Digital Trends

Sidekick LX July 30th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

Surfing the Web

Web browsing on the LX is adequate, but it doesn't hold a candle to more sophisticated browsers like the iPhone's Safari. Pages loaded quickly, with mobile versions of CNN.com, NYTimes.com, Google Maps, and Facebook completely loading within 10 to 15 seconds. DigitalTrends.com and Wikipedia took noticeably longer, at around 30 seconds, though much of the time was spent requesting the site as opposed to actually loading it.

Sites that use JavaScript (Google Reader, for example) caused the browser to hang or simply didn't load properly. When we tried to log on to banking sites like Chase and Citibank, we were greeted with 404 Not Found errors instead of site incompatibility messages.

The biggest thing we missed with the LX was the ability to open more than one page at a time, though given the spotty 3G coverage in our local area, we'd have liked some WiFi for browsing too. We did, however, find the page zoom/scroll utility handy for navigating large pages.

Multimedia Playback

The LX's on-board media player is very easy to navigate, and it immediately picks up songs and videos loaded via microSD card. The phone supports MP3, WMA, WAV, and AAC audio files, as well as ID3 tags for browsing content. Sound quality via the included earbuds is pretty good, and the headphone jack's output is strong enough to drive even higher-end headphones like Sennheiser's HD280Pro a bit beyond comfortable listening levels.

Video support is much more limited, encompassing only MPEG-4 SP and 3GPP formats. This is unfortunate given the phone's high screen quality; videos we loaded looked just as lousy on the phone as they did on our laptop after we crushed them down to the appropriate resolution (QVGA) and format. We really hope they add support for higher-quality formats in the future.

Battery Life

The Sidekick LX's battery life is rated at about 6.8 hours of talk time, but most Sidekick users do a lot more texting, emailing, and IMing than talking. We had to recharge ours about every 2 days with normal use: 15 texts, 3 short IM conversations, 1.5 hours talking, 30 minutes Web browsing, and about an hour's worth of email. When we used Bluetooth, the camera/camcorder, and the media player, we could easily run the battery down by the end of a single day.

Conclusion

As we mentioned earlier, this is definitely a phone designed for people who want to use a QWERTY keyboard a lot, since Sidekicks have the best physical keyboard around. The phone's overall size is easy to overlook when you consider the roomy screen and button layout, and the 3.5-mm headphone jack makes the LX a viable music player too.

Gabbers will be sorely disappointed with the LX's call quality and may find T-Mobile's coverage lacking. Mobile Web surfers would do far better with an iPhone 3G, which actually costs less than the Sidekick LX. And if it's a cameraphone you're in need of, there are plenty of phones with better cameras, like the Nokia N95.

Pros:

• Excellent keyboard and messaging features
• Sharp, bright screen
• MySpace integration
• Good Web browser
• Standard-size headphone jack

Cons:

• No WiFi or GPS
• Limited 3rd party app and ringtone support
• Bulky
• Poor camera quality
• Weak speakers and earpiece