T-Mobile Sidekick

Performance of T-Mobile Sidekick

Design: 7 Features: 7 Performance: 7 Surfing the Internet on the Sidekick is a surprisingly good experience, thanks to the combination of a high-speed, GPRS connection and some compression technology on Danger's Data Services Framework. Web pages load about as fast as you'd expect from a standard dial-up connection, and articles are fit to the screen--you can view about 11 lines of text in a small font. We found the Web experience to be on a par with or even better than that of Handspring's Treo 300, which uses Sprint's 3G network.

Upend the Sidekick to use it as a phone.	Alternate method: Plug it in and dial on up.

The IM experience via AIM is even more impressive. The built-in keyboard makes it easy to type messages, and responses appear as quickly as they would with a dial-up connection on a desktop computer. You can have up to 10 chats simultaneously, and the Sidekick offers a full range of buddy-list-management features, including the ability to assign certain ring tones and light tones to specific buddies. Hopefully, other IM services, such as MSN or Yahoo, will become available.

As we noted earlier, don't expect much from the camera attachment, which snaps color pictures at a meager 120x90 resolution. Conveniently, you can store up to 36 images in your device gallery on your Web-portal page, which also holds your contacts. The Sidekick automatically sends pictures to the device gallery once you take them.

Can I borrow a cup of sugar or a picture of a flower?	You can do a mess of messaging using AIM.

Phone performance is a mixed bag. Using T-Mobile's GSM/GPRS service in San Francisco, we had a generally good experience. The Sidekick doesn't have a speakerphone, but if you're in a quiet room and you jack up the volume, you can hear voicemail and callers through the speaker without holding the unit up to your ear. However, we found that it was sometimes tough to hear callers when we were outside, as traffic and other background noises impinged on our conversations. That said, once we used a headset, callers' voices sounded loud and clear; they said that we sounded just fine, as well.

Battery life is acceptable but less than stellar, particularly in the standby department, where we were able to achieve only slightly more than two days, compared to T-Mobile's rated standby time of 60 hours. We hit the rated talk time of 3 hours, but you should be aware that using the data services a reasonable amount during the day will sap your talk-time minutes--you'll definitely want to recharge the unit at night. In other words, it's a good idea to keep the charger close at hand. Luckily, it isn't too big, but you wouldn't want to keep in your pocket.