AT&T 3125 user reviews

4.5 stars

"awesome phone and organizer for a busy life" on December 2, 2006 by markhwebster

Pros: compact, great battery life, syncs with outlook, plays wma files

Cons: proprietary headphone jack, easily modified

Summary: Pros:
it’s a phone, and a Palm all in one.
Very small and tightly built
Window Mobile operating system.
T9 text entry, no need for a stylus
Long battery life

Cons:
Proprietary headphone jack, fixable with a little cutting and soldering on the supplied headphones and a 1/8” jack from radio shack.


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 it at bestbuy online for $150 (no rebates involved), as long as I agreed to a 2 year plan at $40 a month.

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.