The resurrection of the Sidekick emanated from left field, after the trendy texting machine seemed to have drifted into the witness protection program for a significant amount of time. Well, the Sidekick 4G is here, and we're certain that it's the best Sidekick yet. Not only did Samsung retain the tried and true messaging-happy form factor, but the phone can tap into T-Mobile's HSPA+ speeds and it's fortified with Android 2.2. Samsung also stuffed a quicker 1GHz Hummingbird processor into the Sidekick 4G, and the phone receives a front-facing VGA camera for Qik video chats when the fingers have keeled over from abusing the phone's new and improved QWERTY keyboard.
The Sidekick 4G is also the first of its ilk to feature a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, which made our navigation experience all the more enjoyable. The phone is also no slouch when it comes to multimedia, thanks to T-Mobile TV, Slacker Radio, YouTube, Android Market, in-browser Flash support, and Samsung's Media Hub. Although the Sidekick 4G's 3.2-megapixel main camera left a lot to be desired and we experienced some lagging within the phone's performance, the Sidekick 4G proved itself as the most capable QWERTY warrior to date, and will certainly find itself into the hands of teens with eager fingers nationwide.
Design
Following in the typical Sidekick tradition, the Sidekick 4G is not a compact device, especially in this day and age. The phone resides on the bulky side of the spectrum in terms of thickness, but that's because its signature feature lurks beneath, waiting to be violated by rabid fingers with "LOL", "TTYL", and emoticons on their mind. Yes, a good portion of the Sidekick 4G's raison d'être is its high-quality flip-out QWERTY thumbboard, which is further improved for 2011. We've seen a fair number of QWERTY phones this year, but the Sidekick 4G's keyboard is hard to beat. Keys are spaced out for plenty of texting real estate, and we get convenient shortcut keys for smilies, Voice Search, and several ALT commands.
Furthermore, the Sidekick has a Jump key that can be used in combination with any letter on the QWERTY thumbboard for assigning quick actions, so the entire phone can be customized at the drop of a finger. Samsung also migrated over the secondary navigational control, though the original track ball has been replaced with a BlackBerry-like optical tracking pad. The sensitivity was decent, but we found its existence to be questionable, given the fact that the Sidekick 4G is equipped with a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen. We're not talking iPhone Retina or Samsung Super AMOLED quality, but the Sidekick 4G's screen will hold up against select Droids and other roadwarriors. The concoction of a sizable touchscreen and full QWERTY thumbboard made the Sidekick 4G even more powerful than it ever was, and we found that it was easier than ever to fire off texts with ferocious accuracy.
Rounding out the Sidekick 4G's architecture, the phone has a 3.5mm audio jack, volume control, and Power/Lock button located along the left side. It will take some practice to avoid hitting these controls while flipping out the screen, so beware. In addition to the Jump key, the Sidekick 4G has Home, Menu, and Back buttons along the sides when held horizontally. A 1500mAh CANON BP-511 battery and 2GB MicroSD card slot hideout beneath the back panel, along with the lens for the 3.2-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, the camera lacks a flash, but for the most part, the Sidekick 4G kicks some major butt on the design frontier.
Software and Interface
Part of what makes the T-Mobile Sidekick dynasty a breed of its own is the custom Sidekick experience that is exclusive to the phone. Rather than a TouchWIZ, Sense, or MOTOBLUR type experience, the Sidekick 4G gives us its own interface, fortified by Android 2.2 and supervised by a 1GHz Hummingbird processor. The phone offers WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and GPS for connectivity, and our experience was not far removed from other Samsung phones we've seen in the recent past. We get 7 Home screens with the ability to adorn each one with a plentitude of widgets, folders, or shortcuts, many of which are prone to live-updating for the latest news.
Of course we get the Android drop-down menu with Notifications, and Samsung offers a handful of colorful themes to dress up the screen of the Sidekick 4G. We will say that the Sidekick 4G was not as snappy as other phones with similar processors, and it lagged in certain areas, even when swiping between Home screens. The more background junk you disable, the better, and we recommend taking out the trash early on in this phone's career.
Internet
Samsung does not skimp on the Sidekick 4G's internet experience, as we're given a full browsing experience rife with Flash 10.1 support for playing videos within web pages. The Sidekick 4G supports pinch-to-zoom, double-tap-to-zoom, and allowed us to use the optical track pad in order to fine-tune our navigation. We were impressed with the Internet performance on the Sidekick 4G, as it enabled us to keep open windows in a scrollable bar and assign pages to any of our Home screen. But it was the productive force brought about by the full QWERTY that really made our Internet experience shine. Inputting the same character multiple times on a virtual keyboard is enough to catalyze on-site hair removal, but the Sidekick 4G's keyboard let us fly through web addresses and Google searches effortlessly.
Multimedia and Productivity
The soul and DNA of a Sidekick resides at the core of its messaging capabilities, and the Sidekick 4G showed up the competition by offering Group Text, which let us participate in SMS Text threads with numerous members. We could create groups and save them for quick mass-texting action, but that wasn't all. The Sidekick 4G had a Sticky Text Message box that could be customized with our favorite text threads for quick access. So, when we were in the midst of an LOL fit, we could save the conversation on a Home page in the Sticky widget (what a dirty sounding thing) for future accessibility. We also had T-Mobile's Cloud Text for instant messaging, and of course the Sidekick 4G could handle video chat with other Qik-enabled contacts. Let's also not forget about the Buddies Now widget—a Rolodex of favorite contacts—that seems to make its way onto every Samsung smartphone these days. The Sidekick 4G is a messaging powerhouse, and few will come close to topping it in that respect.
Though the Sidekick 4G's legacy is its messaging magic, the Sidekick 4G can handle multimedia like some of the best out there. The phone has an accelerometer for 3D gaming, so we had no issues downloading the latest content from the Android market and going to town. The phone also comes preloaded with Media Room, a hub for music, videos, movies, YouTube, T-Mobile TV and Slacker Radio, with a full search function in order to track down more content. We liked Media room because it combined our own pictures, videos, and music into easy to access compartments, more like a centralized hub for all things entertainment. The Sidekick 4G even came with Thinkfree Office, allowing us to work on Word and Office documents using the friendly QWERTY. Almost anything you can find on a high-end smartphone will be available on the Sidekick 4G, and that's what makes this device such a gem.
Call Quality/Battery Life
The Sidekick 4G continues to kick butt with an impressive SONY NP-BG1 battery performance, courtesy of its 1500mAh rechargeable pack. After 24 hours with moderate usage and an overnight standby, our Sidekick 4G review unit exhibited 53% life, which is not too shabby compared to the typical smartphone that is tapped out by dusk.
In addition, the phone proceeded to make crisp and clean calls, even though we were not connected to a native T-Mobile tower. Usually we have gripes about T-Mobile phones, but the Sidekick 4G seemed to sift out background noise and provide quality audio during our tests.
Camera
The Sidekick 4G's Achilles heel is its 3.2-megapixel camera, which lacks a flash. The phone is capable of capturing 720 x 480 widescreen standard-definition video clips that exhibited mediocre quality, but the sound recording was better than most phones we've seen. For 3.2-megapixel images, the quality was not bad, but we had to make sure we shot in specific Scene modes that were tailored to the environment in order to get the best results. Also, the camera could not do low light at all, unless we shot in Night mode, which ran the risk of blur due to the slower shutter speed. The Sidekick 4G's Gallery is identical to other recent Samsung phones with Android, making it super easy to share pictures and videos on the go.
Sidekick 4G – infoSync Diagnosis
The Sidekick is back and it kicks more butt than ever before. If you are a texting teen or find yourself longing for a decent QWERTY, then you should not overlook the Sidekick 4G. This phone is every bit as capable of some of the higher-end smartphones like the Galaxy S 4G, only it's architecturally geared for the diehard keyboard abuser.
The Sidekick 4G also exhibited a great SAMSUNG SLB-07A battery performance, made clean calls, and provided plenty of multimedia to pass the time while waiting for responses such as "LOL", "TTYL", or "ROFL". The phone offers plenty of shortcuts, courtesy of the customizable Jump Cut button, and we had an optical track pad handy for fine-tuning our full Internet or basic interface navigation experience even further.
The Sidekick 4G does skimp on the camera, and at times we found it to be more sluggish than the higher-end smartphones in its price range, but overall, Samsung camcorder battery and T-Mobile have a winner here. The most powerful Sidekick has been released, and the best part is that users get to take advantage of its speedy HSPA+ connection. Long live the Sidekick!
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