(7) Contact synchronization - I use a Mac, so this is more involved than it would have been if you are a Windows user. Still, I downloaded a synchronization package from the internet (The Missing Sync) and it worked very nicely. Contacts and appointments worked very well.
(8) Headset - I bought a Jabra BT headset to work with this unit; it worked very well. The only issue is that the headset begins to experiencing skipping and choppiness if the phone and headset are out of line of site. For example, if the phone is in your pocket.
(9) Responsiveness - I've owned PDAs and Smartphones before and I was always displeased with responsiveness of the interface. This appears to respond well. It lagged a few times, but it is tolerable.

Cons:
(1) Needs more themes out of the box. I don't use MSN, though that is the most attactive theme that comes with the phone. The Cingular theme is functional and looks decent, but you could reasonably expect something a little flashier considering that they got everything else right with this phone.
(2) This is reaching a bit, but it comes with a 128MB SD chip. Considering the multi-media functionality, this is grossly insufficient. I'm a bit of a purist, prefering a separate, higher quality camera rather than one integrated with my phone, but I realize an integrated camera+phone is attractive to a lot of people. Between photos and music, you'll eat up 128MB before you know what's happened.
(3) Ring volume is a bit low. Out-of-the-box, the ring volume is a bit difficult to hear if you are in even a moderately noisy environment. I have not yet found a way to increase ring volume.
(4) Difficult to see missed call indicator on external display. The dark external display with the blue clock is undoubtedly a cool feature of this phone, but as soon as the backlight times out, you have to activate the light to see a missed call. Not a big deal, but a bit annoying if you are used glancing at an external display to identify missed calls. Definitely not a show stopper.

Notable:
(1) As I pointed out, I use Macs, not Windows, so Windows Media is useless for me. If you manage your songs and photos in Windows, I suspect the built-in Windows Media functionality would be a big plus for you.
(2) Outlook integration looks very nice. This phone is going to be great if you use Outlook and your e-mail is hosted on Exchange. I'm a bit jealous.

Why not 5 stars? If it interfaced with a Mac out of the box, I would recommend it without hesitation. I totally understand the target market of the phone is a Windows-enabled corporate workforce and in that area they completely make the grade. Still, this is a review, right? It is all about perspective! Not to worry, third-party software fills this gap!