T-Mobile Sidekick 2008 (T-Mobile Flexpay)

Calls and speakerphone: Though the Sidekick might not strike you immediately as the best device for making calls, to its credit, the call quality is acceptable, but not stellar. Callers said we were loud, but not always clear. We found the phone comfortable cradled between ear and shoulder for long chats. We’re happy to report that the speakerphone quality has improved over the Sidekick. Callers couldn’t really tell we were using the speakerphone unless there was a lot of noise in our surroundings.

Audio quality: We found playing music back over the Sidekick’s speakers to be pretty good. Songs rarely sounded tinny. We also appreciated that we could use our own headphones with the cell phone via the 3.5mm headset jack or use the pair included in the box, which also lets you accept incoming calls when a song is playing.

Menu/phone book: A quick glance at the Sidekick’s screen, and it is clear this cell phone is meant for a younger audience. It’s filled with graphical icons that are friendly and that immediately identify what each icon represents (for example, there’s a picture of a phone book for the address book). Initially, using the Sidekick can be a bit daunting because it’s not clear exactly what all the buttons do. But if you play with it for about 10 to 15 minutes, maneuvering through the menus becomes second nature. The best reference we can provide for this phenomenon is a typewriter’s keys. The first time you look at the order of the keys, it doesn’t make much sense, but once you type a bit, you find yourself saying, “Of course, this is how it should be.” Another great way to get accustomed to using this cell phone is to try to play the included Bob’s Journey: Lake of Doom game. You’ll immediately figure out how to use the trackball and navigation keys. If that’s not enough there are Tips for each application that can be accessed by pressing the top left hand corner button with the three lines on it.

A synching cable is included to download music and pictures. Since this cell phone is all about personalization you can change the backdrop to one of four included themes. You have to manually import your SIM contacts into the phone if you’re just going to insert an existing SIM card into the Sidekick.

One of our favorite usability features is that you can immediately exit any application simply by pressing the button with a bunch of circles on it in the lower-left corner. It takes you right back to the main menu screen. You can store up to 2,000 contacts in the phone book, and each entry can include 10 phone numbers, three street address, five e-mail addresses, IM info, notes, and three web addresses URL (you know, in case you need to quickly check out someone’s MySpace page).

Messaging/Web browser: Above all else, the Sidekick is a messaging device, and like its predecessors, this is something the cell phone does extremely well. (Note: In some cases, you might find that you get a text message from someone in your phonebook sometimes and will only see the phone number instead of the person’s name if you have multiple entries for them. However, this is not the case for all models and there will be a fix available shortly.) Additionally, if you don’t insert the included 526MB MicroSD card in the cell phone , you’ll need to constantly erase incoming messages before being able to receive more. However, if the MicroSD card is inserted you shouldn’t encounter this problem. It’s easy to use any of the three IM clients (AIM, Yahoo, and MSN); just enter your user name and password, hit Connect, and you’re good to go. It also supports most e-mail programs (IMAP4 and POP3), so you can send/receive e-mail, as well, for up to four accounts.

Camera/video: The Sidekick sports a 2-megapixel camera that can take photos and record short videos. Though this camera phone lacks a flash, we didn’t miss it much. To take a picture you need to launch the application and then snap a picture by holding down the button on the side of the Sidekick where it says Capture on the screen. There aren’t many photo settings available; there’s only image quality (high, medium, and low) or image resolution size. The good news is that you won’t accidentally snap pictures of the inside of a purse or pocket. On the plus side, the entire screen turns into a viewfinder (similar to digital cameras), so it seems like you have more room to frame your photo. We did find shutter lag time to be fairly fast (read: when you hit Capture, that’s the picture you get). As for image quality, we found colors to be vivid, but images came out a bit blurry. Video quality is acceptable but not stellar.

Music: The Sidekick sports an MP3 player and comes with a spacious 526MB MicroSD memory card, so you can store tons of music (at least a couple of albums' worth of tunes). It also comes with a synching cable that makes getting music on the phone pretty easy. You can play MP3s, WMA (Windows Media Audio), and AAC (Apple’s music format) files on the MP3 player. As noted, the audio quality is pretty good through the cell phone speaker. While there aren’t any audio settings, there is shuffle, repeat, and the ability to create playlists on the Sidekick.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the Sidekick with a Motorola H680 Bluetooth headset. We found call quality to be sufficient with this headset, but people did ask if we were using one. Since this cell phone supports stereo Bluetooth you can connect it to a stereo Bluetooth headphones to listen to music.

Look and feel: It’s clear upon first glance that the Sidekick is more about text-driven communication than verbal chat. The Sidekick sports a similar design- and style as it’s predecessors, but it is decidedly slicker and thinner. Translation: It really doesn’t take up a ton of pocket real-estate and won’t weigh you down. Speaking of pockets we should note the Vibration on this cell phone is impressive. We can honestly say we never missed a call when it was in a pocket or purse. It does have the same swivel display that exposes the cell phone’s keyboard, and the color display is fairly easy to view in direct sunlight – a definite plus. And, really, why mess with something that works so well? Also new to this model is the ability to customize the exterior of your Sidekick with shells that you can design yourself at sidekickshells.skinit.com.

As noted, the Sidekick has a much slicker plastic shell – gone are the rubber sides. However, the rubberized trackball, not unlike one you'll find on a mouse, is still there. When not in use, the trackball flashes bright green on standby and bright blue when you get a message. We found the trackball easy to use and not too sensitive to the touch out-of-the-box. It also makes maneuvering through the Sidekick’s menus a snap. However, if you’ve never used a Sidekick before, mastering the buttons on the face of the cell phone will take some time.

Keypad: Clearly, the Sidekick is all about the full keyboard. You can dial numbers from the keyboard in two ways: either directly by pressing the numeric keys at the top of the keyboard or by holding shift and clicking on the numbered keys that can be found on the actual letter keys, a la the BlackBerry and Treo keyboards. We should note that occasionally we had a hard time pressing the numbers at the top of the screen, but getting accustomed to hitting them correctly is easy, unless you have long fingernails – then you’ll be constantly hitting the base of the screen, making it difficult to use. The remaining plastic keys are easy to use for just about any finger size. We particularly liked how smooth the keyboard felt and found that keys are far enough apart, which minimizes misdials or mistypes.

As for battery life, we found on the Sidekick that heavy texters, Web surfers, and message addicts will likely need to charge the cell phone daily. But if you use the cell phone to send/receive a few text messages and e-mails or make a couple of calls, you’ll need to charge it every other day. But when we used the cell phone to occasionally check messages and play a game, the Sidekick managed to last close to three days before needing more juice. The good news is that leaving Bluetooth activated doesn’t drain the battery

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