Way back in August of 2002, T-Mobile announced they’d be offering the very first Sidekick handheld cell phone and Internet device. It’s now August of 2008, six years later and T-Mobile has made available a brand new Sidekick–the seventh in a line of handhelds that have seen a fair amount of success, both in North America and in Europe.
The original Sidekick was known to its developers at Danger, Inc. as the “Hiptop” but would be rebranded in certain markets as the “Sidekick.” That original device was quite (understandably) primitive at the time. It had a black and white screen, no camera (though one could plug in to the headphone jack) and the screen flipped, unlike any cell phone anyone had seen back in those ancient times.
Flash forward to July of 2008 to find the world obsessed with the iPhone. The iPhone could be described as a Sidekick on steroids. Like every model of Danger’s device, the iPhone allowed you to surf the Internet, check your email, play media and more. While the Sidekick 3, iD, LX and Slide all fell short of the truly amazing features of the iPhone, to many (especially kids) the Sidekicks were a more economical alternative to what many called “The Jesus Phone.” After all, the Sidekick iD would cost customers just $99 in the US, with a contract.
Of course, July 11, 2008 rolls around and the 3G iPhone is made available with the 8GB model running customers just $100 more than the Sidekick iD and it could do so much more than any of the Sidekick models. Well, that’s not entirely true.
Less than a month after the iPhone was loosed into the hands of mobile phone users around the world, T-Mobile made available their latest Sidekick for $50 cheaper than the base model iPhone–costing just $149 in the US, with contract. Without a contract, it was priced at $300, which was substantially cheaper than the $600 contract-free price Apple and AT&T were asking.
While it was true that this new Sidekick (dubbed, simply, the “Sidekick”–no fancy nickname or anything) missed most of the big bells and whistles of the iPhone, it also included a few things iPhone users around the world were (and still are) missing, too.
1) Stereo Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support. This included file transfer and control of music playback from any A2DP Bluetooth headset. This was a big deal to see missing from the iPhone. It was the next logical step to take with Bluetooth technology in many people’s minds.
2) MMS messaging. While many argue that MMS is on it’s way out, the ability to send pictures to other cell phones was still missed by many iPhone users.
3) A MicroSD slot (upgraable to 4GB). While many iPhone-users think there is no comparison between the storage of an 8GB or 16GB capacity iPhone and a maxed-out 4GB Sidekick, some users look at the iTunes-free ability to add more media to the Sidekick as a good thing.
4) Instant Messaging that stays open in the background. There is an odd failing in the iPhone in that it’s not able to run apps in the background. The Sidekick has always been capable of doing this easily.
5) This is the big one: Video recording. While you can’t exactly use it as a portable DVR, you can use it as a low-end camcorder for shooting short clips and then playing them back or sending them to friends and family (or uploading them to the web). The sad thing is that the iPhone can also do this, but Apple chooses to not allow the functionality. Mobile-media-posting service Qik released a video back in June 2008, of their app running on a jailbroken first generation iPhone.
Sure, the iPhone is still a thousand times more elegant than any Sidekick model, but what good is elegance when you can’t do stuff as basic as shoot video or, you know, feel the keyboard.
