T-Mobile Sidekick LX Review

Introduction:

The Sidekick line has always been synonymous with the hip, young, and cultured crowd. It provided users a good messaging device with their distinguishable swivel screen design and QWERTY keyboard. Looking past the design aspect, it made navigating a breeze with almost anyone picking it up right away. With the advent of T-Mobile's 3G network, it would only be logical to see a Sidekick device  jump into the next level. Enter the second model of the T-Mobile Sidekick LX, which is the first 3G enabled Sidekick device. Other updates include a slightly slimmer design and a gorgeous high resolution LCD screen. Will all the new goodies still give users the same Sidekick experience previous devices offered?

The package contains:

• T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009
• 1GB microSD card
• USB Cable
• Protective Sleeve
• Stereo Headset
• Reference Guide CD
• Starter Guide Poster

Design:

The new Sidekick LX 2009 does not stray far from the design of previous incarnations. From afar, it's definitely quite noticeable with the traditional look. It's undoubtedly a Sidekick device with a swiveling screen and QWERTY keyboard.  Although the body is made out of plastic, it has that gunmetal finish that makes it look and feel well constructed. The chrome accents on the top and bottom edge adds some balance to the design. It radiates an almost business like appeal rather than a campy entry level device. When comparing to previous generations, this version is a bit more stretched out – making it longer and wider with a slimmer profile (0.64”). There is no denying the hefty weight of the phone (5.82 oz) will make for some extra baggage when placed in the pocket. We're confident that it is durable, but still would hate to see what would happen if it were dropped.



You can compare the T-Mobile Sidekick LX with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

With the flick of a finger, the high resolution 3.2” LCD screen has the Sidekick's trademark swiveling action. You'll be greeted to a sharp display with a resolution of 854 x 480 that rivals some high-end smart phones. Colors jump out with various gradients discernible; while the crisp looking text easily legible to the eye. To add some nifty looking notification effects, an LED strip that lights up is placed on one side of the screen. The light sensor will automatically adjust the brightness depending on conditions. Both indoors and outdoors, the display proved to work fine in various settings with even direct sunlight posing no threat to the Sidekick LX 2009.



Keeping to tradition, the layout on the device remains intact with the send, end, menu, jump, done and cancel buttons found in their usual spots. Most of the buttons on the face of the phone have a plasticy and cheap feel to them. Luckily, they are tactile and large enough to operate. Navigating can be accomplished with either the directional pad or trackball; with the latter one being the preferred method. It's not to say that the tactile d-pad isn't bad either, but it makes for a monotonous way of navigating through the menus. Additionally, it houses the only speaker used for phone calls and music. Just like the LED strip, the trackball will provide some eye candy by lighting up depending on certain actions. Small things like this goes to show the attention to detail going into the Sidekick LX 2009. On the bottom edge you'll find the narrow buttons used for the  volume rocker and power button which are flush with the surface. It's also worth noting that the phone uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack for music listening and a miniUSB port for charging/PC connection. Jumping to the top side, the shoulder buttons are used to quickly launch the camera and picture messaging applications. The 3.2-megapixel auto-focusing camerawith LED flash is located on the back side. Finally, the microSD slot can be accessed by removing the back cover and also reveals the battery and SIM card slot.




Since the existence of the first Sidekick, the QWERTY keyboard was one of its biggest aspect. We're glad to say that this probably the best designed one found on all the models so far. Buttons on the five row keyboard are well spaced and large – making speed typing a breeze with minimal mistakes occurring. They are slightly raised to allow your fingers to glide over them smoothly and still be able to feel each one out. Symbols are almost identically located on the same buttons found on a regular keyboard; adding to the comfort of not straining to look for specific characters. The only downside to the QWERTY is its overall stiff feel when you press on it. Characters are large enough to be seen on each key while the bright backlighting lights up the QWERTY. Small things like the blue strips that light up around the keyboard adds to the small details in making it an appealing phone.

Software:

Not too much to say about the newer version 5.0 of the Danger operating system used on the phone. The one thing any Sidekick user will say about the interface is the fact that it is simple and straightforward. The same is true with this new version. Granted that the better screen allows for slick looking animations when scrolling through the menus, but there are some neat looking themes preloaded. There is a rotating list of icons on the left side of the screen with an opposing picture loading up on the right as you scroll through the different menu options. There are also tons of shortcuts that are used depending on the application you are running. You will find the interface to be quite stable with minimal slowdown with even all the transition effects running when you navigate.



The phone does a good job of adding contacts; offering a good amount of information to be stored per contact. Items such as phone numbers, email addresses, instant messaging names, and notes are some of the many things you can include. You can save up to 2000 contacts before having to worry of running out of space. Searching for a specific contact can be done by scrolling through your list or just typing the name on the keyboard.



Messaging is another integral part of the Sidekick features. And it does shine in that aspect thanks to its depth in all areas. Pressing the left shoulder button will launch the application where you can quickly send an MMS. If you prefer just sending a quick SMS, you can launch the application by clicking the appropriate icon on the main menu.



We were pleased to see a great email program. There are some providers listed on the phone you can choose to quickly set up and start receiving emails. If you have a specific email provider, you can manually enter the server settings. It's noteworthy to say that Microsoft Exchange might be supported down the road.



If you're into all the popular social networking sites, applications for Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter can be found. We used Twitter and noticed how well it is integrated into the phone. It will give you updates to the latests tweets of your friends and will keep you updated even if you exit out back to the main menu.



Finally you can keep in touch with friends through the various IM clients. You can login using either AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or Windows Live Messenger to chat with friends. You'll continue to be online if you exit back to the main menu and can use all three IM clients at the same time as well.

Camera:

Improving on the hardware side, we see the upgraded auto-focusing 3.2-megapixel camera. Pressing the right shoulder button will start up thecamera program which took over five seconds to start. There are somesettings you can modify through the option like the white balance,color effects, and resolution. Slightly pressing down on the same rightshoulder button will focus the camera and pushing it all the way downtakes the shot. Pictures came out with decent detail while colors werewell represented in outdoor settings. Our best shots came out inbrightly lit conditions while low lighting caused colors to be way off.One nice feature found on the Sidekick is its ability for photos to begeotagged thanks to the built-in GPS. It may not replace your digitalcamera, but it does a decent job being a quick point and shoot.



It'swonderful that you can take videos and send it to someone. But thelimited resolution of 320 x 240 would not provide the best quality.They came out blurry and pixelated to the point where it made itunrecognizable at times. On top of that, color representation was wayoff and almost made it seem like the video was in black and white.While taking the video, there was a noticeable delay in what you aretrying to take versus what is seen on screen. As we said before, it isbest left used for MMS.

Multimedia:

Selecting the media player icon willallow you to listen to music or watch a video. The interface of themusic player is pretty simple with the artist, song title, and albumcover displayed on screen. Pressing the menu button will provide youthe option to pause/play, reverse, or forward a song. While the cancelbutton can be used as a dedicated pause/play key when running the musicplayer. The audio coming out of the speaker lacked some power and didnot provide ample volume when placed on the highest setting. Wepreferred using the 3.5mm headphone connection to get a betterexperience. Supplementing that is stereo Bluetooth connection if youprefer a wireless method.



We feel that the Sidekick LX 2009'svideo support to be somewhat lacking. It will play 3gp videos fine, butyou can forget about all other formats. Unfortunately, we were unableto play a video in either H.263 or H.264 format. Instead, we loaded upa YouTube video and it played smoothly on the phone. The menu controlsare located on the bottom of the screen with access to the functions(pause, play, reverse, forward) by using the trackball. Audio qualityfrom the video was the same as music playback; very low with no bass.



Connectivity and Internet:
 
Ifyou plan on taking a trip overseas, making phone calls won't be aproblem thanks to the quad-band GSM phone (850/900/1800/1900 MHz). The3G connection is possible due to the tri-band UMTS (850/1700/2100 MHz).

Itmay not provide the best experience with web browsing, but it does adecent job at it. Pages did take quite some time to come up when we had3G speeds and displayed in a vertical scrolling friendly view. Changingit to the full-size layout loaded up the site in typical fashion.Scrolling both horizontally and vertically was a timely process if youhad the trackball sensitivity on the default setting. After changingit, we managed to have a better experience. There is even a pageoverview that works well for those long web sites.   If pages loadedfaster, it would have been an almost perfect browser. Nonetheless, itruns good enough without any major complaints.



GPS:

The onlyavailable GPS application found on the Sidekick LX 2009 was MicrosoftLive Search. It'll do the job when it comes to looking up local pointsof interests. You can even switch the map type from a road view to anaerial view. This will definitely not replace a traditionalturn-by-turn GPS system though.



Memory isn't too much of aconcern because it is loaded with 128 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM. The phonedoes come with a 1 GB microSD card already; so you'll be fine right outof the box. If you find it not enough, it can support cards up to 16 GB.

Performance:

Call quality was a bit disappointing with voices sounding hollow and muffled at times. It was pretty poor because we thought that people were almost mumbling their words when listening to them. Trying to place the volume on the loudest setting didn't help either. Our callers had no problem hearing us on their end though. Even worse was the speaker phone quality. Maybe it might be the speaker because we noticed that it lacked any serious strength to it. It was still very difficult understanding our callers using it. On their end, they stated that we sounded a little weak.

According to the manufacturer, the battery should provide 5.5 hours of talk-time and about 192 hours of standby. We fell far short from those numbers though; clocking in 3 days of normal use before it went dead. The brightness level was set to the middle setting and used it primarily for messaging, web surfing, and the occasional phone call. We would assume that the quick battery drain can be associated to running applications in the background. But there really isn't a way to manually shut down each application once you launch it.

Conclusion:

Alright, it's one year older now with tons of updated features. We like the fact that it looks great and remains faithful to the concept of the Sidekick line. Sharp revamped this new model in almost every way and paid a lot of attention to the smallest details.  The overall improvements may push it to the bounds of being a smart phone, but the simplistic interface will allow anyone to get adjusted right away. Naturally, the Sidekick LX 2009 does prove to be a functional device while adding some much needed love to the Sidekick name.

T-Mobile Sidekick LX Video Review: