A Sidekick guy uses the Sidekick 4G
Jun. 4th, 2011 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinAs mentioned in comments earlier, my new phone is a Sidekick 4G, T-Mobile and Samsung's stab at reviving the Sidekick brand in the post-Danger Hiptop era as an Android phone.
A disclosure: I used to work for Danger, and, like many Sidekick users, I was rather attached to the Sidekick platform. They were more capable devices than their celebrity-marketed image might have implied; their most notable hardware features were the best QWERTY keyboards ever put on a smartphone, big landscape-orientation keyboards with five full rows of keys.
I'd seen many people switch away from Sidekicks, either because they wanted better coverage than T-Mobile could manage in their area, because they just wanted something more up-to-date (the old Sidekicks never even had a touchscreen, relying on a D-pad and scroll wheel or trackball for navigation), or for some other reason. They almost always ended up missing that keyboard. So I held onto my Sidekick LX 2009 for as long as I could. But the old Sidekick/Hiptop relied for all of its data transactions on a back-end service, and Microsoft (which acquired Danger in 2008) shut that down at the end of May, so I had to move on. Having read some good reviews, I decided to get the Sidekick 4G.
I like it. After a couple of days, I'm still enjoying it. Most of the old Sidekick models were made by Sharp, and I'd been wondering whether Samsung could do as good a physical job of building a device of this type (especially since they couldn't use any of Danger's patents or other IP). The 4G in fact feels satisfyingly sturdy and also remarkably Sidekick-like. The keyboard is the best one I've seen on a modern smartphone; in fact, I think I like the clicky keys even more than I did the membrane keyboards on the last couple of Sharp/Danger Sidekicks, which were still very good.
All but one of the old-school Sidekicks had an unusual screen hinge (patented by Danger) in which the screen would swivel around 180 degrees in a horizontal plane and pop up at a slight angle. It was cool-looking, but did have a tendency to spring partly open in a user's pocket (on the later models that were small enough to go in a pocket), sometimes resulting in accidental pants-dialing. The 4G replaces this with a slider mechanism that elevates the screen by a few degrees as it slides open, preserving a characteristically Sidekick-esque open configuration. Of course, I don't yet know how durable this is, but it feels incredibly solid and sturdy; there's no give in the thing whatsoever, and it stays closed much more positively than the old hinge did. It does require a little more force to open, but that may be good.
The screen is now a touchscreen. It's a little smaller than the screens on many current Android phones, which probably keeps the manufacturing costs down, but may make some stock Android apps tricky to operate if your vision or hand-eye coordination are less than acute (they work fine, however). It's respectably-sized for a Sidekick. The phone is really designed to work in the classic landscape configuration with the keyboard exposed, but it also works all right with the screen closed. By default, the phone switches to portrait mode when you close the screen; there's also an orientation sensor, and you can set it to pay attention to that when closed. But it always locks into landscape when the keyboard's out, which makes good sense. The touchscreen fixes the old Sidekick's single worst usability problem, the awkwardness of dialing a phone number.
I didn't even realize it for the first day or so, but the button to the right of the keyboard is actually a tiny trackpad that functions much like the old Sidekick trackball, allowing fine navigation within text-editing windows. There is no separate d-pad, nor are there physical send and end buttons (which also helps eliminate the pants-dialing). The four buttons at the corners of the case are still there, but they're not exactly the Danger buttons, instead being more Android-esque in function.
Wifi support is, of course, a huge addition. The old Sidekicks never quite got that. There's wifi calling, too, though the standard feature still uses plan minutes. It does nicely eliminate the problem I used to have with spotty T-Mobile coverage in my house.
At least going by first impressions, battery life seems much, much better than with the older devices. It's always initially hard to tell how much of this is an illusion caused by tricky indicator displays, but it seems consistent with what other reviewers have found.
The Hiptop chooser-wheel interface is gone. Instead, the phone has a version of the standard Android launcher with some minor cosmetic tweaks, and a fairly typical assortment of mostly stock Android apps. The lower-left button is a "jump button" that brings up a fancy menu of recent app shortcuts.
Complaints:
The one thing I've had significant trouble with on the keyboard is that they added a dedicated button for Google-powered voice actions just to the left of the right shift key, and I keep hitting this by accident while typing. The voice actions actually sort of work with my voice; you can invoke apps and do some limited dictation (it's useless at understanding Jorie's voice, however). But I don't like the placement of the button. It's not a deal-breaker, though; I'm getting used to avoiding it. I also haven't figured out how to type accented characters on the keyboard, but I haven't done much reading of the documentation.
Some of the fine details of the keyboard interactions aren't quite right to me; I want the shift keys to select the symbols above the number keys, like on a typewriter, but you have to use ALT there like with the letter keys.
I really, really miss the old Sidekick platform's sound profile system. The main volume rocker on a Sidekick would not just control the ringer or media volume, but would actually choose between a finite number of editable sound profiles, which gave you control over sounds, volumes and vibrations associated with all the different types of alert. You could have it automatically switch between sound profiles at certain times of the day, and even give it a separate schedule for weekends. The phone could go silent at night and get audible again in the morning without user intervention. As far as I can tell, Android doesn't have anything like this, though I suppose there may be some app for it that I don't know about.
A disclosure: I used to work for Danger, and, like many Sidekick users, I was rather attached to the Sidekick platform. They were more capable devices than their celebrity-marketed image might have implied; their most notable hardware features were the best QWERTY keyboards ever put on a smartphone, big landscape-orientation keyboards with five full rows of keys.
I'd seen many people switch away from Sidekicks, either because they wanted better coverage than T-Mobile could manage in their area, because they just wanted something more up-to-date (the old Sidekicks never even had a touchscreen, relying on a D-pad and scroll wheel or trackball for navigation), or for some other reason. They almost always ended up missing that keyboard. So I held onto my Sidekick LX 2009 for as long as I could. But the old Sidekick/Hiptop relied for all of its data transactions on a back-end service, and Microsoft (which acquired Danger in 2008) shut that down at the end of May, so I had to move on. Having read some good reviews, I decided to get the Sidekick 4G.
I like it. After a couple of days, I'm still enjoying it. Most of the old Sidekick models were made by Sharp, and I'd been wondering whether Samsung could do as good a physical job of building a device of this type (especially since they couldn't use any of Danger's patents or other IP). The 4G in fact feels satisfyingly sturdy and also remarkably Sidekick-like. The keyboard is the best one I've seen on a modern smartphone; in fact, I think I like the clicky keys even more than I did the membrane keyboards on the last couple of Sharp/Danger Sidekicks, which were still very good.
All but one of the old-school Sidekicks had an unusual screen hinge (patented by Danger) in which the screen would swivel around 180 degrees in a horizontal plane and pop up at a slight angle. It was cool-looking, but did have a tendency to spring partly open in a user's pocket (on the later models that were small enough to go in a pocket), sometimes resulting in accidental pants-dialing. The 4G replaces this with a slider mechanism that elevates the screen by a few degrees as it slides open, preserving a characteristically Sidekick-esque open configuration. Of course, I don't yet know how durable this is, but it feels incredibly solid and sturdy; there's no give in the thing whatsoever, and it stays closed much more positively than the old hinge did. It does require a little more force to open, but that may be good.
The screen is now a touchscreen. It's a little smaller than the screens on many current Android phones, which probably keeps the manufacturing costs down, but may make some stock Android apps tricky to operate if your vision or hand-eye coordination are less than acute (they work fine, however). It's respectably-sized for a Sidekick. The phone is really designed to work in the classic landscape configuration with the keyboard exposed, but it also works all right with the screen closed. By default, the phone switches to portrait mode when you close the screen; there's also an orientation sensor, and you can set it to pay attention to that when closed. But it always locks into landscape when the keyboard's out, which makes good sense. The touchscreen fixes the old Sidekick's single worst usability problem, the awkwardness of dialing a phone number.
I didn't even realize it for the first day or so, but the button to the right of the keyboard is actually a tiny trackpad that functions much like the old Sidekick trackball, allowing fine navigation within text-editing windows. There is no separate d-pad, nor are there physical send and end buttons (which also helps eliminate the pants-dialing). The four buttons at the corners of the case are still there, but they're not exactly the Danger buttons, instead being more Android-esque in function.
Wifi support is, of course, a huge addition. The old Sidekicks never quite got that. There's wifi calling, too, though the standard feature still uses plan minutes. It does nicely eliminate the problem I used to have with spotty T-Mobile coverage in my house.
At least going by first impressions, battery life seems much, much better than with the older devices. It's always initially hard to tell how much of this is an illusion caused by tricky indicator displays, but it seems consistent with what other reviewers have found.
The Hiptop chooser-wheel interface is gone. Instead, the phone has a version of the standard Android launcher with some minor cosmetic tweaks, and a fairly typical assortment of mostly stock Android apps. The lower-left button is a "jump button" that brings up a fancy menu of recent app shortcuts.
Complaints:
The one thing I've had significant trouble with on the keyboard is that they added a dedicated button for Google-powered voice actions just to the left of the right shift key, and I keep hitting this by accident while typing. The voice actions actually sort of work with my voice; you can invoke apps and do some limited dictation (it's useless at understanding Jorie's voice, however). But I don't like the placement of the button. It's not a deal-breaker, though; I'm getting used to avoiding it. I also haven't figured out how to type accented characters on the keyboard, but I haven't done much reading of the documentation.
Some of the fine details of the keyboard interactions aren't quite right to me; I want the shift keys to select the symbols above the number keys, like on a typewriter, but you have to use ALT there like with the letter keys.
I really, really miss the old Sidekick platform's sound profile system. The main volume rocker on a Sidekick would not just control the ringer or media volume, but would actually choose between a finite number of editable sound profiles, which gave you control over sounds, volumes and vibrations associated with all the different types of alert. You could have it automatically switch between sound profiles at certain times of the day, and even give it a separate schedule for weekends. The phone could go silent at night and get audible again in the morning without user intervention. As far as I can tell, Android doesn't have anything like this, though I suppose there may be some app for it that I don't know about.
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 10:53 pm (UTC)Droid does have some sound profiles; they are accessible by a long press on the power button in most cases.
There are days where I miss my old Sidekick II; it was a decent critter despite what I felt were a few misgivings with the OS.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 01:49 am (UTC)On the Sidekick 4G the long-press-on-power menu lets you switch in and out of silent mode (which seems pretty typical for Android), but that's it for sound. (You do have the ability to set whether vibrate is active or not in silent mode.)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:06 am (UTC)It's frustrating, because there really are only three states that I want to be able to toggle between: totally silent, silent except for notifications, and full volume for everything.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:26 am (UTC)It's still got a nice keyboard for texting, but without the Danger service, the Danger apps would be poor hobbled things, and there would be no way at all to install new apps. At least it's cheap, contract-free.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 07:05 am (UTC)I haven't gotten around to buying it, but Locale is the one I have my eye on:
http://www.twofortyfouram.com/
It uses time, date, battery status, charging-status,and location (etc.) as clues to where you are and what you're doing (as programmed by you) and therefore decides to do such things like turn off the ringer (the software was inspired by a phone ringing in a courtroom leading to an upset judge and some harsh consequences), toggle some of the radios (so Wi-Fi flips itself on while you're at home and work, off when battery is low, on which charging) etc.
Android commands the external volume buttons are what they claim to be-- adjusting volume directly. But it's a nice thing about Android that it uses some context to adjust different volume sliders: Normally it's ringer volume, but it also does media-player volume if you have one running, and incoming-call volume when you're on a call.
It also seems to have two volumes for each-- one with headphones (As I often do) and one without.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-05 03:33 pm (UTC)I think the screen is actually the biggest one ever to appear on a Sidekick, at least in area. The bezel area still seems wide, but it's probably because I am comparing to the post-iPhone generation of devices whose front surfaces are almost all screen.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-07 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-09 06:45 am (UTC)However, typing on a software keybard on landscape mode is as good as the real thing.