My cell phone is a brick. It's big, fat and heavy. I love it. No one will ever mistake it for an iPhone, that's for sure.

The phone itself is an HTC Hermes. That's a version of the HTC TyTN with the forward facing camera (in place for videoconferencing) removed at the request of domestic cell phone carriers. Thank you, Cingular. Oh, how I feel the customer-servicing love.

The phone itself is nearly an inch thick, but it chews through batteries like a hungry dog on steak, so I ended up with an extended battery that added even a little more bump to the lump. I certainly can't carry this thing in my pants pockets anymore.

PocketPCs, especially with the sliding keyboards, are somewhat fragile. So much so that Cingular refuses to sell insurance for them. Extended warranties, insurance and aftermarket suckage like that are usually major revenue sources for vendors, so for one to decline selling it means only one thing: past history shows more people making claims than paying premiums.

I ended up with a ballistic nylon holster for it. That clip on the back, plus the layers of nylon goodness make the whole mess at least two-and-a-half inches thick, and weigh closer to 3/4 pound than half.

What does this gain me?

Windows Live Mobile Search

Yep, I'm drinking the Kool-aid big time here. This is the first search application that I look forward to using.

I was in San Francisco, looking for a Chinese restaurant. I knew it was one block south, two blocks to the east. I also knew it had changed management and names. This toy brought up a map of SF, allowed me to zoom in to the SOMA district, then showed me on the map 'thumbtacks' for up to 25 restaurants near me. I clicked on the right one, it brought up the 'business card' for it. I clicked on the phone number, it dialed it for me.

My friend who was with me summed it up best: "Looks like something from a movie!"

SOTI Pocket Controller

This mirrors what my phone is displaying onto my desktop. I can (and have) downloaded skins so the image displayed on my laptop looks just like my 8525 (less the scratch where I dropped it.) I click on the application on my laptop, the phone reacts as if I had pressed a button or tapped its screen.

Plus, it looks cool.

tethering

This is a fancy word for "use your phone as a modem." Where as Windows Live Mobile Search was "wow, I thought they only did this in movies," tethering is "but they do it in movies all the time!" Change some check boxes on my laptop, run a cable from my USB port to my phone (so it charges at the same time) and run a program on the phone, and suddenly Windows reports it has a new network adapter.

This looks boring. The phone simply says, "Connected." I can use it to make calls while on the data line. Still, it's neat to be able to sit in a Starbucks and thumb my nose at the t-mobile 'free' wi.fi. (It's free to browse t-mobile's web pages, but it will cost to see anyone else's.)

It's especially entertaining to sit on the bus and brows the web or work my email as we're tooling along. I've overheard others say, "How did he get signal? I don't see any access points!"

In addition to this, it gets my work email, my hotmail, my work calendar, my address book from work, the corporate address book, plays MP3s, has a camera etc.

And it does text msging. :)