Philip Berne snaps up T-Mobile's new Sidekick Slide, which slims down and loses the flip for a slider form.
Review summary of the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide:
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 The Sidekick will be an interesting phone to watch when T-Mobile goes 3G, but perhaps the carrier should leave the Slide behind on that journey. In sacrificing a half-inch length, T-Mobile has only shrunk the keyboard and display, and has not made a phone that feels smaller than the larger Sidekick LX. The Slide should have been the Sidekick RAZR, a thin, tight-fitting phone with a solid feel and near-invisible seams. Except for novelty, we can't see why T-Mobile chose the slider mechanism, especially on a phone named "Sidekick." In other ways, too, the Sidekick Slide fails to deliver. Multimedia capabilities lag behind competitors, and even the interface is starting to feel dated. Mostly, though, compared to recent competitors, the Sidekick has lost its competitive edge as a trendsetting messaging phone. Release: October 2007. Price: $250.
Pros: Smallest Sidekick yet. Screen dramatically improved from Sidekick 3. Great online address book.
Cons: Smaller size means smaller screen and keyboard, not a fair trade. Calls faded in and out. Lacks key multimedia features and accessories. EDGE networking is slow, lacks capabilities customers might enjoy in a Sidekick device.
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Full review of the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide:
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Design - Good
The main difference between the Sidekick Slide and all the other Sidekicks is in the name. This device slides open, instead of swiveling like the others, but we're not sure users will benefit from the different mechanism. We found the original flip to be fun, but we would have given it up for a significant reduction in size. Instead, the Sidekick Slide is barely smaller than the just-released Sidekick LX. The Slide is shorter, but the same height and thickness as the LX. In return for losing some length, the Slide also loses some significant screen real estate, and some width in the keys. It isn't a fair trade.
Beyond comparison to former Sidekicks, the Slide seems like it could have been designed better on its own. The screen is almost 2.75-inches diagonally, but you lose about a quarter-inch to a black frame. The slide mechanism is also looser than we like. It definitely wobbles more than we've seen on sliders like the Motorola Z6tv, a slider with a very tight mechanism. The keyboard on the Slide is less comfortable than other Sidekicks, thanks to slick, rounded keys that don't enough as much from the base. Perhaps the flip mechanism allowed for more headroom for the QWERTY?
Calling - Good
While calls on the Sidekick LX suffered from a significant buzzing problem, using the same SIM in our lower Manhattan office, the Sidekick Slide had no such difficulty. Calls still had problems. They suffered from a general digitized sound, and we had a few calls that dipped in and out, becoming inaudible for seconds at a time. We can't blame reception, as our Sidekick showed a consistent four out of five bars.
For calling features, the Sidekick Slide maintains the family's excellent address book handling, as well as its lack of advanced calling features. The address book is entirely accessible online. After importing your .csv file to T-Mobile Sidekick Web site, and perhaps cleaning up a few entries, the address book is loaded over the air to the Sidekick Slide. Its an efficient, elegant solution that keeps you from losing your contact list permanently and gives you access to an address book if you're away from your phone. Still, it doesn't quite make up for the lack of voice dialing, or the menu-heavy conference calling process.
Messaging - Good
The Sidekick family is starting to show its age in the messaging department, and the Slide is just a step too far down from what we would want in a messaging phone. Of course, it packs instant messaging for AOL, Yahoo and MSN (no Gtalk? ICQ?), manages SMS and MMS with ease, and can track multiple e-mail accounts. But most phones with a QWERTY keyboard, and that's a lot of phones these days, can do the same. So what distinguishes the Sidekick?
Well, it isn't the keyboard, at least not on the Slide. While we liked the keys on the new LX, the keys on the Slide are slick and low, and our fingers tended to butt up against the wall of the keyboard on the sides. Typing might be easier with lots of practice, but at first our fingers were too large for the keypad, and our hands, held firmly at the side grips, made seeing the lower keys more difficult.
Multimedia - Mediocre
There isn't much to recommend the multimedia experience on the Sidekick Slide. It has a music player, the same app as the Sidekick LX, and this works well, though it lacks features like an EQ or visualizer. There is no management software offered with the Sidekick, which is probably for the best, since T-Mobile isn't giving out free microSD cards with this one, either. You do get a pair of stereo headphones, and you'll need them, because T-Mobile has puzzlingly chosen a 2.5mm jack for the Slide, instead of the standard 3.5mm jack on the LX.
Otherwise, there is no video on the Sidekick Slide. No video recording with the camera. No playback of videos from the Web. Without a 3G network, T-Mobile really can't support advanced video offerings like Helio's iFilm access, or even Verizon's V Cast Mobile TV. But, we think these are the sorts of features that the Sidekick's audience will crave, so we definitely found the device lacking for their omission.
Web browsing - Good
The Sidekick Web browser is a capable app, and it had no difficulty chewing up our site and spitting it back out in a long, single-column stream. We would have liked a desktop view, especially considering how annoying it was to flick the trackball dozens of times to reach the bottom of the page. Instead, the trackball should allow for 2-D navigation, and should also accelerate as you scroll deeper through pages. Otherwise, T-Mobile might as well have included a trackwheel instead.
Still, every image came through clearly, and text was laid out properly on long pages. The browser handled the single-column format nicely, and we never found a page with jumbled text or a strange layout We would obviously like a faster network, and support for advanced Web technologies like Flash, but for an EDGE phone, the Sidekick browser works just fine.
Value
The Sidekick Slide is $100 cheaper than the Sidekick LX, though we thought that phone was overpriced. At $200, the Slide competes with phones like the new Pantech Duo, which seems appropriate to us. It also comes in at four times the cost of a Sidekick iD, though we're not sure if the better screen and longer list of features merit the difference. Drop the price of the Slide $50 more and we'd be happier.
Price and availability
The Sidekick Slide is available from T-Mobile for $250 with a contract agreement and an instant discount of $50. A mail-in rebate of $50 is available, when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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