Earlier on you got to see the unboxing, now pull up a chair for some SlashPhone First Impressions of the Cingular 8525.

There's no doubting that Cingular (and HTC, the hardware geeks behind the design) have pulled out all the stops with the 8525. From the moment you get it out of the box, you can tell it's a promising piece of kit; there's a reassuring weight to it, although it's nowhere near heavy, and the keyboard slide is solid and not at all flimsy. Something else you can't help but notice is the thickness, but when you read the spec sheet you can go some way to forgiving them.

If it's wireless connectivity you want, the 8525 is for you. WiFi and EDGE/GPRS are predictable; toss in HSDPA and 3G and you're getting close to worldwide mobile internet facilities. There's Bluetooth squashed in there too, so you can connect the 8525 to a laptop (or use a handsfree kit if you're too embarrassed to hold it to your ear).

Windows Mobile is the same no matter what the device, but it's great to see that Cingular have acknowledged that some parts are better than others; hence supplementing the patchy Mobile Internet Explorer with the sublime Opera 2. Somewhere it really does shine is messaging; setting up push-email with our Exchange server was a piece of pie (and damned easy pie at that), while composing messages and editing attachments is straightforward thanks to the broad, flat keyboard that suits even the chunkier of fingers.

Performance is subjective, and at this early stage it's impossible to tell how the 8525 will cope once a full bevy of applications are loaded on. Out of the box it's full steam ahead, though, with the 400MHz processor easily managing multi-tasking. You'll have to wait for our full review to find out if it can continue that good behaviour after some serious use.

First impressions count, so would I recommend the 8525? Without a doubt, if you're a power-user and have big enough pockets (in all senses) then you'll consider Cingular's latest a must-have. Whether casual users will be equally suited, we'll just have to wait and see.

See the unboxing video here