#Tmobile sidekick cheap software#
#Tmobile sidekick cheap Pc#

The symbols are marked very small and are a bit hard to spot against the blue background to the keyboard. The keys themselves are round dots in a sea of blue background and because of the slide-up screen they are quite deeply recessed in relation to the side edges.Ĭharacters on the keys are marked in white, symbols in blue, and in some cases also embedded numbers in yellow. The keyboard comprises a QWERTY set and a number row. For such an unashamedly consumer focussed device I can’t understand why a 3.5mm connector was not used.

#Tmobile sidekick cheap Pc#

Meanwhile on the right edge there is a mini USB jack for mains power and PC connection, and a 2.5mm headset jack. On the bottom edge the left and right shoulder keys are the power switch and volume rocker. When you are on a voice call it toggles the speaker while the left shoulder key mutes a call. When the camera is active, for example, the right one captures a shot. Two on the left and right top edges have functions which vary depending on what application you are currently using. This edge also houses a huge navigation button whose centre has an alert area which will glow various colours at you to give you different kinds of notifications. From here you scroll around a carousel of animated icons to move through the applications on the device. The Jump key takes you to the main screen, (which in Sidekick-speak is called the Jump Screen). The former calls up whatever menu options are available within an application. On the left side of the front casing are Menu and Jump keys.

Call and End buttons flank this, while outside these again, at the top and bottom right sides of the device, are a Cancel and Done key. There is a mini trackball (think BlackBerry Pearl), that sits under your right thumb and is wheeled to get around within applications and menus. It still has a sideways on orientation, which makes it feel more like a games console than a mobile, and means you have to hold it in both hands to use the mini keyboard. However, Motorola has retained many of the other features that made the Sidekick unique. You simply slide the screen section upwards. But it is gone, and the new Sidekick Slide has a much more sedate way of getting to its keyboard. This mechanism was one of the things that made the Sidekick what it was. You pushed at the screen’s top right edge with a finger and it rather boisterously swivelled round 180 degrees to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. All previous Sidekicks have had a ‘flip and swivel’ screen. In the reworking of the Sidekick’s looks it has lost a real wow feature. Unfortunately, the plastic used for the casing is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. A black and blue livery replaces the black and silver of the Sidekick 3. Motorola has taken over the design from Sharp, and this has had a huge effect on look and feel. T-Mobile may be crowing about the Slide being the smallest, slimmest Sidekick yet, but the device is still big for a mobile phone at 60 x 110mm, 17mm thick and a hefty 150g. This means not only can you make diary changes and suchlike without fiddling with the Sidekick Slide itself, but you have a backup if your device gets lost – and one which can be downloaded to a replacement Slide. You can get to this information from any computer, and make edits or changes, which are themselves transferred back down to your Slide.

#Tmobile sidekick cheap software#

In both software and hardware terms the Sidekick Slide is similar to its predecessors, A key selling point of the Sidekick Slide is the ‘Web portal’.īasically everything you store on the Slide is automatically backed up to a password protected Web site. But T-Mobile clearly is smitten, and now brings the latest version, renamed the Sidekick Slide, over from the US. Too big, too clunky, too mid-range in specs, I always thought.Įarly in 2007 the Sidekick 3 didn’t bowl me over, but then I hadn’t been very impressed by earlier versions of the device, either. I’ve never been convinced by the ‘yoofy’ IM-generation oriented Sidekick.