After a week of Sidekick 4G how do you like yours?

So now some of us has had the Sidekick 4G for a week or so.

Is it worthy of the Sidekick name? 

Does it live up to the legend?

Is it a let down?

Personally I feel this post over on Hiptop3.com really sums it up for me too very well so well I decided to post it up here! (click on the image below to get to the post directly)

 

I must add that I never intended to post much subjective and opinions on this blog but after having had the Sidekick 1 - LX09 and now the Sidekick 4G (a week) I can not help but feel exactly as "Goliath"! 

Video chatting over 4G on new Tmobile Samsung Sidekick

Here is a quick demo video of video chat with the new Sidekick:

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G Unboxing & review videos.

If you are curious to see what is in the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G box?

Here is some unboxing & review videos:

 

  

  

  

 

Review: Sidekick 4G by a teenager.

Gigaom's Kevin C. Tofel's 13 year old son did a review of his two year use of the Sidekick 4G:

 

 

New promotional videos for the new Sidekick 4G by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile has released new promotional videos for the new Sidekick 4G

to see them click on the picture below:

 

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G online help / online manual

Do you miss the old Sidekick online help & procedure manual?

Well don't worry for the Sidekick 4G it can be found here (click on the picture):

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G User Manual in PDF format

Are you looking to get aquinted with the new T-Mobile Sidekick 4G 

or just want the user manual in electronic PDF format, well here you go (click on the picture):

T-Mobile Sidekick 4G root already discovered

If you are like me and considering rooting your new Sidekick here is how to do it thanks to the Android Community: 

"The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G has only been on sale since Wednesday, but that hasn’t slowed down the rooting masters at xda-developers. They’ve already come up with a root for the messaging-centric smartphone, opening the door to custom ROMs and other juicy hacks. 

The root is the handiwork of “josby”, but according to other xda members there are several ways to hack the Sidekick 4G. Next up is stripping away some of the preinstalled apps T-Mobile load onto the handset, which may give it an extra turn of speed.
We found the Sidekick to be something of a unique proposition among Android devices, doing a darn good job of following in the footsteps of its unusual predecessors and differentiating itself for a pretty specific market.

1) enable debug USB mode on your phone
2) install Samsung drivers for the phone – right now Samsung’s site seems to not have a choice for the Sidekick 4G’s model (SGH-T839), but I grabbed the drivers for the Vibrant (at www .samsung.com/us/support/downloads/SGH-T959ZKDTMB) and they worked.
3) get adb shell working on your PC (Google it)
4) download the rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin and Superuser packages from the links in this page: wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=HTC_Hero_%28CDMA%29:_Full_Update_G uide (be sure to unzip the files into the directory where your adb.exe program is unless you’ve put it in your path)
5) reboot your phone and plug it in
6) adb push rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin /data/local/tmp
7) adb shell
8) cd /data/local/tmp
9) chmod 755 rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
10) ./rageagainstthecage-arm5.bin
11) wait until you get booted back out to your DOS command prompt
12) adb kill-server
13) adb start-server
14) adb shell
15) you should now be at a # prompt. The first few times I tried, I wasn’t – I was at $. Doing this from a fresh boot seemed to be the trick. Reboot your phone and try again if you’re getting a $.
16) mount -o remount,rw /dev/block/stl9 /system
17) exit
18) adb push su /system/xbin
19) adb shell chmod 4755 /system/xbin/su
20) adb push Superuser.apk /system/app
21) adb shell mount -o remount,ro /dev/block/stl9 /system
22) exit
23) reboot the phone then run an app that requests root, such as Root Explorer, to verify"

T-Mobile releases Sidekick 4G ads

Here is TMobile's ads for the Sidekick 4G demonstrating it's speed:

Video tour of the new Sidekick 4G 3 PART VIDEO!

More video goodness on the Sidekick 4G for those who can't get enough of these videos.

This time by Mobileburn:

Extensive review of the Sidekick 4G with VIDEO and PICTURE SAMPLES!

Infosync has a very nice extensive review of the new Sidekick 4G here is a quote of it. ENJOY!

(One note, this is the very first Sidekick that Samsung made!) 

"Check out our Sidekick 4G review here. Is this texting machine the most powerful Sidekick yet?

Sidekick 4G Report

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 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 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 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  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!" 

  

Sidekick 4G Unboxing & Hands On VIDEO!

So it's another six days until the public can get their hands on the

new Sidekick 4G but here is unboxing and hands on VIDEO:

 

Official date for the Sidekick 4G given as April 20th!

So exactly a week after Radio Shack decided to make the April 20th date known publicly T-mobile finally has stated in the tweet you can see above, that  the new Sidekick 4G will indeed be available starting the 20th of this month.

Can you wait?