Welcome to the forums! From your other posts, it sounds like you bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the forums!
On to your questions...
1) To keep the landscape mode permanent, see this thread for a workaround. They talk about opening the camera app to switch to landscape, then killing the camera app which leaves landscape mode on...not a perfect solution, but a workaround: thread at
xda-dev
2) For backups, I've been using
SPB backup for the past month or so, and it works great. I've run a restore from one of the self-executing backup files and have had no problems.
3) Speakerphone - from all the specs I've seen on the 8525, they mention having a speakerphone. I can't comment definitively as I do not have the device, but have you tried opening the phone app, then hitting the right softkey? That's the way I access the speakerphone function on my phone.
Hope that helps,
Brain