2008 T-Mobile Sidekick review

T-Mobile Sidekick 2008

T-Mobile Sidekick 2008

T-Mobile Sidekick 2008

T-Mobile Sidekick 2008

The T-Mobile Sidekick line has been around for nearly 6 years, and there are few people in the U.S. that wouldn't recognize one these days. While there have been some attempts at changing the form factor, such as the Motorola designed Sidekick Slide, the basic form factor has remained largely the same. Today's new T-Mobile Sidekick, built by Sharp, keeps the same familiar Sidekick form factor, but fills it with more modern equipment and slims it down into what is the most pocketable Sidekick yet.

T-Mobile has chosen to call this new device the T-Mobile Sidekick, in spite of the fact that this is also the name of the original Sidekick the company sold years ago. Its plan is to also call future versions of this device the T-Mobile Sidekick. So, to avoid confusion as best as possible, we will refer to this device as the T-Mobile Sidekick 2008.

Physical Aspects

The most obvious difference between the Sidekick 2008 and the former flagship product, the Sidekick LX, is the overall bulk of the device. The Sidekick 2008 measures 120mm x 58mm x 19mm (4.7" x 2.3" x .7") in size, which means it is 10mm shorter, 2mm narrower, and 2mm thinner than the Sidekick LX. Also important is the new phone's decrease in weight. At 137g (4.8oz), it is a whopping 25g (.9oz) lighter than the LX. What this equates to is a device that is so much more pocketable as to not even be in the same ballpark.

Aesthetically things have improved just as much. The new Sidekick 2008 has smoother lines, an overall cleaner look, and something that Sidekick LX lacked: user changeable covers. The Sidekick 2008 ships with a very pretty gloss black cover as well as a wild looking green cover. The best part is that users can not only buy new covers, but they can even design their own from scratch - something T-Mobile afforded us the opportunity to do. The process was pretty painless and you can see photos of the finished product below.

In terms of features of the physical design, the highlights of the device are the new 2.6" WQVGA (400x240 pixel) display that flips out, the QWERTY keyboard, and the dual navigation offered by the trackball and d-pad controllers. A simple flip with the thumb is all that is required to get the Sidekick 2008's display to spring into the open position to reveal the QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard itself is not as nice as that on the Sidekick 3, which was one of my favorites, but it is still pretty good. The keyboard is made of a single sheet of a rubber type material that has buttons formed into it. The regular keys work decently, but the space bar on ours just didn't provide consistent feedback. It had an impact on typing accuracy, but is something that can be worked around. The trackball and d-pad controller (which is also the ear speaker) worked as well as I expected, and I really like having the option to use whichever suits a given task best.

T-Mobile Sidekick

T-Mobile Sidekick

T-Mobile Sidekick

T-Mobile Sidekick

One thing any Sidekick has plenty of is buttons. I count ten on the new Sidekick 2008 if you ignore the keyboard, d-pad, and trackball. When holding the phone horizontally, the button above the d-pad brings up the context sensitive menus. The button below it, the main "jump" menu. Call send and end buttons sit directly above and below the trackball, while the upper right corner holds the cancel button and the lower right the OK button. On the bottom edge are the power button and the volume buttons, and on the top edge are two additional softkeys that can be configured by the user and are used by various applications in the phone.

The rear of the device is rather simply designed, and is interrupted only by the 2 megapixel camera's lens. This actually works out well since it provides a nice, large canvas for customer cover designs. The cover itself comes in two pieces, both of which wrap around the front and rear of the phone and snap into place.

I think the designers have hit a home run with this new Sidekick design. The Sidekick 2008 is shaped like and is the size of a semi-normal phone, but still houses all of the trademark Sidekick tricks.