Archive for the 'Sidekick Gekko' Category

Sidekick 2008 Specs

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

Want to know what the full specs on the T-Mobile Sidekick 2008 are? BreatheTmobile has them for you and we’re reposting below:

T-Mobile Sidekick (2008) Specs:

2mp camera w/video
Media Player
Pc-like HTML web browser
Instant Msg
Email
Automatic Backup
Removable Faceplates (customizable at sidekick.com w/your own art or pix!)
2.6″ high resolution wQVGA screen w/ micro-reflective tft lcd
Bluetooth 2.0 w/file transfer
QWERTY keyboard
Trackball
3.5mm headjack
Mirco SD slot w/ 4gb support

Quadband 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
size: 120 x 57.5 x 18 mm!!!!!!
weight: 140 g
standby: 10 days
talk time: 5 hours
Display: 400 x 240 pixel
ram: 128 mb
Flash ROM: 64 mb

It looks like this device is going to be pretty similar to the Sidekick LX, which is no surprise. He also mentions that the device will be “affordable”, although noone is tossing around a price tag yet. His original post can be found on the TmoNews forums.

Sidekick 2008 aka Sidekick Gecco, Gekko, Aspen, whatever

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008


So the latest rumor on the street is that this long awaited Gecco device is going to be called the “Sidekick 2008” by T-Mobile. We have to wonder if T-Mobile marketing is serious about launching a device halfway through the year it’s named for, but then again they did release the SKiD. We’ve squinted our eyes and examined the photos and haven’t been able to see anything that confirms that it will be called the Sidekick 2008. On the back of the screen where it normally says “Sidekick LX” or whatever, it just says “Sidekick”. So here’s your salt shaker, this is what we’ve heard. Probably even more exciting though are some fuzzy pictures floating around that you can see above and below. Looks like T-Mobile is prepared to help you customize the hell out of your device with Sidekick Shells.

via Thanks for the tip Dominic!

T-Mobile Sidekick Gecco is coming!

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Sidekick Gecco
Sidekick Gecco

We received the above screenshots from a Best Buy employee (they have access to see inventory coming) from their internal tools. Looks like T-Mobile switched around the misspelling of “Gecko” and are calling it the Sidekick Gecco. There’s not a whole lot of details other than the name of the device, the size and weight of the box, and the release date of July 27th that we knew about long ago. Oh wait, what’s that? $299? Is that the price of the Sidekick Gecco? Hmm.. Needless to say, this is exciting and only a couple weeks away!

Big thanks to our anonymous tipster

Sidekick Gekko Manual Leaked Early!

Monday, June 16th, 2008

Someone at Danger has put up the Sidekick Gekko manual a little early for our Viewing pleasure. We have not had a chance to review this manual yet, but we will keep this post updated with anything that catches our eye about the Gekko and the Upcoming OTA for the LX (It’s pretty safe to assume they will have a similar (If not the same) OS.)

Sidekick Gekko Manual Manual has since been taken down.

Ok, so at a quick Inspection of the manual, Here’s what we’ve noticed.
(We assume everything mentioned here except where noted will apply to the Sidekick LX OTA as well.)

View Sender’s Online Status
If the sender of an email is one of your “friends” and is online in one of the instant messaging applications, the sender’s name will appear in bold green font and you will see an instant messaging smiley in the From field:

Videos can be transferred via Email (Upto 2mb) as well as MMS and Bluetooth.

Group Chat in AIM moves out of a Menu + Shift hidden shortcut and into an official feature.

Find Text Messages
You can open the Quick Find dialog box by pressing MENU F. Search for a text message by From, Date, and message body fields.
*This feature works everywhere, not just Text Messages.

Photos can be cropped on device.

Gekko will capture images at 1600×1200, 1280×1024, 640×480, or 320×240.

All videos are captured at 176×144 (We assume this applies to the Sidekick LX as well.)

Media files (Music and Videos) are transferrable via Bluetooth between your computer and between 2 hiptops (Kind of like Zune sharing, but no restrictions.)

Auto-Discard Messages When Mailbox Is Full
With this option selected, once your mailbox is full, the system will automatically make room for new messages by permanently discarding old messages, starting with messages in the Trash, then oldest messages in the Inbox and Sent folders. Messages in the Drafts folder and on the SIM card are never auto-discarded.
This is in the Text Message application – Thanks to Theicool for pointing it out.

Alarm
You can set a basic alarm from the Alarm group box, one that repeats daily at a set time. If you want the alarm volume to be different from the sound profile setting, then select the Override Sound Profile check box and select the Alarm Volume button to make adjustments.
When the alarm sounds, a dialog box will appear, giving you the choice to snooze the alarm for 10 minutes, stop the alarm (it will sound again tomorrow), or stop and turn it off (it won’t sound tomorrow).
Note: The alarm will continue repeating every day at the set time until you explicitly turn it off from this Date, Time, & Alarm settings screen or from the Alarm dialog box.
Thanks to legacy for pointing this out

That’s all we noticed that wasn’t discussed in the new features of the OTA and the Gekko, and some things we went into more detail about. If you happen to notice anything we missed, please let us know via the comments section!

Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX

Looks like press photos of the Tony Hawk Sidekick LX that we’ve been waiting for are out. Rumor from BoyGeniusReport has it that it will have grip tape on the back. And like we’ve been reporting, it’s probably going to have all the features and improvements that are coming with the Sidekick LX OTA. Basically it’ll be running the same version of the operating system as the Sidekick LX after the OTA to come. We haven’t gotten official word from T-Mobile yet, so of course the obligatory “grain of salt” is required, but as soon as we have the official word, you will be the first to know!

We’ll be keeping an eye on eBay to see if a Tony Hawk Sidekick pops up. Any bets on how much they go for?

via BGR

Manual pages from the Sidekick Gekko

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

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.
Sidekick Gekko

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.
Sidekick Gekko Camera

Replaceable Shells
You can customize your device with replaceable shells!
Sidekick Shells

Capture a Video!
Sidekick Capture Video

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

FCC confirms Sidekick Gekko / Aspen / the next Sidekick

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Sidekick Gekko Aspen FCC ID
What you’re looking at is the required FCC label for the next Sidekick. What we’re assuming is the Sidekick Gekko/Aspen is now up on the FCC site as a device manufactured by Sharp named PV210. It’s always nice to see a device confirmed by the FCC because that means their is actually a physical device in the hands of someone. Even with the recent excitement of T-Mobile launching their 3G network, the PV210 is not a 3G device, it’s just good old GSM-850 and PCS1900. Beyond that all we can gather from the FCC docs is that it still uses a microSD card, which means support for music, (probably) videos, themes, and more. Oh, and it has a removable battery, no big surprise there.

The confidentiality on the filed documents expires on August 16th, so unless the FCC screws up then we won’t be seeing the FCC filed pictures of the device until after the rumored July release date. We’ll just have to find some other way to get pictures of the device in the wild. But this date means we’ll definitely be seeing a new Sidekick by August!

FCC Docs

Gecko browser is not the Sidekick Gekko

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

A screenshot of a Javascript error was posted on the PBD forums. It says nothing about a Sidekick Gekko. It just happens that the engine that Danger uses for the Sidekick browser (on all their devices) back-end web proxy (to be exact) is based on the Gecko layout engine, just like Firefox and Netscape. So, nope this doesn’t confirm anything about the Gekko sadly. Not to mention that this sort of screenshot is easily faked with literally 1 line of code on a webpage. The original screenshot below:

Post on Boy Genius Report

Sidekick Gekko/Aspen Screenshot

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

That’s right, a Hiptop3.com exclusive where we bring you the first screenshots from the Sidekick Aspen/Gekko. Everything we’ve been hearing points to the Aspen and Gekko being one and the same. We’re not 100% sure which name T-Mobile is going to market this as, but we’d put our money on the SK Gekko. It’s catchy and plays on the ability for the device to change colors. It’s safe to assume that those yellow sides are going to be replaceable with your choice of colors. This device is going to be the followup to the Sidekick iD for sure, as it’s code name is Style 2 (the SKiD was codenamed “Style”). We’ve also been told it’s going to have the same screen as the LX and similar features. The phone icon in this screenshot matches up with what we were seeing in the catalog earlier. We’ve also heard this was supposed to be a cheaper model phone since not everyone can plunk down several hundred dollars for the Sidekick LX. We have yet to hear what it’s missing in relation to the LX though. My guess would be that it’ll be bigger than the LX because a lot of the time cheaper parts = bigger.

What does Hank have in his pockets?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Yesssss, whats in your pocketsss?

Financial Times has an interview with Hank Nothhaft, the CEO of Danger. Not a whole lot of substance in it other than he mentions his love for horses a lot, and a couple of business mistakes he made. The part that has us interested in is the first question he was asked:

What’s in your pocket?
A prototype of the next Sidekick (mobile-cum-internet device). It’s thinner and less wide but has a bigger keyboard. Now I no longer keep it on a belt, I’m always losing it. I was known as the “absent-minded professor” as a student.

A prototype of the next Sidekick? Could this be the Gekko/Aspen that we’ve been hearing about? I’m trying to wrap my head around how they could be making the keyboard bigger AND make it less wide. But then again, he might be comparing it to a Slide.

thanks for the tip Ricky