One of the new features that comes with the 4.6 OTA for the Sidekick LX is the “Quick Find”. Basically this is a super quick way to search your entire Sidekick for something. Here’s a quick video of it in action:

Sidekick LX Quickfind feature

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.

Sidekick LX New Browser Features

Looking to pick up a new Jeep Wrangler? Don’t want one of those lame stock Jeep Wranglers? Better hurry over to eBay and check out this auction. Not only will you get a tricked out Jeep Wrangler, but you’ll also get one of the new Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LXs with your new ride. On top of that you’ll get 4 VIP tickets to the HuckJam tour and a chance to hang out with Tony Hawk himself. All the proceeds from this auction are also going to a good cause, the Tony Hawk Foundation. No, that doesn’t buy Tony new skateboards, it’s a foundation that helps build skateparks in low income neighborhoods and promote skating. The bids are up to $46,200, so you better break out that high limit credit card if you want to bid!

Here’s the description straight from the auction:

Here’s your chance to bid on this one-of-a-kind 2007 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited, “Hawkized” by DUB® magazine! The Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon 4×4 has been tricked-out with 24” TIS™ 09 Toyo off-road tires, custom Skyjacker 9″ body lift, Borla performance exhaust, tinted windows, DUB satin black emblems, and Birdhouse Skateboards mounted on custom skateboard racks! In the interior, you will find 7” Alpine monitors in the headrests, embroidered Tony Hawk logo on the seats, an Alpine DVD HEADUNIT SYSTEM and a Custom Fiberglass Subwoofer Box, plus much more!

The winner will also receive the new T-Mobile Sidekick LX Tony Hawk Edition, designed by Tony Hawk! A long-time user since the first Sidekick debuted, Tony puts his personal design on the iconic device by giving it a true skateboard look. This limited edition Sidekick will be the first Sidekick to ship with video record, play and share. It also includes other enhancements such as a more personalized Web browsing experience, stereo Bluetooth support, easier downloads and more options for theme and background personalization. The device features a slate-grey shell, accented with blue and white designs, and Tony’s well-known hawk graphic. A customized Tony Hawk theme will be included on the device featuring an exclusive video of Tony performing tricks, a Tony-inspired background, and skate-themed swivel screen open and close sounds. For more information, please visit www.sidekick.com.

In addition to the Jeep and Sidekick LX Tony Hawk Edition, the winning bidder will receive 4 VIP Tickets to Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom HuckJam tour and meet Tony before the show! Winning bidder will get to choose which show they would like to attend. Hotel and transportation not included. Click to see HuckJam tour schedule , visit www.boomboomhuckjam.com

Also, the winning bidder will be featured with the Tony Hawk DUB Edition Jeep in an upcoming DUB magazine issue.

I’m sure everyone is clamoring to see more samples of what video from the Sidekick LX looks like. We’ve got another for you. This is what it looks like when uploaded to YouTube and re-encoded:

Here’s the original video that will play if you have Quicktime installed:

If you want to see the original .3gp file that was recorded, click here to download.

We’ve gotten quite a bit of emails asking us “When will I get my OTA?” Honestly, there’s no concrete answer. The OTA process is entirely randomized.

Danger rolls out OTAs in 2 parts, Part 1 is commonly referred to the “Pioneer” phase. (Which is what the OTA is in) What that means is Danger and T-Mobile randomly select a random mashing of users and send them the OTA. They then see how the OTA goes (If there’s any major issues, bricking devices, etc.) If all goes well in the Pioneer phase and noone is killed in the process of the Pioneer phase, then Phase 2 is started and the OTA moves into full roll out mode. Full roll out mode is again randomized, but the rest of the users who were not in the Pioneer group are selected at random for the OTA.

It could take upwards of weeks for everyone to get the OTA. There is NOTHING you can do to make the OTA come faster. (Aside from slipping into a coma for a few weeks) You will get the OTA. Everyone has to get it. Danger won’t forget about you and not send it to you, we promise.

We’ve got more screenshots for you to enjoy of the 4.6 OTA.

Updated with Quick Find screenshots

Brightness and Sound Profile settings are now grouped together

We’ve seen those before.

As you can see here, the browser introduced a new “Full-Size Layout” option

Hiptop3.com viewed in the Full-Size Layout mode

sklxthemes.com viewed in Full Size Layout mode

Globally empty trash menu item, and Quick Find menu items

Quick Find search window

Quick Find results

*new*

Spellcheck Settings

New!

Spell Check in EMail

New!

Spell Check in AIM
More screenshots coming soon.

Here’s a preview of the Sidekick LX Video Recording quality, as you can see it’s postage stamp sized (176×144 px) and the quality isn’t even close to fantastic. We’ve opted not to embed a youtube video as it looks even worse when they Compress and stretch it out, but we’ve posted a Quicktime player of the raw video right off the LX. thanks to Doeboynmek over at the Powered By Danger forums for the video sample.

You’ll need Quicktime to view the embedded video.

Just for kicks, let’s double the size of the video to (352×288px)

You’ll need Quicktime to view the embedded video.
Doesn’t look great, but you can still make out everything in the video, and at least it’s not postage stamp sized video.

As you can see, there’s nothing to get overly excited about but we guess it’s better than nothing at this point.

We’ve been sitting on these videos since they were posted to youtube, but we didn’t want to post them since the quality is pretty bad, and not many of the new features were shown off. But we’ve been getting tons of email about it, so enjoy what you can… I guess. Now stop emailing us about them. We will create our own high quality HD videos as soon as we have the OTA, and properly show off the new features.

The NEW sidekick LX video OTA update – ibarrr

Video Preview – ibarrr

Thanks to everyone who sent these in. (Now stop emailing us about them. Really!)

It looks like the long awaited Sidekick LX OTA that enables video recording and playback is starting to roll-out to a few select users. These lucky few are commonly called the “pioneers” and are basically one last testing step before the update gets rolled out to everyone over a couple of weeks. Unfortunately there’s no way to make your Sidekick download the update before everyone. It’s all controlled server side and rolls out to chunks of people at a time in a seemingly random manner. It’s just the luck of the draw. I’m sure everyone will ignore what I just said and still ask how to get the OTA anyways.