Well, will wonders never cease. Apparently T-Mobile came through. I guess shipments got delayed because of the holiday weekend. The tracking numbers show that they were delivered yesterday. I stand corrected.
So, the instant I caught sight of the DHL package on the doorstep I immediatly ripped it open. Inside were three boxes, two containing my boss’ new V600’s and a slightly larger one with my Sidekick II in it. I figured I’d give everybody a run down of the phone, from the outside at least, while I wait for it to charge. The manual suggests 4+ hours of charging, so when I get home I’ll turn it on and play with all the features. I’ll give a full review tomorrow once I’ve had a chance to play with it more. For now, it’ll just be my first impressions. Click the thumbnails to see the larger images.
First off, after getting through the packing peanuts and whatnot, the first thing we find is a standard product box, the kind you’d get it you purchased the phone from a store. The box is decorated in “urban flava” to appear hip to the youngins.
Inside the box are the standard assortment of ads and flyers for other crap you don’t need along with the phone and its components. Included with the SideKick II is a hands-free earbud (I refuse to call it a “headset” unless it covers both ears) cord, a standard charger, the phone itself…
…a nifty leather pouch with beltclip (it actually feels sturdy and useable)
…and more manuals and documentation than the space shuttle.
I was impressed with the feel and weight of the phone right off. It feels sturdy and well built, not flimsy and plastic like the Treo I’ve held.
It’s also not a whole lot bigger than my pervious phone, the Nokia 3390.
Sliding the screen up with your thumb reveals the haralded qwerty keyboard. The buttons are the small “chicklet gun” type and appear to be sealed from the elements and grim. They have a nice tactile feel and your hands rest easily on either side for perfect “thumb typing”.
Lastly, on the back we have the very large speaker phone, the camera lens (right most circle), the flash (left) and mini-mirror for taking self portraits (middle).
There you have it. After the Sidekick gets a good full charge I’ll pop in my sim card and call customer support to activate the phone. Hopefully that shouldn’t take too long. After that I’ll have to check out what MegaTones and HifiTones are available for it. From all the message boards I’ve seen, the Sidekick is aimed directly at the urban black teenage market and apparently so are all the wallpapers and ringtones. Hopefully there’s something other than rap available. I wasn’t expecting MegaTone support (actual clips of music), I thought I was stuck with HiFiTones (instrumental pieces of the same music). That was an unexpected surprise. Also, from the press release last month from Danger, they’ve gotten certified as a Java platform by Sun and will be rolling out a new OS via the network later this summer. It’ll be downloaded automatically. It’s supposed to open the platform up a bit and lead to more games, programs and a wider variety of compatable media (ringtones and screensavers, etc). As it stands now, without hacking it you’re limited to whats in the “pay for download” menu on the phone itself.
We’ll see how long Matt keeps his unhacked… bets range from “he hasn’t done it already?” to “by the end of the week”. 🙂
The only thing that has always bugged me about is that if you want to call anyone, afaik, you need to flip the thing open. am I wrong on this account? Or were the people I observed doing such just idiots?
They’re idiots. Once you have a number in your phone book, all you need to do to call someone is use the scroll wheel on the right side. It scrolls through your phone book. When you come to the entry you want to dial, you hit the green button below it. To end the call, you press the red one. The only time you need to open the phone is if you’re putting in a new unknown number by hand. Once it’s in the phone book though, you’re good to go.