Review of the Sidekick 3 (a big disappointment)

Fist of all, I have to say that I'm shocked by the almost unanimously positive online reviews of the new Sidekick 3. I can only assume that they were written by people who didn't have extensive experience with the Sidekick 2, and who were content to simply regurgitate T-Mobile's marketing collateral. Reading positive reviews of the Sidekick 3 has been like reading positive reviews of Matrix Reloaded. This review is written by someone who is (or was) a huge fan the Sidekick, and who has been using both the Sidekick 2 and 3 from the day they were each available.

I waited several weeks to write this review to make sure I had some real-world experience with the Sidekick 3. The first one I received was in some indeterminable way defective. About six hours after I started using it, while I was demoing it to someone, no less, the screen went completely black. I laughed at first, assuming I had found a software bug that would soon be fixed in an update, however after turning the device off and back on, soft resetting, and then hard resetting it, I wasn't laughing anymore. T-Mobile forced me to sacrifice hours of my life speaking with well-meaning but ultimately powerless customer service and support representatives on the phone, the details of which I will spare both of us. The upshot was that I paid a lot of money to have another Sidekick shipped to me right away since once I get my hands on a device, I can't rest until I've learned everything about it.

So now that I'm on my second Sidekick 3, and I've spend a few weeks with it in the field, I can honestly say that Danger got more wrong with the Sidekick 3 than they got right. To be fair, I'll start out with I think they got right:

• The keyboard. I didn't think it was possible, but the keyboard on the Sidekick 3 is actually better than the one on the Sidekick 2. The feedback is perfect, and the keys are just the right size and in just the right arrangement. I feel like I'd pretty much mastered the keyboard on the Sidekick 2, but I believe my typing speed has actually significantly improved since switching to the Sidekick 3.
• The MP3 player. I love iPods, but I also like variety and options, so I was very excited when I learned that the Sidekick 3 would have an MP3 player. It turned out to actually be a pretty decent piece of software. It does all the right things with ID3 tags, allowing you to browse your music by artist, album, genre, composer, and, of course, playlist. It supports two kinds of shuffle, has fairly decent navigation controls, and will even pause when you get an incoming call, then resume after you hang up. Well done.
• Expandable memory. If you're going to have an MP3 player (and a 1.3 megapixel camera), you need someplace to put all the related media. The Sidekick 3 has a MiniSD slot which, in theory, is great, though see below as to why this could have actually been handled much better.

Unfortunately, that's about all they got right with the Sidekick 3. Now for the considerably longer list of what they got wrong:

• First of all, the new Sidekick 3 has a much cheaper feel to it than the Sidekick 2. Almost everything is plastic these days, so I don't fault it for that, but I do fault it for being very cheap feeling plastic. It looks and feels far less robust than the Sidekick 2. The screen sits slightly up above the rest of the phone and has too much play to it, both when it's open and closed. My Sidekick 2 has been dropped, tossed, sat on, squished, and has been opened and closed thousands of times, and it still feels newer than my brand new Sidekick 3.
• And speaking of the screen, Danger (or perhaps I should say Sharp, since they manufacture the Sidekick hardware) completely screwed up the flip screen on the Sidekick 3. The flip screen was always the trademark of the Sidekick, and always had a good, solid feel. But the flip screen on the Sidekick 3 is awful. The back of the screen has two plastic bars which look like they are a part of the latch system, one of which actually sometimes catches on the upper left-hand button when the screen flips open. Unreal. I can already see where the plastic has taken a beating from opening and closing the screen. I've even seen the screen catch on the button and actually get caught mid-flip. I eventually found a way to reliably open and close the screen so that it doesn't catch on the button, but the process still isn't nearly as nice as the Sidekick 2. (For those Sidekick 3 users out there who doubt me, go unpack your old Sidekick 2 and open and close them a few times -- you'll instantly see how much better the old design was.)
• I really don't know why they replaced the old roller with the new trackball. After using the roller for a few weeks (and moving the sensitivity all the way up), I guess I find it reasonably effective, but there doesn't seem to be much point to it. The lighting effects are very cool, and the fact that you can navigate menus horizontally as well as vertically is interesting, but the old Sidekick had primarily vertical menus, and you always had the D-pad, so I'm not sure why they bothered to make the change. Maybe there will be some apps in the future which will benefit from the trackball, but I personally find the old roller easier to grip, faster to use, and generally more effective.
• Yes, I like he MP3 player, but I really don't like the fact that the USB interface on the device is only 1.1. I bought a 2GB MiniSD card, connected my new Sidekick 3, started transferring MP3s, and then picked up my Nintendo DS Lite to play Mario for over an hour waiting for the transfer to complete. In my personal opinion, MP3 players require USB 2.0 or Firewire interfaces. Or at the very least, the device should provide easy access to the media card so I can use my own USB 2.0 interface. In order to access the SD card on the Sidekick 3, you have to remove the back of the handset which is not nearly as easy has it should be. I sure hope my taste in music doesn't change anytime soon, and I don't get tired of the 20 albums I have on my Sidekick 3 because I don't have time to refresh them.
• Another thing I think pretty much all MP3 players need is a standard headphone jack. I have a couple of pairs of headphones that I really like (noise canceling) which I can't use because the Sidekick 3's headphone jack is 1/16" rather than the standard 1/8". Yes, I know I can get an adapter, but that makes for a pretty clunky solution for something that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. I think the bottom line is that the Sidekick 3's MP3 player is more to supplement your existing real MP3 player rather than completely replace it.
• Whenever I upgrade a wireless device, I expect two things right off the bat: better battery life, and a better signal than I got with the old model. There's no reason in the world why battery and antenna technology should be moving backwards. With the new Sidekick 3, not only are neither better, but they are both actually worse. I got in the habit of charging my Sidekick 2 every night just in case I needed to have an especially long conversation the next day, but typically, the Sidekick 2's battery would get me through two days of some moderate IMing, a couple very short conversations (I don't talk on the phone much), and a few emails. The Sidekick 3, on the other hand, needs to be charged every night or it will be completely dead by morning. And if you listen to some music and actually make a few phone calls during the course of a day, it might not even make it until bedtime. Anyway you slice it, that's very bad. And so is the new Sidekick 3's antenna. Most Sidekick 3 users probably won't notice this since they probably moved their SIM cards from their Sidekick 2s to their Sidekick 3s (meaning the Sidekick 2 can no longer receive a signal), but I actually made it a point to have both operational simultaneously to compare signal strength. Once again, the Sidekick 2 did better than the Sidekick 3. The difference is not drastic, but for places where you would normally only have one bar, and now you have none, that's drastic enough.

Of course, there are several other new features which are supposed to make the Sidekick 3 better which, in my opinion, really don't:

• New form factor. I do like that the Sidekick 3 is slightly smaller than its predecessor, however the cheapness of the Sidekick 3 combined with the fact that the shoulder buttons got harder to press when the screen is up, and all the other buttons got harder to locate and press as well, makes the design of the Sidekick 2 superior.
• The application menu is hierarchical now. This is one I'm really pretty ambivalent on. I use keyboard shortcuts to get to most apps anyway, so I don't really care how they are organized. I could see much more use for this feature if you could organize your applications into custom folders or some such metaphor, but you can't.
• Backgrounds. I can't believe they even bothered to implement this "feature". One of the big criticisms of the Sidekick 2 was that you couldn't customize your wallpaper which every other phone in the world supports. The Sidekick 3 now lets you choose between four pre-packaged wallpapers with very hip names like Liquid, Madison, Rodeo, and Surface, but of course, you still can't actually create your own. So if you were hoping to replace those very fashionable cartoon Hiptop users with pictures of your children, no dice.
• Bluetooth. If you just have to have a Bluetooth headset, then you'll appreciate the Sidekick 3's new Bluetooth support. Personally, I don't like Bluetooth headsets. I think the burden of having to keep your headset charged and having to travel with another AC adapter outweigh the benefits of wirelessness. Of course, that's not the Sidekick's fault, so I can't count that against it. However, I can count against it the fact that I can't transfer files between my computer and my Sidekick via Bluetooth. Obviously I wouldn't want to transfer MP3s (if I wanted the process to be slow, I'd just the USB 1.1 interface), but it would be nice to be able to transfer notes, small images, etc. If you're going to advertise Bluetooth support, it should support more than just Bluetooth headsets and vCards. Besides, I can't imaging how abysmal the battery life would be if I left Bluetooth turned on.
• EDGE support. EDGE stands for Enhanced Data (rates) for GSM Evolution which is supposed to make 2G data services faster. Personally, I have noticed zero difference between the Sidekick 2s data rates, and the Sidekick 3s. Am I supposed to call T-Mobile and ask them to turn it on? Does it cost extra? Is the air in San Francisco not conducive to high-speed wireless data transfer? What am I missing?
• 1.3 megapixel digital camera. If only picture quality were as easy as adding pixels. The Sidekick 2 took crappy little pictures, and now the Sidekick 3 takes crappy big pictures. Photography is about capturing light, and capturing light is about optics, not CCD size. Frankly, I don't consider the new camera to be much of an improvement at all.

So in case you couldn't tell, I'm thoroughly disappointed with the new Sidekick 3, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why there haven't been more negative reviews out there. Maybe I have unrealistically high expectations. Maybe I've just been in a bad mood for the last month. Even though I predict that Sharp will be manufacturing an updated version of the Sidekick 3 within a year, I'm recharging my Sidekick 2 to hold me over until I find a new wireless solution.

Comments

[anonymous]

Dear Christian,

First off I disagree with almost every thing you've said in your article. I've had my Sidekick 3 for about a month now and I love it. Your being a pestamist. You say the new sidekick 3 looks cheaper then the sideick 2 your way wrong there. It feels fragile thats it. You shouldn't be fooling around with a four hundred dollar object anyways. That's just plain common sense. I do agree with you about the battery life and the flipping of the sidekick 3. But thats all my complaint of it. You also complain about bad service with the phone well you can't be too surprised there. If you have t-mobile then you should know all there phones have crappy service.(No offense to T-mobile) Also the old scroll looks very cheap adding onto the cheapness of the sidekick 2. I think mabye you should look into what your buying before you but it and then bitch about it to every one.

[Christian Cantrell]

Anonymous,

I actually don't think it's ok for a cell phone whose target market is teens to young adults (who tend to be active) to not be constructed well. And as far as the signal goes, I had both a Sidekick 2 and a Sidekick 3 functioning simultaneously for a short time, and the Sidekick 2 had a stronger signal than the Sidekick 3. I know T-Mobile has crappy service, but that's no excuse for a newer phone to have a weaker antenna than its predecessor.

Anyway, I'm glad you're happy with your Sidekick 3. There are certainly things I love about mine (like the keyboard), but I still maintain that overall, the Sidekick 3 is a worse phone than the Sidekick 2.

[Edward]

I just got my first sidekick ever about 4 days ago. Yes the sidekick do have some real problems. There is no alarm clock which feel is just completely wrong. Also the EDGE is faster than the sidekick 2. The backgrounds can be changed, there is a website which you can create and download your own backgrounds, or backgrounds that other people have created. www.sk3themes.com True the sidekick 3 is very poorly put together, it still works. Anyways if you don't like it than don't use it, why don't you wait for the sidekick 4 to come out in 2008.

[Brandice]

Thank You for your review... I previously had a Sk 1+ and sadly lost it and got stuck with a cheap to go phone. Finally I decided to upgrade and couldnt decide which model was better... guess I will be getting SK 2 from e-bay! Thanks again!

[Bev]

I read many bad comments about sk3, and I jst wonder if tmobile will do something about them to fix all our sk3 disfunctions, if they will/can take all their crappy sk3 back and give us a better and improved one. I know that this sounds like something that will never happen, but I strongly believe that they should do something about this situation, because our high expensed for sk3 should reach our expectation of the quality of the phone, especially if its supposed to be a better and newer version of sk2.

[meeeee]

the alarm clock function can be activated by using the time traveler app. in the catalog. You can set multiple alarms for many pre-labeled events like "wake up" or "party" or "food", etc. total cost is $4.99. which isn't much considering how useful this has proven to be.

[andy]

Hi im from germany and i bought a sidekick3 a few days ago.im very disappointed too,because of the fact that there is no videoplayer and i cant use my mp3s as ringtone which every other cellphone does!!!!ill try to give it back to the tmobile shop if it works.

[andy]

Hi im from germany and i bought a sidekick3 a few days ago.im very disappointed too,because of the fact that there is no videoplayer and i cant use my mp3s as ringtone which every other cellphone does!!!!ill try to give it back to the tmobile shop if it works.

[crizzy]

you suck....i cant beleave you complained about the head phone jack even though you can get a $1 tiny adapter you lazy fat slob.

[responding to crizzy]

Wow Crizzy, were you dropped as a child? Let all that anger out, it must be killing you inside. Take a few deep breaths...

[bananas]

ok, i agree that the camera isnt very good, but if you want quality pictures why are you using a phone?

[mikey p]

overall i agree with you, however..In my opinion the signal difference between the two is tremendous. the sidekick 3 gets the shittiest service of any phone ive had. i have friends constantly complainignt hat they call and it goes straight to my voicemail. and ity would be nice if i could make a ringtone out of the music i put on my device instead of havign to settle for tmobiles crappy tones, or downloading rap or numetal. fuck the sidekick 3, it looks nice, feels cheap, way overpriced, im thinking about selling it on ebay and downgrading back to my 2.

[mr groove]

i agree w/ you 100%. i just got mine back from service & they didn't send me back the back cover. douche bags! so what phone did u switch to?

[Choy]

Wondering if I can get some help. I bought a sk3 for my daughter's birthday two weeks ago. she has had a sk2 for years and has been crazy for a sk3 since it was released. Two nights ago we were wallking through the mall (which was uncrowded, quiet, no large crowds bumping into us, and the screen suddenly developed a large ink blot like splotch. It won't go away. We took it back and were told that we had damaged it, and there is no recourse since we didn't get (and weren't offered) insurance. Not clear if the insurance would cover anyway. If I had not been with her, I would have questioned her story-that she must have thrown the phone down and jumped on it-but I was there! We were just walking along and the phone was in a case on her belt the whole time!!!!
Can anyone help???

[cyn]

Hey everyone! I live in Australia, and I've been mad about getting a Sidekick (or Hiptop as they are called here) ever since they came out last year. I've been reading up on the Internet about Sidekicks - comparing II and III and these reviews totally clarify what choice I should make. I've always had my eye on the II - for some reason I think it looks more reliable than the III, not so flimsy and cheap. Waiting around to get one, major drawback is the PRICE - AU$589. And I don't care about the camera - have a great Panasonic DMC-FX07 which is awesome - any aspiring photographer go check it out on a Panasonic site or something. Thanks for all the help on the reviews! I have definitely made up my mind now... SK2 forever!!!

[Lys]

I have never in my life read a better review on the sidekick3. Everyone ive spoken to about it has preached their life that it is better than the 2 and ive always laughed. I had one sidekick 2. lasted for over a year. beat the heck out of it and was still in almost perfect condition. ive already went through 3! sidekick3s and have had trouble with all of them. not to mention everything that you said about them i TOTALLY agree with everything you said. great job!

[Nicole T]

I wish i would have found this page before I got this phone. It has been nothing but trouble since i got it.I had it for less than 2 weeks and i'm on my 2nd one. The screens look like they are going to blow out at any second. The screen constantly look "shakey" like it doesnt know weather to stay on or go off. I've been on the phone more with customer care more than i've talked to any one else. While on the phone you get a high pitched noise. The reception sucks. The camera is HORRIBLE. it looks like its snowing across my screen. I read the owners manual 2 times so i know how to use the dang thing.DID I MENTION THE RECEPTION SUCKS SO BAD ON THIS THIN?. You'd better carry the charger around with you or have a car charger cuz your going to need it. My battery is almost dead after 5pm and thats after its been charged all night. I work from 830-5pm so its not like i can talk on it all day. Needless to say I'm not happy with this phone. Tech support is no help at all. All they want you to do is a master reset (@,0,1 at the same time) doesnt fix any thing at all. I should have got a DASH

[james]

DUDE YOUR A REALLY NEGETIVE PERSON if you hate the phone so much go get a new one and quit bitchin bout how bad it is!

[LadyyyWhoWantsASidekick3]

Wow. Never in my life have I read a more interesting article then the one above. I am confused about what to do now. A couple of days ago I found myself wishing for the sidekick 3, but after reading this article Im not so sure what to do. I could use some help. =] Im not sure how old some of these articles are and if I'll even get a response, but I'll just wait to see the outcome. So can some one help me decide, please?? I would like to know about the camera thing... is it true. Does the camera have frames and effects you can add.? And what about the ringtones. Are they lame.? lol. And what about those cartoon people, are they always your background..?? Can you change them, custimize them.? So I've heard that the mp3 player is good, is it really.? So you see I need some help. Ive never owned a sidekick, not 1 [if there even was a one], not 2. Im hoping that the SK3 will be a good start. And that I will fall in cell phone love with it, and that will tempt me to buy the 4th[ if there even is going to be one.??] So please help. =] Feel free to e-mail.. =]

LadyyyWhoWantsASidekick3

heartsforyou13@yahoo.com

[J]

Ok, all phones have their ups and downs, its really not worth writing a long ass review on it. And, with the sidekick 3, you can design your own backgrounds, theres a lot of places to do it, and t mobile even has a page where you can "pimp your sidekick". And the whole blue tooth thing? (Not sure if this is just Cali) but in 2008, theres a new law on driving while talking on a cell phone while driving, so you can get a hands free and talk with that, cuz thats legal, I've had some of the best phone, and i've had some of the crappiest, but i don't diss practically every single thing i hate about it, its a phone, get over it, or buy another model.

[Ashleigh]

I LOVE MY SIDEKICK3!!

It is honestly the best phone i've ever had. And i love it even more now that i know i can get rid of the hideous cartoon people.

The camera doesn't have effects or frames, but you may be able to download an application so you can do that sort of thing. I don't know.

The battery isn't the best, but i'm on it pretty much all day and it always makes it trhough the day and night when i go out.

Its the best phone for me, it has everything i need.

Don't listen to everyone saying all this bad stuff about them. THEY ARE AWESOME!

[LadyyyWhoWantsASidekick3]

thanks tons.. =] your right its great. i love love love it.!!!!!!!!!!! maybe its beacuse im not so technical about the battery and stuff. =] thanks so much for the help!

[Mary]

I have a sidekick 3... and I'm on my second one... even though I get mad at it when it looses signal or the battery goes dead... but I don't blame the battery... I'm always texting... overall... I like it... its not so bad... suits me well... can anyone tell me how to get rid of them cartoon people please!!!

Krazigurl251@yahoo.com

[LadyyyWhoWantsASidekick3]

krazigurl,
google sidekick themes and youll find backgrounds that will get rid of the cartoon people. but does anyone know how to make an mp3 song my ringtone.??

[LadyyyWhoWantsASidekick3]

krazigurl,
google sidekick themes and youll find backgrounds that will get rid of the cartoon people. but does anyone know how to make an mp3 song my ringtone.??