The carrier will start shipping the 8525 on November 16th, at retail and through its B2B channel, for $399.99 when its bought with a two-year contract and an unlimited data service plan.

Its most significant advancement over the 8125 is the addition of HSPDA/UMTS 3G cellular-networking for average data transfer between 400 and 700 kilobits per second (Kbps) and uploads of around 384 Kbps. The 8525 will drop down to the much more widely deployed 2.5G EDGE technology, with average performance of 125 Kbps, where 3G isn’t available.

The 8525 is the first HSPDA/UMTS available in North America. And, according to Cingular B2B president Kent Mathy, "it is the only PDA or Smartphone on the American market today to give users wireless 3G capabilities both in the U.S. and in dozens of countries abroad."

That's because the HSPDA/UTMS is widely used as the cellular-broadband technology for carriers worldwide. This wouldn't be true of the EV-D0-based 3G used by CDMA carriers like Verizon and Sprint in the U.S.

The quad-band GSM Pocket PC Phone measures and weighs the same 4.3 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches and 5.3 ounces as the 8125. As with the 8125, the new smartphone is used in a portrait orientation as a phone or traditional PDA. A now-you-see-it-now-you-don't QWERTY thumb-keyboard slides out from the side of the unit, switching the device to landscape mode, however.

Unlike European editions of the Hermes Pocket PC Phone, Cingular's won't feature a second front facing camera. So self portraits and video calling will be out of the question. Its single camera, a 2-megapixel type, resides on the back of the unit. Cingular will ship a version of the smartphone, the 8500, without any shooter at all.

There's a 400 MHz processor that doubles the speed of the CPU in the 8125, 128 MB of ROM, and 64 MB of RAM, in addition to a QVGA touch-screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and microSD slot.

HTC adds a couple buttons to the new model for Cingular: OK for future Push-to-Talk support (due to be available sometime next year) and another marked Start Menu.

The 8525 has a more powerful 1350 mAH lithium-ion battery to the earlier model's 1250 type. It adds a trackwheel as well.

The Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone ships with Microsoft's Direct Push Technology already enabled. This means e-mail, calendar, tasks and contacts are kept up-to-date and synchronized wirelessly with Exchange server.