Today we shall be reviewing the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, which in some regions is known as the T-Mobil T839 Sidekick 4G. This is a very interesting device, both in how it functions and in aspect. As you can very well see from the image it also has a slide-able part. As opposed to most QWERTY phones, this one doesn’t have a slide-able keyboard, but a slide-able screen. This is a 4G phone, as you can already probably tell by the name. It has been quite some time since I reviewed a 4G device so I figured I should do one soon. This phone isn’t all that powerful if you are to compare it by today’ s standards but it’s a pretty good one nonetheless. Also, it looks great and isn’t all that expensive for a 4G phone. You can probably even get one for less than 400 dollars.
But enough with this, let us begin this little review of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G.
GENERAL
This part is what we will begin with. We shall be taking a look at the supported networks and the announcement and release date of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. The supported networks of this device are as following : GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 ( the 2G ones ), HSDPA 1700 ( the 3G one ) and HSDPA 2100 ( the 4G one ). The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G was announced somewhere in March 2011 and it came out later on April 20th 2011.
BODY
This part of the review will focus more on the aspect related issues of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. Things you can find here are details about : the size, the weight and whether or not the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G has any marks that would make it stand out from a crowd. The size of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is around 127 x 61 x 15 mm. This device weighs approximately 162 grams. As I’ve said before and as you’ve probably already seen for yourself, the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G also has a QWERTY keyboard. No other aspect related issues to discuss here.
DISPLAY
This part of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G’s review is dedicated towards the display related items of the phone, items such as : the type, size, resolution and pixel density of the screen, as well as whether or not the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G has any marks that make it stand out from the crowd. The screen of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a TFT capacitive touchscreen with approximately 16 million colors. The size of the screen is 3.5 inches. The resolution of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is around 480 x 800 pixels. The pixel density of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is approximately 267 ppi. This device also has multitouch. The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G also has an Optical trackpad on it which is somewhat rare among the Android devices.
SOUND
This part of the review is oriented towards the sound and audio output capabilities of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. Things you can be looking forward to on this part are : the alert types, the loudspeaker and audio jack and whether or not the device has any means of sound enhancement whatsoever on it. Now the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G doesn’t have any sound enhancement so it’s pretty basic on this part. It has vibration, MP3 and WAV ringtones as its Alert Types, a Loudspeaker and also a 3.5 mm jack as its audio jack.
MEMORY
This part of the review is dedicated to the analysis of the memory of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, mainly : the internal storage space and ways of increasing it as well as the RAM memory. The internal storage space of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is 1GB of ROM memory ( out of which I am unsure how much is user available since usually ROM memory is only used by the system ). That isn’t that much of a problem however since the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G comes with an included 2 GB card. If that isn’t enough for you feel free to purchase other MicroSD cards. Any will do as long as it doesn’t exceed 32 GB. The RAM memory of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is around 512 MB.
DATA CONNECTION
The data connectivity of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is what we’ll be analyzing here. You can expect to see data about : the GPRS and EDGE, the speed of the device, the WLAN, the Bluetooth and the USB connections. The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G has both GPRS and EDGE, although I have no idea what class they are. The speed of this device is : HSDPA ( at around 7.2 MB/s ) and HSUPA ( at around 5.76 MB/s ). The WLAN of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Bluetooth of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP and the USB connectivity of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is done via its Micro USB v2.0 port.
CAMERA
This part of the review is dedicated towards finding out details about the camera of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. You can find information here about the main and secondary cameras, their features and their capabilities. The main camera of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a 3.15 MP camera which can photograph at around 2048 x 1536 pixels. The features of the main camera are : autofocus and geo-tagging. It is also capable of recording video at D1 Quality ( 720 x 480 pixels ) with around 30 frames per second. The secondary camera of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a VGA one, so no need to go into details with it.
BATTERY LIFE
This part is dedicated to the battery of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G since we know it is one of the most important components of an Android device. Here you can find details about the battery type and the time it can function. The battery of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a Standard Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery and it is capable of functioning for around 456 hours in stand-by mode and up to 6 hours and 30 minutes of talk-time.
HARDWARE
This part is dedicated to the hardware of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, mainly the three great most notable components : the mother board, the processor and the graphics card. The CPU of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is a Single Core 1 GHz Cortex-A8 processor. The chipset is a Hummingbird and the GPU is a PowerVR SGX640.
SOFTWARE
In this part of the review we shall see the software of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G, mainly the current version of the OS and whether or not it can be upgraded. The OS of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is Android OS v2.2 Froyo and there isn’t any official update to this operating system. There are probably dozens of unofficial ones, but those may have unwanted side-effects.
FEATURES
Here we shall discuss the more random features of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. The sensors of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G are as following : Accelerometer and Proximity. The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G’s messaging is done via : SMS ( with threaded view ), MMS, E-Mail, Push Mail and IM. The browser of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G uses HTML and has integrated support for Adobe Flash. The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G doesn’t have a radio, however if you want to fix that you can always download a Radio app or listen directly from the website of that station. The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G also has a GPS with A-GPS support and Java via Java MIDP emulation. The available colors of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G are as following : Matte Black and Pearl Magneta.
Here is a short list of the things the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G can do :
- SNS integration
- T-Mobile TV
- MP4/H.264/H.263 player
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player
- Organizer
- ThinkFree Office document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), PDF viewer
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration
- Voice memo
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review of the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions for things which should be added in the comment section below and I shall take them into consideration when writing my future projects.
In the mean time, if you feel like purchasing this device, feel free to follow this link HERE.
