Sidekick LX Cell Phone Review - Messaging

Alfredo Padilla
Published on December 11, 2007 Comment on this

Supported Email Services (7.5)

The Sidekick LX has a real email client, which is a welcome feature considering how many phones leave out full email clients and force users to access web based email instead. It supports standard POP3 and IMAP4 email accounts and can also has simple setup for AOL and Yahoo email accounts. Hotmail is not supported and although you have to manually configure a Gmail account the program will fill in the POP3 server settings for you. If you want Gmail IMAP, however, you're on your own. We were pretty happy with the range of supported protocols and email services.

Push Email (1.0)
The Sidekick LX supports push email via the T-Mobile email account you get with the device. It does not support push email for other email accounts you add to the device. This means you will need to have other email accounts you use forwarded to the T-Mobile account to receive them in real time. We only award a single point for carrier centric push email services like this because they are simply not as compatible with other services as BlackBerry or Exchange ActiveSync. You are also stuck with the Sidekick LX if you want to continue getting push email, while other services can be ported to a wider range of new devices.

Multiple Email Accounts (6.5)
The Sidekick LX can support a maximum of four email accounts, one of which is the T-Mobile email service. This means you can only set up three personal email accounts. Because you're stuck with the T-Mobile email account we are only awarding half points for it.

HTML and Attachments (2.0)
The Sidekick LX does not support full HTML email, instead it will convert the message into plain text format. The only attachment types it supports are PDF and Word documents, which are displayed in line with the rest of the email. Excel, PowerPoint and Zip files are not supported. You can manage attachments in settings, which consists of the ability to have certain attachment types removed when an email comes in.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The Sidekick LX doesn't provide you with many email customization options. You can't change viewing or composition font type, size or color. There's also no way to change the amount of lines taken up by email in your inbox. About the only thing you can do is add a signature to outgoing emails. These can be set for individual accounts, but the setting are a little hidden. Instead of being under the regular settings you have to go to Accounts -> Edit -> choose your account. The you have to select "signature" from the drop down menu at the top of the resulting dialogue. Not very intuitive.

Time to a New Message (9.01)

To see how easy it is to create a new email message on the Sidekick LX we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new email dialogue on screen. We do this test five times and take the average for our score. The Sidekick LX took an average of 2.22 seconds to complete this process, which is pretty good time. You'll notice below that a lot of our comparison phones also got a good time on this test however, so it's not unique in its swiftness.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	2.22	9.01
AT&T Tilt	6.45	3.10
LG Voyager	n/a - no email client	0.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.7	11.76
Helio Ocean	2.1	9.52
Apple iPhone	1.9	10.53

Email Usability (9.0)

The email program on the Sidekick LX provides a fairly straightforward and usable interface for viewing and managing your emails. Each account is given it's own tab. When an account is selected you see a list of folders, which are expandable to show the email messages within. By default you're given a standard set of folders including inbox, saved, drafts, sent and trash, but you can create your own as well. Messages are sorted by date received by default, but you can change this to sort by subject, sender or size. One nice feature is that each sorting option has both a descending and ascending option, so you can put the smallest messages at the top of the list or the largest when you sort by size. When composing a message you are only shown the "To" field by default. To add a Bcc or Cc to the message you hit the menu button and choose the appropriate item in the list. This isn't a very painful process and it keeps the original message looking neat.

We were pleased to see that when composing an email message the Sidekick LX predicts and automatically creates a filtered list of email addresses based on the name or email address you are typing. We were able to get a predicted email address when typing the first or last name and also when typing the email address itself. This is very similar to the system on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Professional devices. We found the email program on the LX to be one of the better we've seen on a mobile device. It's not up to the grade of Windows Mobile or BlackBerry, but it's much better than the poor email clients we see on most regular phones like the Katana DLX.

Supported IM Services (6.0)

The Sidekick LX supports AIM, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger for instant messaging. Unlike most phones that charge you for an SMS message for each instant message you send or receive the Sidekick LX does not do this as long as you have the required data plan. This means the Sidekick LX will actually get points in this section. Most phones that do charge you for an SMS message don't receive points as we feel it's unfair to charge customers for both data and a text message when using IM.

MMS Support (5.0)

The Sidekick LX's multimedia messaging is well integrated into the camera and album software. Both allow you to easily send a photo you've just taken or that is stored on the phone to another person via MMS. Where integration isn't as good is with SMS messaging. We like phones that don't make an unnecessary distinction between text and multimedia messages by putting them into different inboxes or by using different interfaces for composition. Unfortunately the Sidekick LX does both of these things, forcing you to use a different composition interface for MMS and keeping MMS messages in a separate folder structure. We much prefer the approach taken by Palm devices where SMS and MMS are integrated into a single application interface, you can easily turn an SMS into an MMS by simply adding media to the message.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (8.0)

We were happy to see that unlike most phones the Sidekick LX actually interprets text smileys into graphical equivalents, or at least most of them. The LX turned three of our four test smileys into smiley pictures instead of leaving them in plain text. The Sidekick LX also allows you to insert one of sixteen smiley faces into a message via a pop-up menu. We're sure the inclusion of this vital feature is due to the Sidekick LX's target market, which includes a younger demographic. Whatever the reason we're happy to see such solid smiley support because we think smiley faces are swell.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (0.0)

As we mentioned above SMS and MMS messages are divided into two different interfaces on the Sidekick LX. We would have preferred to see a combined interface for both message types but, alas, it was not to be. The SMS interface is fairly straightforward, you have a list of folders just like you see in the email program. These folders can be expanded to display the messages within and there's a helpful preview window at the bottom of the screen so you can see the currently selected message without actually opening it. Composing a new SMS is also straightforward. You're given an area to add your recipient or recipients. Yes the Sidekick LX can send text messages to multiple recipients unlike a certain iPhone we know. Speaking of things the iPhone lacks the Sidekick LX also has a helpful character counter and two pop up buttons that allow you to insert smiley faces and standard phrases.

The only difference between the MMS and SMS interfaces is that when you are composing a message instead of the smiley and phrases buttons you have a section to add multimedia files. You can add a photo, record a voice message or add any sound that is loaded onto your phone, but not music you put there yourself. You can add multiple pieces of media and control how long each item will be played/displayed. There's a data counter at the bottom to show you how much of the 300 kilobyte limit you've used thus far. Of course we have to ask why you couldn't have just added these options to the SMS interface and gotten rid of the complexity of two different file structures and two different programs you need to navigate to depending on what type of message you want to send. This niggle aside we found the SMS and MMS interfaces to be intuitive and easy to use.

Time to a New SMS Message (5.38)

The Sidekick LX took an average of 1.86 seconds to create a new text message. This is a very good, but not astounding time. You can see in the table below that the HTC Tilt and LG Voyager both did better on this test than the Sidekick LX. However the LX did significantly better than our other comparison phones. To find this result we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new text message dialogue on the screen. We do this five times and take the average for our score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	1.86	5.38
AT&T Tilt	0.79	12.66
LG Voyager	1.1	9.09
BlackBerry Curve 8320	4.22	2.37
Helio Ocean	3.1	3.23
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

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