Sidekick LX Review
By Mike Kobrin
July 30th, 2008
Summary
The Sidekick LX is an upgrade to the Sidekick 3, with a vastly improved screen, slimmer profile, video support, and a standard headphone jack. The flip-out screen and roomy QWERTY keyboard are the centerpieces, ensuring that kids will be hammering out messages instead of paying attention to where they're going for some time to come. Prospective iPhone buyers will be disappointed by the Sidekick LX's lack of robust 3rd-party app support and WiFi. But make no mistake: You can't beat the LX for compulsive texters and instant-messaging nuts.
Full Review
Features and Design
The first thing that jumps out about the Sidekick LX is its 3-inch 240-by-400-pixel screen. It uses Sharp's Aquos technology, and it is impressively crisp and bright, which will keep younger eyes from being ruined too quickly. The phone is slimmer and less kid-oriented than its predecessors, favoring a more rectangular design and toned-down colors (navy blue or dark brown). It's also lighter, at 5.7 ounces. Lights still go off during various processes like sleep, startup, and message receive, though older users will want to disable this.
The rest of the Sidekick LX's physical features will be recognizable from previous SK models, including one of the best QWERTY keyboards in the business and a little trackball for navigation. On the back, the LX has a textured rubberized coating that looks a lot like the leather on old film cameras, providing a comfy and secure grip.
The LX is a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone and packs Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless listening and file transfers, though the phone conspicuously lacks GPS and WiFi.
Navigating the Interface
The trackball is great for navigating the phone's icon- and text-based interface, and the Danger OS is a breeze to figure out. You can also use the D-pad (which doubles as a speaker) to jump through longer lists. Overall we found the processor speedy, with no noticeable lag when switching apps, and the controls are adjustable and very responsive. The buttons on the front are large and easy to press, and we're big fans of the Sidekick's shortcut keys and combinations.
Call Quality
Since the screen isn't touch-sensitive, you have to flip the phone up to dial, but you can use the numbers along the top or the highlighted numerical pad. Reception isn't bad, depending where you are: We generally got up to 3 to bars in New York City, but in New Orleans, the phone usually showed 4 bars. Call quality is pretty low via the earpiece and speakerphone, since the on-board speakers are far too weak; callers on the other end said our voice sounded grainy and hollow.
The on-board email client is very easy to set up for use with POP3 and IMAP accounts, with presets for Windows Live, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and many more. Unfortunately for corporate folks, it lacks Microsoft Exhange support. (Early adopters should note that over-the-air firmware updates since the phone's launch have improved email support.)
We set up our Gmail account in less than a minute, but it the phone didn't refresh our inbox immediately refresh our inbox at first. After a few hours, we started getting emails soon after they hit the server. The LX supports push email only for the included T-Mobile account, though you can have your third-party email forwarded to your T-Mobile account to get your messages in real time.
While the client is easy to use and supports multiple account tabs, we prefer Yahoo and Gmail both have excellent mobile online interfaces via Web browser, which we preferred for viewing threaded conversations.
SMS/MMS and IM
SMS text messaging works extremely well, as does instant messaging via AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. These are easily the phone's most valuable features, thanks in part to the excellent keyboard and the crisp screen. One very welcome addition to the Sidekick interface is support for video messaging (MMS) -- a feature the iPhone 3G conspicuously lacks.
Pictures and Video
The 1.3-megapixel camera frankly isn't very good. Our outdoor test images were surprisingly grainy, with soft focus and drab color even in bright sunlight; our indoor shots were blurry and awash in noise. Video is also disappointing, at a mere 176 x 144 resolution, though it's reasonably smooth and responds quickly to lighting changes. The recorded sound isn't bad for narrations by the person holding the phone, but it only barely picks up sounds made by subjects more than half a dozen feet away.
Image Courtesy of T-Mobile
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
Specs
Basics
Size: 5.2 x 2.4 x 0.7 inches
Weight: 5.8 ounces
Included battery: 1540mAh Lion
Talk time: Up to 6 hours
Standby time: Up to 4 days
Band (frequency): 850 MHz;900 MHz;1800 MHz;1900 MHz
Top Phone Features
Messaging
Text messaging*
Fun
1.3 Megapixel camera
Games
Music player
Communication
Bluetooth® wireless technology
E-mail
Full QWERTY keyboard
Picture messaging*
Information
Swivel Screen
External caller ID
Personal Information Mgr
Assistants
Calendar
Phone book
Speed dial