Retro Review: The Sidekick

[From Darcy Boese, in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada] Hi Sammy! We've all heard the news now that Matias Duarte, who worked in the UI for the Sidekick, is now helping Palm work on the new version of their PalmOS. So I figure this would be a perfect time to post my retro review of the Sidekick, or as it is known here in Canada, the Hiptop.

I have been using a Fido Hiptop as my primary cellphone for several years now. My boss had decided that for my job I need to be on call for 24/7, but I was unwilling to pay for a phone or for the service myself, and so this is the phone he gave me to use. He had been using it himself until he wanted to upgrade to a BlackBerry instead.

Mine is the original model of the Hiptop, also known in the United States as the T-Mobile Sidekick. This is the same phone that was made (in)famous when some "hackers" broke into Paris Hilton's online account for it (or more likely, guessed the name of her dog).

While this phone is no longer available to be bought new, and you can no longer purchase a plan specifically for this phone here in Canada, it is a standard GSM phone and ought to work with any SIM card. You may not be able to use all the online features if you don't have a service plan specifically for this phone.

When the phone is not in use, or when you're using it as a phone, it is in a relatively compact form. But if you decide you need access to the keyboard, the screen just pivots open. There is no touchscreen, but there is a scrollwheel for selecting items.

All of the built-in applications work adequately, and more (mostly games) can be downloaded at any time, and they add another $8 or so to your bill. One or two applications (such as a simple "Calculator") can be downloaded for free. Many ringtones are always available for a quick download too!

The user interface is quite intuitive. Use the scrollwheel: up and down to select, click to choose your selection, or hit the nearby "back" button to cancel. Alternatively, if the screen is opened up to the keyboard, you can use the cursor pad and the return key instead. Very simple to use, and the interface is consistent across all of the applications.

The main interface for the OS is the "Jump Screen". All the applications are shown in a column, and you can scroll through them to select them. But having given all the programs I use frequently hotkeys, I pretty much never see this screen, and jump back and forth quickly without even going through thr Jump Screen.

With this phone, I've got access to the internet from any place and at any time. The boss pays for an unlimited data plan, and so I never have to worry about wasting minutes. This gives me a simple web browser (Google from anywhere!), online chat (with an AIM account), and the ability to send and receive email on a whim. And for an extra $13 (a one-time fee) I can get a "Terminal" program which can remotely access all the servers at work with telnet or ssh.

One "fun" feature for this phone, I can email myself any (short) MP3 file and use that as a ringtone or message alert for mosr programs.

And the included PDA features all "just work". The calendar lets me set appointments (so I can still remember all those birthdays), I can write short notes, and keep track of everybody's phone numbers and addresses. Pretty much, all the basic features you'd expect to be built into any PDA. And it multitasks! I can quickly jump between any application with user-defined hotkeys (I picked "T" for the terminal app, "B" for the browser, etc.) and each one continues to update even when it's running in the background. So while I'm waiting for a webpage to download, I can still compose email or write notes or play games.

The built-in applications are seamlessly integrated with each other. "Address Book" stores all the contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers. Whatever I select, it gives me an option in the menu to launch the other applications, so that I can email/SMS/call anybody with just one more click. And one thing they definitely did right, the "Phone", "SMS" and "Email" applications ALL read from this same database directly. When I'm dialing or messaging somebody, I don't need to recall their numbers or addresses, all I need to do is start typing their name, and I get a short popup list to select from. When I was (briefly) using a Treo 650, to get the same functionality, the phone application launched a separate application to look somebody up, which then re-launched the phone application again. The Hiptop's way of doing things is MUCH more intuitive.

For an extra bonus, all of this data gets backed up for me AUTOMATICALLY over the network. I can even access and change any of it with my desktop's web browser, where any updates get sent to my phone for me with no extra work on my part.

They also sell an external camera for this phone, which just plugs in to the side of the phone, into the headphone jack. Any pictures taken get automatically uploaded, and I can do anything I want with them later from the website.

So for everybody waiting to see what they come up with for PalmOs 2.0, you can expect something that Just Works Right and will be Very Intuitive!

Those the good parts about my phone. But there are quite a few downsides. As I said, I'd had the opportunity to use a Treo 650 for about a month, so I'm acutely aware of the shortcomings of my phone. Every one of these things annoyed me before, but I pretty much just lived with it. Mind you, this is the original model for this phone, and they have come out with two revisions since then, so take these complaints with a grain of salt. Maybe they've already fixed some of these issues in the newer models.

The phone is too thick. It is about twice as thick as a normal phone or PDA. This leaves a pretty big bulge sticking off my belt in its holster, and it is constantly getting caught on things. This did NOT happen with the Treo.

The battery needs to be charged EVERY day. If I forget to charge it overnight, it will often die on me before I get to work the next day.

The scroll wheel wears out easily. This makes it difficult to scroll through things quickly, and I keep finding myself flipping the screen open just so that I can use the 4-way cursor pad instead.

The pivot (where the screen flips open) is not very sturdy. This is actually my second Hiptop phone, as the first one's screen went all haywire thanks to a loose connection here. Rather than get me a brand new Treo with an unlimited data plan from, say, Telus, my boss chose to keep the current plan and buy a new phone on ebay. On the bright side, when the new phone arrived, all I needed to do was insert my old SIM card and ALL my data was quickly re-downloaded onto the new phone with pretty much zero effort on my part.

When the phone is in use, ALL other data connections on the phone are cut off. I cannot quickly switch over to the browser to look something up on Google, and if I was remotely connected to my workstation with the Terminal app, it effectively logs me out from the middle of whatever I was doing.

The web browser is terrible for any website formatted in columns. Everything gets shifted over to a very narrow column on the right. Many websites I would otherwise visit more often, such as slashdot (www.slashdot.org), are unreadable. An additional problem with this browser is that there is NO Java or Javascript support whatsoever. Some pages with large images or too much content will not download at all.

EVERY internet connection is done via a proxy service. This means that the already-slow internet has extra lag introduced. The terminal app, in particular, suffers very much from this. (My brief time using the Treo, on the other hand, was MUCH faster, and had little lag, all using the exact same GSM network.) Web surfing is uncomfortably slow, as everything must first get downloaded to the proxy server, its contents reformatted for the small screen, and THEN sent to your phone.

SMS conversations are saved on the SIM card itself, leaving very little room for very much history. And even worse, NONE of your own outgoing messages get saved. Oh, I really do miss the Treo's "Chat" format for SMS very, very much.

You are only able to use a very small number of applications which were written specifically for the phone. There is no custom third-party support for programs whatsoever. There is quite a variety of simple arcade and puzzle games available, mostly at $8 each, but there's only room for about 5-7 of them at a time. And if you run out of room or change your mind, you cannot re-download any apps you delete unless you also re-spend the $8 again.

The Hiptop also has a pair of mystery ports that appear to serve no function whatsoever. There is an IR port, but no software whatsoever to make use of it. It doesn't receive contacts Beamed to it, nor is there any option in the Contacts menu to Send data. Perhaps I just haven't downloaded the right multiplayer games? (Not that I know anybody else with the same phone to play against anyway.) There is also a standard-sized mini USB port, which also seems to serve no purpose, and my computer doesn't recognize the phone when I plug it in.

Another minor irritation is that I know the phone has more built-in memory that just isn't being used. For example, since I don't have the camera add-on, it's just wasting the space reserved for all 36 pictures. That memory could have been used for more applications! Or better yet, my two-way SMS conversations!

Overall, the Hiptop phone works, but I don't really like it. It does the job for me, but that's it.

There is only one feature on my Hiptop that is superior to the Treo: the keyboard. It is VERY easy to thumb my way around this thing. There is a pleasant "click" with good tactile feedback, and all the buttons are spaced far enough apart that I don't keep hitting the wrong buttons. The number keys are all separate, and don't need an "option" keypress to access them. EVERY special unixy character is right there and easy to get to, with no mucking around in various menus and screens. I do have to remember two special characters: ` is alt-Q and | is alt-W, but everything else is printed on the keys for reference.

Overall, the Hiptop/Sidekick smartphone is a good little workhorse. It doesn't do anything "great", but it DOES do everything it needs to do more than adequately. It's no Treo though, and there's tons of room for improvement.