Hands On with T-Mobile's New Sidekick LX

The 854-by-480 screen on the new Sidekick LX is by far the highest resolution on any device near its price of $199. The new handheld also comes with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter clients.T-Mobile announced a powerful new Sidekick today that kicks almost all of the cult handheld's specs up a notch and ties it in with Facebook and Twitter.

The Sidekick LX (2009) runs on T-Mobile's and foreign 3G networks and has an amazing 3.2-inch, 854-by-480 screen. It also offers an autofocus 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording, a Qualcomm MSM7201A 400 MHz processor, and built-in MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter clients.

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The 854-by-480 screen—by far the highest resolution on any device near its price—also lets Sidekick owners take advantage of a dramatically improved Web browser and a Microsoft Live Search mapping client with satellite view.

I had a little time with the Sidekick LX (2009) last month, and I was pleasantly surprised. While the original Sidekick and Sidekick 2 were great messaging devices for their day, I felt that the Sidekick iD, original LX, and Slide were a bit behind the times.

Sidekicks are all smartphones running their own operating system designed by Danger, now a subsidiary of Microsoft. There are several dozen applications available in the onboard app store, but the phone's real strength is messaging. Where the original Sidekicks were top-notch e-mail machines, the newer ones focus more on instant messaging, SMS, and social networking like MySpace and Facebook.

The new Sidekick is about the same size as the Sidekick LX (in other words, big), but a little heavier at 5.12 by 2.36 by .63 inches and 6.02 ounces. The screen is slightly separated from the body—it still swings open, but it doesn't snap totally flush like the original Sidekick LX's did. The whole device feels classy and powerful, not toy-like.

The big keys on the keyboard are round rather than square-like, but otherwise all the traditional Sidekick controls are there, including the track ball and various action buttons.

The new screen is drool-worthy. It has an extremely high-pixel density, which really pops out at you when running something like the Microsoft Live Search satellite view. It's a good thing Sidekicks are aimed at young people, because the extreme detail of this screen really rewards sharp eyes.

Web browsing using 3G felt fast, but not blindingly so; I'll have to do some more tests there. The Twitter client was impressive, showing little icons of my friends. And the 3-megapixel camera was a huge step up from any previous Sidekick; I noticed the device I used was packing an 8GB memory card, too. (The retail model comes with a 1GB card.)

All in all, the device felt fast and powerful enough for any messaging task. It might be the first Sidekick in years I can recommend enthusiastically.

The Sidekick LX (2009) also has GPS, the usual SMS/MMS/IM clients, an automatic YouTube video uploader, a basic music player, a video player, and stereo Bluetooth. The phone comes in "carbon" and "orchid" colors, which in English seems to be gray and maroon.

The Sidekick's one Achilles heel seems to be the size of its mailbox. When I spoke to T-Mobile a few weeks ago, they said the new LX would still have a 6MB mailbox. I get 6MB of mail in two days. In this era of huge cloud storage, it's really unclear why T-Mobile is keeping such a stingy limit.

The Sidekick LX (2009) will cost $199.99 for existing users who want to upgrade, $249.99 for everyone else, and $449.99 on prepaid. That makes it one of only two viable prepaid smartphone options in the U.S., along with MetroPCS's $449.99 BlackBerry Curve.

Available for presale starting today, the Sidekick LX (2009) won't hit store shelves until May 13, according to T-Mobile. PCMag will have a review closer to the retail date.