We’ve been waiting for months and months for this device. It’s been quite the cornucopia of rumors, codenames, and speculation. What once was thought to be the Style 2, then the Sidekick Aspen, or maybe the Sidekick Gekko, is officially here, and it’s going by the name of the Sidekick 2008. Yeah, we realize that 2008 is already half over too. We’re not sure why T-Mobile decided to go with an annual naming scheme this time, but as history shows, they can’t decide on a naming convention. Regardless, we’re here today to talk about the Sidekick 2008 *coughgekkocough*. We’re pretty impressed with a device that we had low expectations for. Sure, it’s not a major jump, but it certainly is a nice little device with all the familiar features that Danger does well. It’s a good upgrade candidate for anyone not yet carrying an LX or Slide, as it’s not a ridiculously expensive phone. That being said, let’s jump into the details.

(If you’re not much of a reader, check out our Sidekick 2008 Video Hands-On as well as the 2 full pages of our Sidekick 2008 Unboxing Gallery)

The Bad News
Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat. The Sidekick 2008 is not 3G. It’s on the slower EDGE network like the other recent Sidekicks. Those of you still waiting for a super fast Sidekick 3G will just have to keep waiting. If that’s a deal-breaker for you, then you may not want to waste your time with the rest of this review.

Screen
One of the most important aspects of the Sidekick is the screen and its familiar flip. It’s still here. The screen on the Sidekick 2008 is the same high resolution (400×240 WQVGA) as the Sidekick LX, but it is a bit smaller in size (2.6″ instead of 3″). This actually results in crisper images and much nicer web browsing and picture viewing on the device. You don’t have as big of a picture, but for most of the things you use a Sidekick for, you won’t even notice. Plus you shave off a tiny bit of weight and size. Screen gets a thumbs up.

Keyboard & Buttons
The keyboard on the Sidekick 2008 is very similar to the Sidekick LX. However the keys are ever so slightly smaller, but typing on it is still as easy as ever. That’s one thing that no phone on the market has been able to compete with, the Sidekick’s keyboard. I was a bit concerned with the keyboard size at first, but it hasn’t been too much of an issue. It just might take some getting used to.

Weight
One of the things I noticed about the 2008 instantly was that it was significantly lighter than the other Sidekicks. As I was carrying it around I sometimes completely forgot that it was in my pocket. I broke out the scale to get some real world measurements and found that it weighed 4.8oz, the same as the new iPhone 3G. Compare this with 5.7oz for the LX, 6.4oz for the Sidekick 3, 6.49oz for the Sidekick II, and a whopping 7.0oz for a Color Sidekick. If you’re still using a Color Sidekick, it’s time to upgrade.

Shells
One of the biggest selling points of the Sidekick 2008 is shells. These simple pieces of plastic are what can turn your phone from ordinary into something flashy and fashionable. T-Mobile will be selling all sorts of standard shells, in a typical range of colors. The device we got our hands on came with a yellow-green shell (like we’ve been seeing in all the Sidekick Gekko graphics) as well as a more subtle black one. The small parts of the device that aren’t covered by the shell (the screen frame, keyboard, and buttons) are a nice simple black as well. Yes, that’s right, right out of the box all you goth kids can finally have a black Sidekick without having to customize it. T-Mobile is also going to have a site where you can create your own shells, share them with others, and buy these custom shells. The shells are going to be created by Skinit.com and we hope they’ll be as nice of quality as the shells that come with the device. We’re also eager to see what sort of shell + custom theme combos people do with their devices. Maybe if T-Mobile doesn’t have a contest, we’ll throw one. Pricing for the shells from T-Mobile is $14.99 apiece or two for $9.99 each.

Camera
The camera is not a huge jump in quality, but it’s something. It’s a new 2.0 megapixel camera and it seems to get pretty good quality photos in good light. The camera takes images at a resolution as high as 1600×1200, but does’nt have a flash like the LX. Here are a few pics we snapped with the 2008:

The camera is slightly better, but you’re still stuck recording video in postage-stamp size 176×144 pixels. It’s handy for sending a quick video message to a friend, but don’t expect to record the championship basketball game you went to with the Sidekick. We took a quick little video: Video taken with the Sidekick 2008

Operating System
The Sidekick 2008 ships with Danger OS 4.7, a slight bump up from the current OS for the Sidekick LX. The OS is virtually identical (we haven’t found any differences yet) to what is on the Sideick LX after the long-awaited video OTA update brings you to v4.6. Just like the Sidekick LX, the Sidekick 2008 also has video playback as well as recording. The Sidekick 2008 has the newer browser that has full page mode as well as a device-optimized mode for viewing web pages. You’ll want to use the full page mode if you want a more “true to original design” web browsing experience, and the device-optimized mode for stripped down and quick web browsing. Oh, and remember that annoying flying icons bug if you had a custom theme and the MySpace app installed? It’s finally fixed. A huge thank you to the developer at Danger/Microsoft that took the time to fix a tiny, yet annoying detail like this. There’s some debate over whether it’s fixed or not.

Price
We’re hearing from T-Mobile that the Sidekick 2008 isn’t going to break the bank and will be available for $149.99 with a 2 year contract. This isn’t the cheapest phone out there, but it’s definitely appealing to get the Sidekick LX features without paying several hundred dollars. The price for the phone without a contract extension will be a bit more for those that don’t want to lock into another 2 years. No official word on this price, but the leaked info from Best Buy makes us think $299.

Accessories
In the box you’ll get the typical array of accessories. The new charger is well designed, with a plug that flips out when needed. You’ll also get a stereo wired headset/mic, but we bet almost everyone will be picking up Bluetooth headsets since you can now listen to music over them with A2DP now. Two shells are included, a yellow-green one and a plain black one. Once T-Mobile gets the shells site up and running we should see the available options for shells explode.

Conclusion
I like the Sidekick Gekko. It’s not a groundbreaking phone, but it’s a nice daily-use communication device. I’ve been recommending it to friends who are still limping along with a Sidekick II, or an older device. Danger still owns the mobile device instant messaging trophy, as well as the “Best Keyboard” award. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments below and we’ll do our best to answer them in one post in the near future. Also, we’re curious to see who’s going to pick up this phone:

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If you hadn’t heard, it’s finally time for the Sidekick LX Video OTA to roll out to everyone. Over the last week or two the update has been slowly rolling out. The pioneer people that got the users should also receive a new update that brings them up to the latest version. So yes, it’s finally here guys. It’s rolling out randomly, not based on location at all. Good luck trying to guess when you’ll get the OTA. Just sit tight and we’ll all be enjoying the new video and browser goodness before too long.

Before you get all excited, chances are this is just someone with Photoshop that got told “Hey, I need a phone that looks like it has GPS on it” by their boss, so they whipped something up. But we can’t help wonder why the model in the photo accompanying this article is holding the Sidekick 3 so oddly. Then again she is in a mall, and why would you need GPS (let alone being to get a signal) when you’re looking for a new pair of shoes? Regardless, there have been bits and pieces about GPS getting incorporated into a future Sidekick in some way for awhile. Remember that old job posting? From a technical standpoint it would probably be possible to interface a Sidekick with a Bluetooth GPS as it stands now, it would just be a matter of getting a mapping solution on the Sidekick that’s powerful enough. Maybe with Apple’s new iPhone 3G, Danger Microsoft will have some motivation to upgrade some of the hardware capabilities of the Sidekick to keep up with the location-aware mobile computing that is bound to happen in the very near future.

So everyone has seen the video recording capabilities of the Sidekick LX, but what about video playback? We converted a video into .3gp and tossed it on the Sidekick to see how it looked. Surprisingly it turned out pretty good! It’s not unreasonable to think that people could be watching TV shows and music videos on their Sidekick. We won’t say movies are a possibility because we haven’t done any testing to see just how much of an impact this has on battery life. Anyways, enough talk, here’s the video:

Sidekick LX Video Playback from HiptopVideos on Vimeo.

We’ve been saying it for months and months, but T-Mobile has finally put out the official confirmation in their press release yesterday. The Sidekick LX is getting a video OTA. In case you missed it in the press release about the Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX, here’s the snippet:

This summer, all Sidekick LX customers will receive an over-the-air update that includes the new functionality that is integrated in the T-Mobile Sidekick LX Tony Hawk Edition, such as video recording and playback ability, an alarm clock, stereo Bluetooth support, and Bluetooth file transfer support.

Rumors flying around are that it’s going to drop on July 15th, which makes sense.

Wondering what the Sidekick will be able to record and playback as far as video is concerned? We’ll we’ve got the 411 straight from the manual:

Note! The SonicBOOM Media Player will play 3GP and MP4 (simple profile) video files, and MP3, WAV, MIDI, WMA, AAC (MP4), XMF, RMF, AIFC, IMY, AMR music files. It will not play RAM, M4P, FLAC, RA, AVI, or any other file that is not listed above.

Sorry gang, no YouTube support this time around. Maybe when a 3G device comes out in the distant future.

As for the format the Camera will record videos in, it looks like that’s going to be .3gp files using the H.263 video codec. Should be nice and small for sending to your friends.

We found the following images in our mailbox, already watermarked for us. These come straight from the manual for what we’re all assuming will be called the Sidekick Gekko (or Aspen). For your viewing pleasure:

An illustration of the Sidekick Gekko, nothing too surprising.

About the Camera
You can take photos with the device’s 2.0 megapixel camera, then save them in .JPG format to two locations:
– your device’s built-in memory (called Device Albume on the screen), or
– the microSD memory card you’ve inserted into your device (called Memory Card Album on the screen)

You can take videos (.3GP format) and store them on the microSD memory card. Note: Videos cannot be saved to the Device Album.

You can store up to 1.75M of photos on your device, and store videos and more photos on your microSD card. The number of photos you can store will depend on the capacity of the card and the size of the photos: 1600×1200 (largest), 1280×1024, 640×480, or 320×240 (smallest).

You can aso save one or more photo or video email attachments to an album. Read more in Saving Photo Attachments to a Photo Album.

Replaceable Shells
You can customize your device with replaceable shells!

Capture a Video!

All in all no huge suprises, but some pretty concrete confirmation of what we’ve already reported on.

For all those that were doubting us when we said that video was coming to the Sidekick LX via an OTA, we present you with a page straight from T-Mobile.com. The text reads:

Viewing available memory for pictures and videos
To view available memory for pictures and videos, perform the following steps:
1. At the Jump screen, roll to and select Camera.
2. The available space for new pictures appears in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

The original page for the Sidekick LX can be found here (if they haven’t pulled it yet). There’s also the same page for the Sidekick Slide, although we haven’t heard any details on an OTA for you Slide owners yet and there’s also this page which says: “The Sidekick Slide does not support sending video messages.” So we’re going to stick with saying to expect the video OTA for the LX, but not for the Slide. Sorry Sliders.

Pictures and videos man. Pictures AND videos.

-Thanks to Ryan for catching this.

We’ve been saying it for months and months, but now we’ve actually got some picture proof for you guys. Yes, the Sidekick LX is getting video, as evidenced by the screenshots above. We’re still trying to figure out details on what exactly the Sidekick will support as far as video is concerned. But yes, you will be able to capture and playback video on the Sidekick LX. I’m sure the question on everyone’s mind is “Will I be able to watch YouTube videos?” and as of now we don’t have a firm answer yet. Rumor has it that the H.264 codec will be supported, and YouTube started encoding videos in H.264 for Apple awhile back. So there may be some sort of workaround, but as far as a dedicated YouTube app for the Sidekick LX, we haven’t heard anything yet. We’ve also heard that it might be H.263 instead of H.264. We’ll let you know as soon as we nail it down so you can start converting your videos to be ready.

But for all you Sidekick LX users, look for an OTA coming very soon. And if you’ve been holding off on getting a Sidekick LX because of the lack of video support, it’s time to spend that money you’ve been saving. There was also a recent price drop in the device yesterday, so take advantage of that.

A lot of the tech blogs have been buzzing about the Nintendo emulator that runs on the Sidekick. Here’s the real scoop. Yes, it exists and you can play Nintendo games on the Sidekick 3/LX/Slide as evidenced by the video above. It’s slow and more of a proof-of-concept sort of thing rather than a truly viable gaming application. It was basically taking an existing Java NES emulator (Vampant) and wrapping it for loading on the Sidekick since the Sidekick OS supports java. No, it is not going to make it into catalog unless T-Mobile gets real friendly with Nintendo and the license holders of all the roms that you would want to load. The application is a developer app that is only available to Sidekick developers. So basically if you don’t know how to write java, you’ll never get to load it on your Sidekick. When asked for comment, the developer simply stated “HOLLA!”