Although it's not officially available yet, Oliver Thylmann has been poking around to find out just how Danger's HipTop device works. Here's what he found - along with his thoughts.
Some months ago, when I visited Danger.com, the site still had a flash animation explaining that Danger was just arround the corner - and it still is. That is, it's not here yet, but based on reports trickling in, Danger is peeking around that corner and readying itself to take center stage.
With review devices still being a scarce resource, I dug arround to find out how the device works, what it can do and how Danger is integrating and using their backend to make it all work. After completing the digging, I noticed that I'm getting more interested and not less, which of course is a good sign.
The T-Mobile SideKick will be the first device based on the Danger reference design named HipTop. The device is 116 mm wide, 65 mm high and 28 mm thick, with a 240 x 160 pixel 16-shade grayscale display. It comes with 16 MB of RAM and 12-chord polyphony based on the Beatnik Engine.
Lucky me, the manual for the T-Mobile SideKick appeared a while ago on U.S. regulatory organ FCC’s website, and holds some good clues as to what we can expect from the device. Among other things, the SideKick comes with a hands-free headset, a wrist strap and a USB cable. The screen swivels open sideways, revealing the keyboard under it. The USB cable seems to be there for software recovery, as diagnosed by Customer Support, and does not appear to have any other uses. If all goes well, you shouldn't even need it, as Danger can alert users of the SideKick/HipTop of new software updates which can be installed over the air. Such updates range from updating parts of the core operating system to applications on the device.
The device also has several buttons on the side, namely a power on/off button, Jump, Menu, a wheel and a back button. From the sound of it, a quite complete interface.
The first hint of something entirely new, excluding the new design, is the device's activation process, which is executed through the T-Mobile welcoming screen when the device is switched on for the first time. Here, you can create a new user, which will also create an e-mail address like username@tmail.com. In Germany, this will likely be t-email.de, which is the current mailing system, and if users are lucky, the SideKick will be able to make use of existing accounts.
Ringtones can be assigned to AIM buddies since, yes, the SideKick includes an AIM compatible IM tool, as well as to individual callers. For messaging, you can either use AIM, e-mail or SMS, all three of which are distinct applications, eligible for separate upgrades and to my current knowledge totally independent of one another. This also means that licensees of the HipTop reference design can decide which of these applications they want to ship with the device, while users will have a clearer view of costs. In Europe, SMS messages cost extra while e-mails might be part of a GPRS flat-rate, which makes the distinction important.
The Jump screen holds all of the user's applications, including Browser, AIM, Email, Phone, Phone Messages (sms), Address Book, Calendar, To Do, Notes, Camera and Games. The Menu button will give you a menu on any application you are currently using showing you the options you can set or things you can do.
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