iPhone, a Sidekick 3 killer?
With Apple’s recent announcement of the iPhone (way too many details available on your favorite gadget sites), a lot of people are wondering, “Is it worth jumping from the Sidekick to the iPhone?” Of course this boils down to a personal preference for everyone, but there are a few things that are making us want to stick with the Sidekick 3.
– SIZE! We were originally told the iPhone was 6″ long. The spec on Apple’s page say that is not so. Here is an updated size comparison:
– A keyboard. You can’t walk down the street typing without looking on a virtual keyboard with no tactile feedback. There is a need for input, no arguing that, and with “smart devices” a large percentage of the input is text. Ipod style interfaces (touchscreens, wheels, etc) are great for navigating data, but not for inputting.
– Removable battery. We like knowing that a battery can be replaced without having to replace an entire unit or take it in for service.
– The user interface. Danger excels as far as a user interface. It’s very quick and easy to pickup and once you’re used to it, it becomes second nature to fly around the OS.
– The “Flip” C’mon, you know it’s just cool.
Any other thoughts or comparisons? Drop em in the comments below.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
iPhone Wins: WiFi, Google Maps, Location Awareness, Proper OS X Sync, Video, Far Superior Browser, Location Awareness, Better Mail Client, and it doesn’t look like we have to be nickeled and dimed for every fucking thing we put on the device. Lastly, if it’s running OS X, I bet development for applications will be a whole different story compared to the Hiptop OS.
Hiptop3 Wins: Keyboard, Size
Hiptop3.com wrong: The Flip was cool in 2002. Multi-Touch Screen, Accelerometer and Sensors are cool in 2007.
iPhone and Hiptop3 Might Tie: Interface. Hiptop3’s interface blows away the competition. It looks like the iPhone may match or beat that in June.
…and I don’t give a shit about a removable battery.
January 9th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
For 2 Years I have been a loyal Sidekick….Until Now…… The iPhone might have won my heart…….
January 9th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Idk….flips outdated…. user friendly interface…I’m pretty sure apple isnt making this only for Einsteins….us regular folk should be ok. You get the feeling that the review was biased…just a little. Are you effing joking…no way the sidekick is even on the same level. Cingular here I come (well in june….yes I’m springing for the 8 gig model). The ONLY advantage of the sk3 now (and as always) if you lose it and the sim card, you don’t have to worry cuz danger will beam all lost info (except text messages) back to the phone. So I will keep my sk3 (i been down with danger since the 1st sk…well not the b&w 1 but the 1st csk..oh yeah the battery just became removable with this version….you reaching for a valid point but have voiced 0 so far….iphone is beautiful.) but I will be rocking that iphone.
January 10th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Danger and Mac should link to bring iTunes to the device and safari as the web browser. iPhone is really cool. seriously wow fool. but Sidekick is the coolest phone i think. and i dont like Cingular from when i used to have it so I’m not planing to leave my sidekick. touchscreen Sidekick would be nice too
January 10th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I thought I wanted to jump at this iphone, but the touch screen is not appealing to me at all, I can type emails and messages out very quickly due to the feel of the buttons on my sk3 and I know where everything is and I can walk or talk to someone and directly look in them in the eyes while talking to them while i message away on my sk3, LOL so no I don’t care about no damn iphone, Im sticking with the the sidekick 3, and i think the flip screen is still cool! lol
January 10th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Top 10 Problems With the iPhone:
1) Virtual keyboard, with no tactile feedback. Pretty, but not so functional.
2) Battery time: “UP TO” 5 hours Talk/Video/Browsing. I do a LOT of browsing/email/chat. It wouldn’t be cool for my battery to crap out at noon.
3) That touchscreen is going to get scratched as hell, covered with smudges, etc. And I don’t believe for a minute that it’s going to work as well as Apple says.
4) Does it support all the chat services? They don’t say they do.
5) No indication the web browser can format pages into a single column. It’s all well and fine to boast that the iPhone “lets you see any web page the way it was designed to be seen”, but I don’t like spending all my time scrolling around a page on a small screen. IPhone web browsing is a two handed affair (one to hold the phone and the other to navigate) while with the Sidekick I can hold and scroll easily with one hand.
6) It’s $600!
7) It doesn’t have 3G. Yeah, neither does the Sidekick, but it takes steps to compensate. The iPhone gives you the same pages your home PC gets… but slooower (unless you’re in free wi-fi range). Heck, Cingular sells 3G phones for as little as $50, so I don’t know what the deal is here.
8) My Sidekick data is backed up and accessible online for free. Not so with the iPhone.
9) I remember how outraged people were that the $300 Sidekick 3 didn’t allow you to shoot video. Guess what, neither does the iPhone.
10) And it doesn’t support subscription music either (unlike some $50 3G phones). Apple knows that people don’t want to rent music… or movies. Except, many of us do.
Me, I’ll hold out for a 3G Sidekick with Rhapsody DNA. (I can dream.)
January 12th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Even worse, if you’re expecting an open OS, put your own iTunes ringtones on the device, wanted video recording, GPS, etc or if you thought the web browser was going to support things like Flash or Java (the iPhone has/allows none of those things).
In a NYT article (see https://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/01/let_os_x_develo_1.html), Jobs made it quite clear that Apple would control what does and does not go onto the iPhone. Given Apple’s past history (especially with the iPod), this means the device will be locked down even worse than the hiptop is (if you can prove you can code, you can become a developer for the hiptop. If you can prove you can code, Apple won’t care a whit. They’ll pick and choose the third party developers they want to work with).
Some other FAQs of interest:
https://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/the-ultimate-iphone-frequently-asked-questions/
https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/some-hands-on-time-with-the-iphone/
https://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ipod/review/apple-iphone-hands-on/
My own impression is that, it may be one of the best iPods Apple has made yet. The phone part will work as well as on the hiptop (neither better nor worse, both have speaker phones, both can dial from contacts, etc). And the internet functions are subpar compared to the hiptop. As of right now, there is no AIM, Yahoo or MSN clients, only SMS (to quote Steve during the keynote, “in an iChat like way”. iChat isn’t included, the SMS app just looks like it, and since you can’t put your own apps on it, you can only hope that apple releases something like iChat for the iPhone at some point in the future). The onscreen keyboard isn’t going to be as good as the hiptop keyboard, I don’t care how good the touchscreen is. As for web browsing. The only thing the iPhone’s browser does that the hiptop browser doesn’t is let you see the whole page without reformatting and lets you zoom in and out and requires you to do a lot of left and right scrolling to read a page. No thanks, when I look something up online I want to be able to quickly and easily read it by just scrolling up and down. the iPhone browser might have a bit of coolness factor at first but the poor usability (compared to the hiptop’s browser) will wear off quickly.
I’m always wary of the touchscreen and how smudgy the screen will get with a lot of use (and contrary to what Steve wants people to believe, Apple was neither the inventor of nor the first to play around with “multitouch”, anyways). While I don’t care about not having GPS or video recording, myself, a lot of people complain that the hiptop doesn’t have those and, well, the iPhone won’t either. Since I don’t buy music from iTunes, I don’t need an iPod, so any mp3 player (such as the hiptop’s) is good enough for me (I don’t have a lot of music anyways and what I do have, I just rip from my own CDs). I don’t care about watching videos on a tiny screen and internet communication (IM, email and browsing) are most important to me… it looks like the iPhone doesn’t hold a candle t the hiptop in that regard. And lastly, I enjoy a game or two or some of the extra third party apps that are useful now and then. With the iPhone, any of those are a BIG wait and see. Also, 6 months is a long time in terms of cell phones. Who knows what’ll be out by then.
Like a lot of folks, I was initially blown away by the iPhone but after reading the details as they start to leak out, the capabilities of the iPhone are seriously underwhelming. 6 months from now, buying a new (expensive) phone that still only does GPRS+EDGE is going to be kinda “meh”, too.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:06 am
Ignore the posts made by nthread, because it is spam.
Anyways, you honestly cant compare the sidekick to the I-phone because well, the I-phone is a Mini-pc / smart phone, which the sidekick is not.
You can *only* truley compare them on the things they have simular, Like the IM clients, ect.
You cant compare how good something is or if it is better than the other if it doesnt share simular features.
In my opinion. the sidekick wins.
ALSO, the fact that the I-phone is with cingular is what makes me want to through up. I will NEVER swict to AT&T (new name for cingular)
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
I thought about buying iPhone but after checking with Cingular to find out what it would cost me monthly, I find the price so high that it would cost me $75.00 a month (tax not included). Cingular says that I would get 450 voice minutes with data plan for the iPhone. OUCH! I think I’ll stick with my Sidekick 3 🙂 Also Cingular was trying to sell me the iPhone then but I thought it wasn’t supposed to come out until June 2007????
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
they are taking pre-orders.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:11 pm
ok my name is collins and i own a sidekick and a iphone
i seem to like the iphone better but what i do hate about the iphone
it doesn’t take pictures.
sidekick is horrible 🙁 hate to look at it.
it has bad features
August 28th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I know this article is old, but I just thought I’d throw this in.
Being an owner of both a Sidekick 3 and iPhone 3G, I can honestly say that the Sidekick does NOT even compare, but then again, I guess it shouldn’t.
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing Sidekicks have going for them are the monthly fees associated with them.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
alright i get yourm saaying