Sidekick LX Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

Alfredo Padilla
Published on December 11, 2007 Comment on this

Accessing Music Software (8.13)

The Sidekick LX does a pretty good job when you want to get music playing, we were able to accomplish this in only 2.46 seconds on average. This is better than any of our comparison phones, with the iPhone's 3.1 second time the only one to come anywhere near the Sidekick LX. The biggest factor in this is that we encountered absolutely zero lag in getting music to start playing. On many "smart" devices we encounter significant lag when we try to load a song, as is made clear by the somewhat lackluster times below. To get the time for this test we see how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a song playing on the Sidekick LX. We do this five times and take the average for our final score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	2.46	8.13
AT&T Tilt	5.47	3.66
LG Voyager	8.2	2.44
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.62	2.62
Helio Ocean	5.2	3.85
Apple iPhone	3.1	6.45

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
The only buttons on the Sidekick LX that perform a dedicated music function are the volume keys, which can control both music and device volume while music is playing. There is also a shortcut to open a "mini-player" that gives you some basic playback controls. To open the "mini-player" you hit the "jump" and "done" buttons together, the one with the dotted circle and the check mark if you're wondering. Although not specifically a music control it does allow you to control music playback functions without going through the menu system so we decided it was worth another point.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.6)

The Sidekick LX was able to recognize our standard .m3u playlist and we were also able to edit existing and create new playlists on the device. Tags for all three of our test file types were recognized. The Sidekick LX's music player provides a very good selection of sorting options, including title, artist, album, genre and composer. You can't sort your music by rating, however there was a search function available via the menu.

Our album art was not recognized by the Sidekick LX's music player and there were no visualizations or support for rating songs. We were happy to see that all music on our Micro SD card was immediately recognized and properly sorted by the music application, there was no need to perform a scan as on Windows Mobile devices and we didn't even have to place them in the "right" folder. As you would expect from a multi-tasking device background play was supported but there was no equalizer. Overall the Sidekick LX's music software did well on most points, with a few noticeable failures like album art and the equalizer. It's not as good as the music player on the iPhone, but it's significantly better than Verizon's V Cast music players as found on the LG Voyager and other phones.

Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not support any direct to device music download services. As T-Mobile has not made its 3G network widely available yet they are not yet able to support such a service.

Streaming (0.0)
The Sidekick LX was unable to play streaming music in the Mp3, Windows Media or Real formats.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not have any software for downloading or organizing podcasts.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The Sidekick LX mounts your memory card as a simple USB drive when you connect it to the computer via USB cable, making it easy to move music back and forth. Probably the easiest approach is to use a program like Windows Media Player to manage and move your music over, although you can also simply drag and drop files if you wish. We appreciate having this ease of use instead of proprietary software that other phones force you to use.

Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Sidekick LX was able to support AAC, Mp3 and WMA audio files. It does not support any form of DRM protected music however, so anything you've purchase from iTunes or one of the stores that uses Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM won't be playable on the Sidekick LX.

Music Interruption (10.0)
While playing back music the Sidekick LX handles itself fairly well when a call comes in. The music is paused when the phone starts ringing and starts back up again when the call ends. Our only issues where that the start and stop were rather abrupt and that when the call was over the phone didn't go back to the music player, even if that's where you were when it came in. Still, these are minor issues and you won't find yourself losing any part of the song to an incoming call.

Video

Video Software Access (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not support video playback of any type. Although some of our test videos were recognized by the music software, we were only able to play back their audio. Given that video playback is standard on even entry level phones and that the Sidekick LX has a nice large screen you might actually want to watch video on we find this rather disappointing. As video playback is not supported the Sidekick LX will receive zeroes in many of these sections.

Video Controls (0.0)
No video playback.

Video Software & Organization (0.0)
No video playback.

Video Sync with PC (0.0)
No video playback.

Video Formats (0.0)
No video playback.

Video DRM (0.0)
No video playback.

Video Playback Smoothness (0.0)
No video playback.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
No video playback.

Video Streaming unscored
No video playback.

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