The T-Mobile Sidekick 3 still has the same spring loaded swiveling screen, keeping with the Sidekick’s trademark design. A full keyboard located underneath the screen in now plastic coated instead of the same old rubber coated keyboard. The Sidekick is held horizontally to do everything except talk on like a traditional a cell phone. However most won’t need to do this now that it also supports Blue tooth headsets.
On the left side of the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 face you have a menu and jump button as well as the dpad. On the right side of the phone there is now a track ball to make using the device more convenient. The track ball is surrounded by the Sidekicks cancel and okay keys, as well as the send and ends keys. You will find that the track ball is responsive and easy to use. On the bottom are the volume keys and the power button, as well as the headset jack for stereo headsets.
On the right side of the Sidekick 3 you will find the USB and charging ports, and on the top you will find two shoulder buttons which come in handy while taking pictures. The built in camera in the Sidekick 3 has been upgraded to a 1.3 mega pixel. However the phone still has a poor flash. On the back side of the phone you will now find a removable back. Underneath this lies a memory card slot and replaceable battery, so you can carry a spare and then just replace them when they run out.
The keyboard on the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 is well laid out with nice size keys, for those of you who will be typing a lot. The phone also has an actual row of number keys which is rare on qwerty phones. This also provides easily accessible internet punctuation keys. The Sidekick 3 is also a smaller phone Sidekick’s before it, being slightly shorter and much more narrow. We found that the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 springs open with a lot of force, maybe too much as there is a lot of rattling as it does so. But the Sidekick 3 is not only smaller its faster. You will find while browsing the internet on the Sidekick 3 that it will download and load pages much faster.
The T-Mobile Sidekick 3 now also has an MP3 player. So you can now drop MP3’s onto the memory card and you will find them automatically sorted for you on the phone. The sorting is pretty convenient , but it takes a bit more clicking to get the music actually playing then say an iPod. One other bad feature with the MP3 player is the cancel button which is also the play and pause key, which makes stopping the current song a pain. The default volume on the phones MP3 player is pretty low but the volume can be adjusted separately from the rest of the phone, which comes in handy. Another nice feature the MP3 player in the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 has is like everything else on the phone will keep playing when you switch to other applications.
T-Mobile Sidekick LX Specs:
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