Over the past few months most of our Sidekick LX 2009 questions have been answered in one way or another. But now that the device is here and actually in the hands of people it’s time to fill in the holes of the questions that haven’t been answered. Exiva was one of the lucky ones who got his Sidekick LX 2009 early. Because he’s awesome, he has agreed to answer whatever questions you have about the device.  This is your chance to ask someone who is actually holding the new Sidekick in their hands.  Here we go!

How does the keyboard feel?
-It’s a harder rubber than the LX. Same style, feels nice. There’s definitely a difference though.

How does the OS look/perform?
-It looks gorgeous on the new LCD (everything does though.) It performs really well. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns yet.

How does it compare to other sidekicks in all areas?
-It’s much lighter than the LX was, It feels more sturdy than the 08 in the few times I played with it. I haven’t tested battery life yet, so I can’t comment on that. The speaker is significantly louder than the LX’s, which is nice.

If you had ringtones on a previous sidekick, were they transferred over?
-Not sure, I never bought any ringtones.

Can we use sounds as ringtones saved from emails?
-Yes, as long as they are 100kb or less. So to get any length in the mp3 the quality will be pretty crummy. You can record on the device up to 20seconds.
Click through for more questions…

Appletech over at PoweredByDanger has posted up a new batch of screenshots of the Sidekick LX 2009, and we’ve collected them for you.

Lots of screenshots of the updated Microsoft Live Search application, as well as the Twitter and Facebook applications.

If you’ve been hesitant to download the Photobucket application because of the price or the recurring fee (or both), the option to try the app out for free has come! If you download the application by 4/30, you have a 30 day free trial period to test it out. This means you can use the full version of the application, risk free for 30 days and then decide if you like it or not. This is a great option and may be what changes people’s opinions about the product. Remember that the application is free only for 30 days from the time that you have downloaded it. After the 30 day free trial period is over, you will be charged a monthly subscription fee of $1.99, which will be billed to you each month until the item is discarded. Check out the information in the Download Catalog for more in-depth information. Download and try it out from the Catalog now!

When the video recording capabilities for the Sidekick arrived, many people were disappointed by the limitation of only 20 seconds of video capture. Cramped Thumbs, a new Sidekick applications developer, decided to do something about that and have released Video Recorder, a Sidekick application that lets you record up to 50 seconds of video. Why is it still limited to only 50 seconds? Apparently recording and encoding video really pushes the Sidekick past its normal capabilities. So until we get a new powerful device *cough*sidekickblade*cough* enjoy recording at least more than twice as much as your other Sidekick friends. The app costs $1.99 and is available in the catalog now.

Here’s an example video shot with a Sidekick LX:

You’ll need Quicktime to view the embedded video.

I’ve been waiting a long long time for mapping software to come to the Sidekick. For many years all that was available was either slow and tedious web-based mapping or the Google Maps developer app that was only available to developers. Finally the cries of many a lost Sidekick user have been answered. MSDanger has released the MS Live Search app (built by Requiem Software Labs) into the catalog on 4.x devices (2008, LX, and Slide) today. It takes care of all your mapping and searching for local businesses needs. You can do street mapping, aerial views, get directions, and even view traffic. You can also search for businesses and types of businesses near an address, movies, and even find the cheapest gas near you. And the best part? It’s totally free and there are no monthly fees!

For all you Sidekick 2009 Blade junkies out there, this is big news too. Remember when I posted about the next Sidekick having “Microsoft Live Local Search and Maps”? Well here it is. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that these maps would work hand in hand with the GPS capabilities of the Sidekick 2009. And the fact that the app is free makes me think it’ll come standard on the Sidekick 2009

Here are some screenshots:

[Show as slideshow]

Ever since Microsoft bought Danger there’s been much speculation on the marriage of the Zune line with our familiat Sidekicks. While there haven’t been any official announcements on whether or not we’ll ever see these two technologies merge, it’s still interesting to think about. In a recent talk with Steve Ballmer he made some comments about the future of Zune and Microsoft’s vision for smartphones:

SB: “We’re going to keep going with Zune”. It’s two things: Service and a device. The Zune service, that’s going to fan out its footprint. Hardware will continue to improve. “The question is whether even if we flog them heavily, is their profit upside”. We’re going to keep going “I won’t say full steam ahead, because that implies acceleration of investment, but we’re going to sustain our investment.” We like it and the future may be the software/ecosystem on other devices.

On to smartphone market:

SB: Smartphones will go from 10% to 70 or 80% of market next few years. So what will people want? Good experience built in, w/out downloading stuff. You want good price range. iPhone is very expensive phone, without a keyboard. Some people can’t afford them. Sweet spot is phones that cost $150 to $200 to make — forget retail price. iPhone is about $500. We want to provide vendors with ability to make Windows phones up and down the price scale.

Unless you assume Apple and BlackBerry are going to sell the lion’s share of most phones, which I don’t, I think the play for us is to provide broad innovation at many price points.

A $500 phone is not going to work for everybody in every market. The most popular phones in China and India cost about $25 to build. We can’t get our software on that.

SA: Do you care about “touch” on phones? The blogs say you are.

SB: Windows Mobile 6.5 has touch on it. The way Apple does touch drives cost. They way they do it on the iPhone is not an inexpensive component. We’ll do it in a way that you can afford to do it on most phones.

My first thought was “No, please don’t replace the DangerOS” but was then it was pointed out to me that the Zune software integrated into the DangerOS, replacing the current MediaPlayer could be a nice change. This is something that we won’t see for the Blade for sure, but it’s an interesting possibility for future devices. Steve comments on the sweet spot for prices on smartphones gives hope that the next Sidekick may not cost a fortune. Here’s hoping! If you want to check out the full Q&A with Steve Ballmer, here’s the article.

via engadget. Thanks Mike!

Do you use Photobucket to share photos? You’ll be happy to hear that there is now a Photobucket application for the Sidekick that will let you send photos directly to the service and manage your account from your device. Rumors about the Sidekick Blade said that this app would be available, and here it is for existing devices (Slide, LX, and 2008).

The application will set you back $1.99 to purchase, and then a recurring fee of $1.99 each month thereafter. So it looks like this is geared more towards hevy users of Photobucket. To get it, just check out the Download Catalog. Here are some screenshots of the app:

[Show as slideshow]

More info on Photobucket’s blog post. Screenshots are via PoweredByDanger’s post.
Thanks to everyone that sent this one in

Want to use the MyFaves interface on your Sidekick to make it quicker and easier to get in touch with your top 5 friends? Well, rumor has it that T-Mobile will be releasing the MyFaves interface to all Sidekick users for free come March 10th. Remember though, that this is just the MyFaves interface, it’s NOT the MyFaves rate plan where you get unlimited calls to your “Faves”. You’ll be charged the same rates for contacting these friends if you don’t sign up for MyFaves. For those of you that don’t know what the MyFaves interface has:

“The Faves home screen provides customers the advantages of a simple and convenient one touch connection for calling, texting, or sending photos to the people they (you) care about most.”

via CellPhoneSignal

…and cue comments about how this isn’t Sidekick 2009 news in 3…2…

We’ve been hoping for an official Twitter application for the Sidekick for a long time now. Those of us with developer keys have enjoyed different Twitter applications on our Sidekicks, but had to endure complaints from all our friends who were stuck with SMS and the browser for their Twitter fun. It looks like in the near future these friends won’t be complaining anymore as an official MSDanger app for the Sidekick appears to be on it’s way.

Clue #1: We’ve seen and heard rumors about an internal Twitter application at Danger that was being developed.
Clue #2: Developer apps for Twitter have not made any progress towards getting into the catalog and several have been made. You would think with a service like Twitter that is growing more and more popular everyday that a cheap application for it would make it’s way into the catalog.
Clue #3: Remember that screenshot from the online survey that mentioned Twitter?
Clue #4: There’s a whole lot of people Twittering from an application that’s only identifying itself as “hiptop”. Several of these people are known to be Danger employees.

So, we’re almost positive you’ll be seeing a Twitter application on the Sidekick LX 2009 / Blade when it drops. We also hope that MSDanger offers a Twitter application in the catalog (or via OTAu) for those users on the older devices. It would definitely round out the social networking capabilities of the Sidekick.

Follow Hiptop3.com on Twitter.

We got the above image in our inbox. The reader sending it in danielle says she was taking a survey about smart phones on QuizPoints and was presented with this one. Here are the specs it lists in the photo:

Social Networking Suite of Apps
- Facebook
- MySpace w/ video upload
- Twitter
- YouTube Mobile Access via browser

GPS Location Based Search
- Turn by Turn Navigation
- Microsoft Live Local Search and Maps

Content Creation
- Blog publishing, editing, and management client
- Photobucket Upload and Management
- Video recorder and upload to MySpace/Photobucket

Communications
- Signature Sidekick IM/SMS/E-mail Experience
- Microsoft Outlook/Exchange synchronization

Hardware
- Large (3.2 inch WVGA) screen with sharp 854×480 resolution
- Thin design
- 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video recording
- Large QWERTY keyboard
- Expandable memory up to 8GB via MicroSD

Everything seems to match up with what a Sidekick LX 2009 would have. It mentions 3G, which is pretty much a given at this point. The introduction of Microsoft Live Search and maps makes a lot of sense since Microsoft now owns Danger. The addition of GPS (finally!) is also a nice complement to the maps and helps the Sidekick compete a little bit with the iPhone and other location-enabled devices. But I’m sure the thing that everyone is freaking out over now is the mention of YouTube mobile access. It’s probably the #1 request for the Sidekick by the majority of the users. It doesn’t seem that out of reach since the Sidekick can play video already, it just needs a way to get it from YouTube. None of the apps are groundbreaking, but they’re things that a lot of us would agree it would be nice to have on our Sidekick.

The hardware looks about right too. A 3.2MP camera isn’t the 5mp camera we hoped for, but it is a god bump up from the 2MP camera in the Sidekick 2008 (not to mention the 1.3MP in the LX). The screen is higher resolution (too early to start working on those new themes?) and of course the familiar keyboard is still there.

Is this the Sidekick Blade that we’ve been hearing whispers about? Hard to tell. We know that “Blade” is a codename and that internally (in software) it’s know as the “m3“. The “m2″ was the Sidekick 3, so one would guess the “m3″ would correlate to the elusive Sidekick 4 and a “large” upgrade in device. (FWIW, the Sidekick LX was the “m2-hd”) Could MSDanger be working on two devices? It’s very possible, but we don’t have anything to back this up or refute it yet.

So is this for real? We think so. At least we think it’s specs drawn up by someone official that is testing the water with consumers to see what they think. Whether it’s what we actually see in a device in the future, I’m not 100% sure. I think it definitely sounds like the next revision of the Sidekick LX. It’s not too ambitious, but does add a few of the most requested features. Seems to be the way that T-Mobile/MSDanger like to do things with the Sidekick.