Home > Reviews > Manufacturer > Sidekick LX Cell Phone Review

Sidekick LX Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on December 11, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Sidekick LX is the latest iteration of the iconic Sidekick line which brings many smart phone features to the younger set. We found ourselves liking the Sidekick LX's software interface and appreciated the native support for push email. Not so appreciated was the terrible camera and sub-par audio performance. Those who love ease of use and aren't feature hounds will appreciate the Sidekick LX, but we think that you can find a better value elsewhere.

We did like the Sidekick LX's QWERTY keyboard, although those with small hands may find it difficult to use. The device was large in all respects, including its battery performance, which was excellent. The organizer features on the Sidekick LX were also good, although business users will find them a little limiting. Also limiting was the selection of third party applications. Although the LX is a "smart" phone by our definition, as native third party applications are available, the selection is extremely limited and you can't supplement them with Java applications. We also can't understand why the LX doesn't support basics like video capture or playback.

The Sidekick LX is available exclusively from T-Mobile for $299.99 with a two-year contract or $399.99 without.

Tour & Design - The Sidekick LX is a big device that won't fit neatly into most pockets.

Audio Quality - Audio quality was a mixed bag, we've seen much better from other phones.

Imaging - The Sidekick LX's camera is terrible and it doesn't record video.

Making/Receiving Calls - We found having to open up the phone to dial a number and then closing it again to talk an annoyance.

Messaging - We liked the built in email client with push email support, but wish there were a unified messaging client for SMS and MMS.

Organizer - The Sidekick LX's calendar, tasks and notes applications will be sufficient for all but business users.

Multimedia - Music playback was decent, but we can't understand why video playback is not supported given the Sidekick LX has a very nice display.

Software - The Sidekick OS is intuitive and the web browser provides solid, if unspectacular, functionality but we wish there were a larger library of third party applications.

Battery Life - The Sidekick LX is a battery powerhouse, it should last even the most intense users a couple of days.

Connectivity - We wish the Sidekick LX had Wi-Fi and found the lack of Bluetooth profiles to be disappointing.

Hardware - The QWERTY keyboard is easy to type on and we like the large display, but the custom button configurations will take awhile to figure out.

Other Features - We are disappointed that you can't use the Sidekick LX as a dial up modem and GPS would have been nice too.

Value & Comparisons - The Sidekick LX is a little pricey at $299 with a two-year contract, you can get more from other devices for the same price.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
Unlike most phones that are held vertically along their longest axis the Sidekick series is held horizontally, so when held correctly they look very wide and not very tall. The front of the Sidekick LX is dominated by the three inch screen. To either side of the screen are the control keys. To the right is a trackball very similar to that found on recent BlackBerry devices. Just above and below the trackball are the send and end keys. Above and below those buttons are the "cancel" and "done" button (and if you can figure out they're different just from their names, you're a smart chap). Next to the cancel button, the top one if you're wondering, is a small hole for the phone microphone. On the opposite side of the screen is a four way D-Pad, which strangely lacks any kind of center select button. Instead the central part of the D-Pad is used to hold the grill for the phone speaker. Above and below the D-Pad are the menu and jump buttons, which mirror the cancel and done buttons from the other side.

Front Open
Sidekicks have an opening mechanism unlike any other phone we've reviewed to date. Instead of sliding or folding open the Sidekick LX's screen rotates 180 degrees on a pivot to sit just above it's previous position. When the screen pivots away it reveals a full QWERTY keyboard underneath.

Left
The left side of the Sidekick LX holds a volume rocker key near the top and the power button near the bottom, with bottom and top being somewhat arbitrary designations here.

Top
The top of the LX has the Mini USB port for connecting power and data cables on the left and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the right.

Bottom
There are no significant features on the bottom of the Sidekick LX other than a lanyard loop at the bottom right.

Right
On the right of the Sidekick LX are two small buttons one near the bottom and another near the top. When the phone is held horizontally this puts them within easy reach of your for fingers. The button near the bottom launches the camera by default while the one near the top launches the multimedia message interface.

Back
The back of the Sidekick LX is basically taken up in its entirety by the battery cover. Near the top of the device is a small slot in the cover where you can see the lens, flash and self-portrait mirror for the 1.3 Megapixel camera. The back itself is textured in a pseudo-leather material.

Battery Out
When you slide the back of the phone up it comes off and reveals the battery cavity underneath. There is a very capacious 1540 mAh battery. Thankfully you don't have to remove this huge battery to get at the spring loaded Micro SD slot near the top of the phone. You do have to remove the battery to get at the SIM card slot though.

In the Box (5.5)
The Sidekick LX ships with a reasonable selection of accessories including a set of manuals, USB cable, case, stereo headset, charger and a 128 MB Micro SD card to get you started.

Handling (3.0)
The Sidekick LX is a big phone, there's no getting around that. Throw in the fact that it's meant to be held horizontally for most operations and you have a phone that's not exactly the easiest to handle. One-handed use is not the strong point here, instead you will find yourself having to use two hands for most operations. Throw in the fact that even when you are holding it vertically during a phone call it's heavy and rather wide and our impressions of its handling are, to put it mildly, unimpressive.

Portability (4.0)
As we mentioned above, the LX is a brick of a phone at 5.2 x 2.4 x 0.7 inches and weighing in at a heft 5.8 ounces. This thing won't slip into your pocket easily, in fact there are some pants pockets it probably won't fit into at all. Not good, folks, not good.

Aesthetics (6.5)
So, the Sidekick LX is big and handles poorly, so you better hope it looks good because people are going to be able to spot this thing from a mile away. Thankfully the Sidekick LX's aesthetics are not totally offensive. If that doesn't sound like a whole hearted endorsement, it's not. We do like the LX's black finish and although the pseudo-leather soft touch finish on the back might be considered tacky by some others will find it cool. The Sidekick line has always targeted the young and hip crowd, and we're sure this demographic will continue to be impressed by the rotating screen and blinky lights.

Durability (5.0)
We are concerned about the Sidekick LX's construction on several fronts. First of all there's a lot of plastic on this device that, combined with a large screen, leads us to worry about scratches. We also worry about any phone that has moving parts and the Sidekick LX's signature rotating screen fits the bill. Thankfully, the rotating mechanism seems to be made of metal, but it still feels flimsy and we were easily able to bend the screen a little too easily in the wrong direction. The soft-touch finish on the back does provide some measure of protection, but on the other hand the camera lens is not protected. We also noticed that many of the buttons and controls on the Sidekick LX were a little loose. The Sidekick LX isn't a cheap looking device like the Pantech Duo, but these combination of concerns make us worry about its long term durability.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

The Audio quality of a phone is, of course, the most important feature for anyone who wants to actually use it as a phone. To test the call quality of cell phones we use the same professional equipment and software used by many of the manufacturers. This includes Listen Inc's SoundCheck software to analyze the sound and a Head and Torso Simulator to simulate the human head and ear. For more information on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (6.74)
The chart above shows the quality of sound received by the Sidekick LX, this is how those on the other end of the call will sound to you. The blue line indicates the Sidekick LX's performance while the two red lines are the limits against which we test. As you can see the Sidekick LX had some problems in this test. The curve is too low across lower and middle frequencies and then it spikes up above our limits at higher frequencies. This means that lower voices may sound subdued while higher pitched voices may sound louder than they should. You can see from the table below that the Sidekick LX did worse in this test than any of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	AT&T Tilt (on AT&T)	LG Voyager (on Verizon)
Score	6.74	8.04	7.84
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	8.30	7.88	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (5.35)
This test measures the quality of sound sent by the Sidekick LX, so this is how you will sound to those on the other end of the all. As with our receive test the chart above indicates the Sidekick LX's performance with a blue line and the limits against which we test with red lines. You can see that the Sidekick LX fell above our limits across almost all frequencies. As you might guess from our limits we expect a line to rise slowly to one level and the rise slightly again at higher frequencies before dropping off. By contrast the Sidekick LX rose to a high level quickly and then stayed there across all frequencies. What this means in practice is that your voice may sound exaggerated to those on the other end of the call, especially if you speak in lower tones. Once again the Sidekick LX put up one a poor score in an audio test, you can see below that it did worse than any of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	AT&T Tilt (on AT&T)	LG Voyager (on Verizon)
Score	5.35	7.44	8.51
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.51	6.45	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (8.26)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that a handset pipes back into your ear so that you can hear how loudly you are speaking. The Sidekick LX posted a side tone score of -19.74 decibels, which is very close to the ideal -18 decibels. This means that you should be able to judge how loud your voice is pretty accurately. You can see below that the Sidekick LX put up a pretty good score in this test, in sharp contrast to its performance in our other audio tests.

Cell Phone	Side Tone Measurement	Score
Sidekick LX	19.74	8.26
AT&T Tilt	20.29	7.71
LG Voyager	17.63	9.63
BlackBerry Curve 8320	17.88	9.88
Helio Ocean	22	5.50
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.55)
To test resolution we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart and then run those photos through the Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height, which is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Sidekick LX scored 782 lw/ph horizontal and 662 lw/ph vertical, which is not very impressive. You can see below that the only phone that did worse in this test was the Helio Ocean. This is also far worse than the result you'd get from a stand alone digital camera.

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	AT&T Tilt	LG Voyager
Score	2.55	4.80	2.93
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	782/662	1039/1057	837.9/838.9
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Curve 8320	Helio Ocean	Apple iPhone
Score	5.25	2.18	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1087/933	701/476.6	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (4.00)
To test the quality of colors produced by the Sidekick LX's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. These photos are then run through Imatest, which compares the original color the capture color.
Imatest produces the chart above. The small inner rectangle in each color represents the ideal color. The inner box is the captured color adjusted for luminance while the outer box shows the original captured color. Imatest also produces the chart below. Here the ideal color is indicated by a small box with the captured color is indicated by a circle. The longer the line between the two the more inaccurate the colors.
As you can see the Sidekick LX has some problems under-saturating colors, especially yellows and greens. This means the photos you take with the Sidekick LX will seemed washed out and not very vibrant. As you can see below the Sidekick LX did worse in this test and any of our comparison phones

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	AT&T Tilt	LG Voyager
Score	4.00	5.50	5.31
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	BlackBerry Curve 8320	Helio Ocean	Apple iPhone
Score	4.92	6.66	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.76)
To find out how much noise is produced in photos taken by the Sidekick LX we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels, ranging from very bright to low light. We then run these photos through Imatest to determine the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. Our final score considers both the amount of noise at each lighting level and the consistency of noise across lighting levels. The Sidekick LX performed very poorly in this test, with higher than average noise at every lighting level and particularly poor performance in low light. As you can see below the Sidekick LX put up the worse noise scores amongst our comparison phones, although you'll also note that no camera phone does very well in this test.

Cell Phone	Score
Sidekick LX	0.76
AT&T Tilt	1.23
LG Voyager	0.95
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.41
Helio Ocean	1.14
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (4.0)
The Sidekick LX's live preview is not very good. We liked that it took up the entire screen, but we noted a lot of noise in the preview, and panning produces artifacts. It did give you a good idea of how the photo will turn out though, especially in terms of color and detail. Given how poor photos from the Sidekick LX's camera are, you're probably well served by a poor live preview, because it lets you know just how badly the pictures are going to come out.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.06)
This test finds out how fast you can whip out your phone and take a photo. We found a serious disparity with the Sidekick LX on this test depending upon where you are saving your photos. If you save them on the internal memory the camera was able to launch up and take a photo in a relatively speedy 1.7 seconds. For some reason, however, saving photos to an external memory card slowed this performance down to 3.3 seconds, which isn't horribly slow, but is going to give you some trouble capturing a shot that may only last a moment. We filled up the phone's internal memory with only a couple of photos so we have to assume that most people will be saving photos to the external card, as such we used that time for our score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	3.3	6.06
AT&T Tilt	3.7	5.41
LG Voyager	5.7	3.51
BlackBerry Curve 8320	2.9	6.90
Helio Ocean	4.1	4.88
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (0.63)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos. This is important if you want to capture an action shot. When possible we do this test using a camera's burst mode, however the Sidekick LX lacks this function so we had to do it manually. The Sidekick LX took 23.8 seconds to take five photos, which works out to 0.21 frames per second (fps). This is a pretty terrible score and is the result not only of us doing the test manually but also of the fact that you can't turn off photo review on the Sidekick LX. You can see below that there were several other phones with terrible results in our comparison group, with only the Helio Ocean and HTC Tilt putting up reasonable scores. What this means is you shouldn't expect to be able to capture an action shot with the Sidekick LX.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Sidekick LX	0.21	0.63
AT&T Tilt	1.36	4.08
LG Voyager	0.15	0.45
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.35	1.05
Helio Ocean	1.25	3.75
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (1.67)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've hit the shutter button. The Sidekick LX was very inconsistent in this test, posting shutter to shot times ranging from 0.3 seconds all the way up to 1.5 seconds, this was with a large number of repetitions. Normally we like to see a nice consistent number all the time, but in this case we'll have to go with the number we saw most often, which was 1.2 seconds. About 80% of our trials were over a second so although you can occasionally get much better shutter to shot time we wouldn't count on it. As you can see below a shutter to shot time of 1.2 seconds is pretty poor. It's even worse when you consider that the AT&T Tilt and LG Voyager, which were the only two phones to do worse on this test amongst our comparison group, were slowed down by an auto-focus lens. Our other three comparison phones shared a fixed focus lens with the Sidekick LX and did much better on this test. Bottom line is you better hope your subject sits still for awhile when taking a photo.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	1.2	1.67
AT&T Tilt	1.64	1.22
LG Voyager	1.3	1.54
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.43	4.65
Helio Ocean	0.6	3.33
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00

Interface (5.0)
The interface for the Sidekick LX is very simple. The entire screen is taken up by the viewfinder with two overlays, one in the top right and one in the bottom left. The top right overlay tells you how many photos you can still capture and what your current capture resolution is. The overlay in the bottom left allows gives you four controls you can switch between using the trackball. These are: capture photo, send last photo, control flash and open photo album. All other controls are found in the menu, which can be brought up with the menu key, of course. We like how simple the interface is, and that the whole screen is used as a viewfinder. We do prefer more "camera-like" interfaces as on the AT&T Tilt, however. The camera interface on the Sidekick LX makes it feel more like a toy than a real camera, which given the poor quality of the photos it captures may be understandable.

Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The Sidekick LX's photo album software is exceedingly simple. You have two expandable lines, one for internal memory and a second for your memory card. When the boxes are expanded you get a thumbnail view of all the photos in that location. Selecting a photo and pressing in on the trackball marks it with a small check box, which does make selecting multiple photos for deletion or other manipulation fairly easy. It is annoying that you have to open the menu to view a photo in full screen, however. The menu allows you to create new albums for your photos, move them about, send them via email or MMS and resort them. You can also create a slideshow with your photos, with an intervening screen asking you for options like time between photos, which photos to be used and if you want to play a ring tone during the slide show. The album software has some nice options and we like the simplified interface, but we feel like the album software on Nokia Series 60 or Windows Mobile devices is just as easy to use and is more powerful.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Sidekick LX has no manual controls.

Zoom (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does't even offer a digital zoom.

Focus (0.0)
The Sidekick LX has a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We are beginning to see some phones with auto-focus lenses and are disappointed that at the Sidekick LX's price point it lacks this feature. We do not award points for fixed focus lenses.

Flash (3.0)
The Sidekick LX has a simple LED flash that is only good out to a range of about three feet.

Metering (0.0)
There are no metering options on the Sidekick LX, not even brightness controls, which most phones have.

White Balance (0.0)
Unlike the vast majority of cell phone cameras the Sidekick LX has no white balance options. Most camera phones offer you at least a few pre set options.

Image Handling (5.0)
The image handling options on the Sidekick LX are pretty simple, you can rotate photos and resize them to 640 x 480 resolution. Both of these are nice options and more than many phones offer, but once again we've seen better from other smart phone platforms like Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60.

Video

Overall Video Score (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not support recording of video. In a time when almost every handset on the market can do this we find this very disappointing. Because of this lack the Sidekick LX will receive zeros in all of these sections.

Video Resolution (0.0)
No video recording.

Video Compression (0.0)
No video recording.

Interface (0.0)
No video recording.

Manual Control (0.0)
No video recording.

Zoom (0.0)
No video recording.

Editing (0.0)
No video recording.

Modes (0.0)
No video recording.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (4.76)
To see how easy it is to dial a number on the Sidekick LX we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have dialed a test phone number. We do this for five different test numbers and take the average for our score. The Sidekick LX took an average of 4.2 seconds to dial a phone number. As you can see from the table below this isn't the speediest time. We have seen worse from phones like the AT&T Tilt, but we've also seen significantly faster. To dial a number on the Sidekick LX you have to swing open the screen and use the number keys on the QWERTY, which adds a significant amount of time. There is the option to use an on-screen keypad that you navigate via the trackball, but this is significantly slower than just opening up the screen.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	4.2	4.76
AT&T Tilt	5.57	3.59
LG Voyager	4.32	4.63
BlackBerry Curve 8320	3.16	6.33
Helio Ocean	3.1	6.45
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (5.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Sidekick LX are located to either side of the trackball. This puts them within easy reach if you're using the trackball, but we found that because we dialed numbers with the hand that would normally be using the trackball when we went back to hit the send button we often missed it or hit the wrong button simply because it's small. The buttons also don't provide much tactile feedback when pressed, although there is a reasonable amount of key travel. We much prefer the send and end keys on phones like the HTC Tilt or Helio Ocean that are much larger and easier and less likely to be missed by accident.

Call Management (7.0)
The call log on the Sidekick LX can be accessed by hitting the send button from the home screen. This gives you a small on screen list of recent calls, but at the bottom is a link to your full call log. This call log is a full list of your calls with an indicator for type, the phone number or contact name, the time and date of the call and duration. There's no way to bring up more details for any call. You can filter your call log by incoming, outgoing or missed calls, as well as add numbers to your contacts or send them a text message from the call log. You can dial the currently selected number simply by pressing in on the trackball. There are no total call timers or data counters available.

During a call you have an on screen keypad to enter numbers for things like phone trees or dealing with your voicemail. There is another button that allows you to toggle the speaker on or off. All the other functions can only be accessed via the menu button. Here you can initiate another call and conference them together, mute the call, put it on hold or transfer the sound to a Bluetooth headset. Because the Sidekick LX is a multi-tasking operating system you can also go and access other phone functions while you are on a call. The only thing we were missing was the ability to record a call.

Startup to Call (1.77)
In this test we turn the phone off completely and then time how long it takes for the phone to start back up again and dial a number. We use the same five test numbers we used from our original dialing test and take the average for our final score. The Sidekick LX took an average of 56.54 seconds to start up and make a call. This is not a good time, you can see below that only the AT&T Tilt did worse than the Sidekick LX. The Tilt is a Windows Mobile device and they are notorious for taking a long time to start up, but the Sidekick LX wasn't that far off the Tilt's terrible time. In fact it took the Sidekick LX more than twice as long to start up and make a call as the LG Voyager or Apple iPhone, which put up the longest times amongst our comparison phones aside from the Tilt. The bottom line is that if your Sidekick LX is turned off it's going to take awhile to get it going again.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	56.54	1.77
AT&T Tilt	64.55	1.55
LG Voyager	25.26	3.96
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.12	14.04
Helio Ocean	9.5	10.53
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (8.45)
To see how loud the Sidekick LX's ring volume gets we go through all of the ring tones on the phone at maximum volume using a sound pressure meter to measure the loudness in decibels. The Sidekick LX's ring tone measured a maximum of 84.5 decibels. This is pretty standard fare, you can see below that all of our comparison phones put up a volume within a decibel or two of the Sidekick LX. In fact the vast majority of phones fall between 80 and 90 decibels in this test, with most of them around 85 decibels, so the Sidekick LX is pretty average in terms of ring volume.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Sidekick LX	84.5	8.45
AT&T Tilt	85.7	8.57
LG Voyager	85.6	8.56
BlackBerry Curve 8320	85.6	8.56
Helio Ocean	85.4	8.54
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not allow you to use your own custom ring tones, instead you will need to purchase new ring tones from T-Mobile.

Non Audio Alerts (12.0)
The Sidekick LX's vibrate alert is pretty good. We were able to feel it easily in a pocket, and you can even notice it in a jacket pocket. The vibrate doesn't seem much stronger than some other phones we've reviewed, but simply because the Sidekick LX is so large and the whole phone vibrates it seems more noticeable. When a call comes in the screen lights up with information about the incoming number, and the LX's lights also start blinking it, so you'll likely notice and incoming call if you're looking at it.

[page title="Messaging"]

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

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The Sidekick LX does not synchronize with your desktop computer by default. Instead you will need to go to T-Mobile's web page, log into your account and download the Intellisync software. This software allows you to synchronize the address book, calendar and to-dos with Outlook. Because we only review items that come in the box the Sidekick LX will receive a zero here.

Alerts (7.0)
You can only set alerts on the Sidekick LX for calendar appointments. We found the flexibility of creating alerts to be very good, with several pre-set options and the ability to create complex patterns. When an alert sounds you'll definitely notice it as the ring tone sounds, the device vibrates and all the lights blink. If you miss this you have to be really trying. The alert notice will appear on screen with the option to view the appointment, dismiss the alert or snooze it for five minutes. We found the alert functionality on the Sidekick LX to be very good, the equal of other smart devices out there. About our only annoyance was that you can't choose to snooze an alert for varying period as you can on Windows Mobile devices.

Over the Air PIM Sync (1.0)
The Sidekick LX automatically synchronizes your contacts, calendar appointments, tasks and notes with your online T-Mobile account. Although this isn't over the air PIM synchronization in the strict sense of the word as found on BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices in partnership with an Exchange Server, we did think it was worth a point.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.11)
The Sidekick LX took an average of 19.58 seconds to add a new contact name and number. This is just an average time, as you can see in our table below several of our comparison handsets took around 19 or 20 seconds in this test as well. The LX is nowhere near as fast as the LG Voyager or the BlackBerry Curve 8320 though. To get the Sidekick LX's score in this test we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a contact name and phone number. We do this test five times and take the average for our final score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	19.58	5.11
AT&T Tilt	19.74	5.07
LG Voyager	11.76	8.50
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.1	7.09
Helio Ocean	21.24	4.71
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.0)
The Sidekick LX's contacts program provides some very good sorting and search options. By default contacts are organized alphabetically by last name, but this can be changed to be organized by first name. As we've seen in other areas we also appreciated that you can choose ascending or descending for each of these sort options, which we thought was helpful enough that we awarded a bonus point.
You can also filter your contacts by category. Finally you can search through your contacts using the Sidekick LX's QWERTY keyboard. Thankfully this search will work on a contact's first or last name regarding of sorting option, which isn't always the case.

Fields (6.6)
When you create a new contact on the Sidekick LX you can enter up to 33 pieces of information, although we should note that includes up to ten phone numbers, five email address and five instant messaging IDs. You can also enter multiple web addresses, physical addresses, a birthday, notes, job title, company and category. Although the sheer number of different fields and the variety doesn't quite reach the level we've seen from Windows Mobile or Symbian Series 60 devices, it's far higher than most regular phones we've reviewed.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (2.33)
The Sidekick LX supports speed dials but does not support any type of voice activated dialing like tagging contacts with a voice command or using speaker independent voice command. This is a shame because the Sidekick LX is exactly the type of awkward to use device that would benefit from voice dialing.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (8.04)
It took us an average of 12.44 seconds to add a new lunch appointment to the Sidekick LX. This is not a particularly good time, but it's also not the worse we've ever seen. You can see below that the Tilt, Voyager and Curve all did significantly better than the Sidekick LX on this test, but the Helio Ocean and iPhone both did significantly worse. We found ourselves slowed down slightly on the Sidekick LX by the fact that a fifteen minute reminder is not added by default. To perform this test we start at the home screen unlocked and time how long it takes to add a lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder fifteen minutes before.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	12.44	8.04
AT&T Tilt	7.46	13.40
LG Voyager	9.28	10.78
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
Helio Ocean	24.2	4.13
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (5.13)
The Sidekick LX provides users with five different views for the calendar. The default view is "upcoming", which is similar to the agenda view we've seen on other phones. It's basically just a simple chronological list of all your upcoming appointments with time and title. This is a useful view to get a quick glance of what's upcoming, but we would have liked a little more information about appointments like maybe icons that indicate reminders or recurrence.
The day view is a little different from traditional day views. Like most you have hours along the left side of the screen, but unlike most it doesn't show just a single day at a time. Instead it's continuous, as you scroll down to the end of one day the next day begins. On the one hand this does simplify the interface a little, but on the other hand it also makes it a little more difficult to control the date you are at. Of course appointments are blocked out in the time period that they are scheduled, but like the daily view only title and time are shown, even if there's plenty of space available.
The weekly view is more traditional. There's a grid with days along the top and hours on the left and appointments are blocked out during the time they are scheduled. The week is seven days instead of the traditional five days, but the screen is large enough that this isn't an issue. We also appreciated that the title of the appointment is on the time blocked out, unlike many weekly views that leave out the title altogether or just list details at the bottom of the screen. On the other hand we also would have liked to see more details than just the title.
The monthly and yearly views are less useful than the others. The monthly view is just the current month with a small dot to indicate days that have appointments. The yearly view is just a calendar that shows six months at a time, like you would see in your checkbook, if you still use a checkbook. The other three views on the Sidekick LX are much more useful on a daily basis and made pretty good use of the large display, which is not always the case on devices. Our biggest issue with all the views was that we would have liked to see more information about each appointment included. Also, unlike contacts, categories are not supported in the calendar so there's no way to filter your views, although you can change the icon for your event, this doesn't seem to have any functional impact and it doesn't show up on any of the calendar views.

Fields (7.0)
The fields available when you create a new appointment are better than average, but not as good as some smart phones we've seen like the AT&T Tilt. You can add a title, start/end time, set up recurrence patterns, including complex custom ones, set up a reminder and add a note. You can also set a location, but other items like all day events, categories and invitations are missing. Still, this is a pretty good selection of fields and all but very advanced users should find it sufficient.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (6.99)
The Sidekick LX took an average of 14.3 seconds to add a new task. This isn't the greatest time we've ever seen, but it's not bad either. You can see below that it's better than our comparison phones; although you'll also note that many of our comparison phones don't support asks at all so in many ways we're just happy to see this functionality on the Sidekick LX. To get our score for this test we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we create a new task reminding us to pick up groceries. We do this test five times and take the average time for our final score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	14.30	6.99
AT&T Tilt	17.77	5.63
LG Voyager	n/a - no tasks	0.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
Helio Ocean	n/a - no tasks	0.00
Apple iPhone	n/a - no tasks	0.00

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
The Sidekick LX's tasks program does not support categories so you cannot filter tasks by category. It does support prioritizing tasks, and you can sort taks by priority as well.

Fields (5.0)
When creating a new task on the Sidekick LX you have a pretty basic set of fields to choose from. You can set a title, due date, priority and add a note. That's about it. There's no support for recurrence, alarms or categories. One nice feature of the tasks program is that when you delete a note it isn't immediately gone forever. Instead it is placed in the trash, which can save you from accidental deletion as you actually have to empty the trash to get rid of it forever. We like this feature and although it's not strictly a field we feel it is deserving of an additional point.

Notes

Adding Notes (6.04)
We were able to create a simple note on the Sidekick LX in an average of 8.28 seconds. As you can see from the table below this is a pretty good time, in fact it's the best time amongst our comparison phones. To calculate this score we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have created a new note. We do this five times and take the average for our score.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sidekick LX	8.28	6.04
AT&T Tilt	13.79	3.63
LG Voyager	10.9	4.59
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.2	4.10
Helio Ocean	16.06	3.11
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (4.0)
The notes interface of the Sidekick LX is exceedingly simple. You have a simple list of notes organized alphabetically by default. There's no separate interface for reading or editing a note, instead this is done in the list view. Only the first line is shown by default, but when you select a note and press in on the trackball it's entry is expanded to show the entire note. You can also choose to expand or collapse all notes in the menu while editing is done in line as you have selected a note. Notes can be sorted alphabetically, by creation date or by modification date, and like in other places where sorting has been an option you can choose between ascending or descending for each sorting type. Although the simplicity of the interface has its bonuses it also means that niceties like categories are missing. Also missing is any search functionality. Even though these advanced features are missing we have to admit that we like the simplicity and elegance of the layout.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The Sidekick LX doesn't provide you with any formatting options for notes like changing the font used.

Voice Memo (1.0)
Much like BlackBerry devices the Sidekick LX doesn't allow you to record and store multiple voice notes. In fact, unlike even BlackBerries, the sidekick LX doesn't have any sort of stand alone voice recording program. Instead you can only initiate a voice recording from one of the programs from which they can be sent, namely multimedia messages and email. We would have preferred a full fledged voice note program with one touch access, but you can't have everything in life, and apparently Danger's decided this is one of those things. Just one point here for the extremely limited voice memo capabilities.

[page title="Multimedia"]

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.

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