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The company that designed and built the AT&T/Cingular 8525 is now offering a free upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 Professional for the long-in-the-tooth Pocket PC Phone. That's good news for those own that particular smartphone but aren't ready to move up to its replacement, the new AT&T Tilt.

Microsoft's latest mobile-device platform should bring a number of improvements to the 8525. These include an enhanced user interface, much better Mobile Office Applications, support for HTML-formatted e-mail messages, as well as better-performance overall.

The Windows Mobile 6 ROM update will only be available until February 1st of next year. So if you're considering taking advantage of the upgrade, don't wait too long.

According to HTC, there are a number of things you should keep in mind before upgrading.

For example, since a 8525 with Windows Mobile 6 doesn't support Good Mobile Messaging, you shouldn't upgrade if you use this mob-e-mail application.

Also, once you load the new firmware, it cannot be undone. So there's no going back to Windows Mobile 5.

Since all data is deleted from the 8525 during the upgrade, be sure to back up everything on your smartphone using Activesync (Windows XP only) or Windows Mobile Device Center before proceeding.

After you run the ROM Update Utility to install Windows Mobile 6, a process that should take about 25 minutes, you can restore your personal data using ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center.

Do not interrupt the upgrade process or press any buttons until it has been completed and make sure your battery level is at least 50 percent. There is a chance that the 8525 won't recover if interrupted, be it because of a power drain or some other reason. If an interruption happens and the 8525 can’t recover, you'll need take it down to AT&T for repairs.