The Sidekick LX 2009: smart phone or smarter netbook?

Decades from now, when our descendants' implanted heads-up displays are implanted in their heads, and their instant messages and points-of-presence (phone service? what's that?) are controlled directly by their brainwaves, they'll look back on all of us who painstakingly suffered through the smartphone era, wondering how we managed to get so worked up over hunks of silicon and plastic. And I, very old by then and loudly eccentric, will shake my bony fists and yell at the whippersnappers:

"BECAUSE SOME OF THEM WERE FUN, DAMMIT! NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!"

And I will be thinking of the Sidekick LX 2009. Also, inexplicably, popcorn.

Disclaimer Of Unusual Size: I've been a Sidekick owner since the II, and I've reviewed every model since the monochrome original. (I will not be thinking back on that one in my dotty dotage; it was as big as a bar of soap and nearly as hard to hold. And I loved it dearly, then.) I was there for the slick-key misfire that was the III, and the cheaply made downmarket ID; I cheered when the LX brought the sexy back, and I sighed when it became clear that the fickle finger of fabulousness had moved along to iPhones and multitouch screens, which I still loathe with all my smudgy heart.

And when in February 2008, Microsoft bought Danger, the company behind the Sidekick, I held my breath, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out what Redmond wanted with my indispensable everything-but-a-phone. (That's right; I have another phone for simply phoning and a Sidekick for Web, alarm clocks, addresses, notes, calendars, IM, and a hundred other little tasks throughout the day. Those who are familiar with T-Mobile's voice coverage outside of major metropolitan areas will need no further explanation.)

I still have no idea why Microsoft bought Danger. The Sidekick interface has been refined, but not substantially changed since the last iteration. Live Search is nicely integrated into the handset after its rollout to earlier handsets a few months back, and T-Mobile says that Exchange Active Sync support is right around the corner. But this delicious, full-QWERTY handset, with its unmistakable swivel screen, isn't some adopted stepchild to Windows Mobile. Instead, it's the spiritual heir to the Zaurus, arguably Sharp's finest hour and certainly its finest mobile device.

The hardware

T-Mobile sells the Sidekick and Microsoft/Danger develops it, but this is Sharp's baby. The keypad, which is built to be touch-typable by thumbs when the gadget is cradled in both hands, is by virtue of the handset's unusual configuration the biggest and best around. The handset itself is 5.1" x 2.4" x 0.6", a sliver smaller than the previous LX; the keyboard constrains further shrinkage, but the device has slimmed down another sliver and feels more svelte thanks to new curves along the edges. The LX 2009 weighs in at 5.7 ounces, also a sliver smaller than previous models.

Sharp makes, arguably, the best mobile displays on the market, and their work is showcased well here. The 3.2", F-WVGA, high-definition LCD screen, which boasts 854x480 resolution, is simply stunning. Colors and lines were rich and crisp, and gradients looked downright creamy; if e-book readers had displays this beautiful you'd be reading this article on one now.

The camera is 3.2 Mpx, with an LED flash and autofocus. It has five resolution settings (640x480, 800x600, 1280x960, 1600x1200, and 2048x15360) and three levels of JPEG quality for still images, and high or low quality for video. There's geotagging capability for stills -- GPS capability is built in -- but not for video. I was pleased with the camera's output, though autofocus gave me a certain amount of trouble until I realized that I could click through to a macro or a landscape mode. The device ships with a 1 GB microSD card, but if you're serious about video or music you might want to upgrade that at some point.

First, though, buy an extra charger. T-Mobile's been working on the Sidekick's battery life, which is of the charge-daily-or-else type. The company now reports improvements on both 3G (3 hours talk, 6 days standby) and 2G (5.5 hours talk, 8 days standby) fronts, but though the battery life seems to have improved from that of my own LX I was nowhere near those numbers -- especially when certain new features were enabled. (More on that in a minute.)

Leslie Grandy, T-Mobile vice president of product development, talked with me recently about the refinements to the latest Sidekick and how some of them come to pass. T-Mobile has the interesting policy of sending all its people -- even vice-presidents of product development -- out to work in their retail stores periodically, to keep an ear to the ground.

A few of the changes thus suggested are big ones, such as new hinge technology that can withstand (on average) 200 serious falls to the floor. (The previous average, she says, was around 50 -- klutzes beware.) As a side effect, the handset at last loses the bar-of-soap styling that's plagued it since inception. Rethinking how the strength of the swivel hinge could be improved led the designers to a design that from the side looks a bit like the screen is floating in a cradle made up of the rest of the handset. It takes some getting used to, since it looks a bit fragile, but comparisons between the LX 2009 and my own LX showed that it was if anything more stable. It may even feel a bit more like a curvy pebble -- are you listening, Palm Pre people?

Others changes are subtle; I made a blithering ass of myself in a recent demo when I realized they'd finally moved the dreadfully situated on/off switch that made previous models prone to occasional surprise shutdowns. And some changes are all but unnoticeable to all but the biggest Skick nerds. (If you have no previous Sidekick, please skip to the next paragraph; this one's for the faithful.) The textured back panel on the previous LX is history, supplanted by a smooth and slightly rubbery finish, but along that back there's a small area with twelve tiny bumps at exactly the spot where your right middle finger braces the gadget. I can only image how many man-hours that took to work out. And when you're typing, the pads of your index fingers are now pressed not against the pointy corners at the top corners of the screen, but against curved, very slightly flattened corners. You'll never notice the change; you'll just know it feels inexplicably more comfortable to type your little heart out.

The LX 2009 adds a few blinkenlights to the usual trackball and other indicators -- one deep-blue bar along the top edge of the screen and two along the top and bottom of the keyboard. They're pretty, but the heavy lifting of indicating status changes is still done by the trackball, which can be configured to flash and shift as desired.

The Sidekick is exclusively a T-Mobile phone in the US, but it travels elsewhere well. It's a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset and has dual-band UMTS/HSDPA. There's 3G support for Web browsing, and we noticed quite a bit of improvement in page-load times, network permitting.

Next: A little Sidekick war: software vs. batteries...