Box Contents

As always let’s delve into the contents of the box, you get a Charger, Memory Card (512mb microSD), USB Cable and a Standard Headset.

There are also various Tariffs from T-Mobile, ranging from £32 to £70 (includes unlimited data and a range of call minutes/texts), but by the looks of things you are stuck on 18month contracts - via the official website ordering system.

Specs

• Screen: 2.4” 320 x 240
• Size: 118 x 60 x17mm
• Weight: 150g
• Keyboard: Qwerty
• Bluetooth: Ver 2
• Connectivity: 3G (No), Wi-Fi (No), Edge (Class 10)
• Mem: 128 MB internal memory
• CPU: 225 MHz TI OMAP 850 processor
• Camera: 1.3MP (No video)
• Battery: 1130mAh - Stand-by: Up to 156 h, Talk time: Up to 7 h

Concept

Essentially the Sidekicks popularity in the states could be down to a few celebs (Xzibit, Lindsey Loahan, Paris Hilton and Vida Guerra) who have been seen using the IM (instant messaging) and Email device.

But in this country we need more than just the glamour and marketing a push email solution for the youth of this country with no 3G or Wi-Fi support is always going to make life difficult from a selling point, not to mention the lack of other features that put the sidekick on the back foot for business professionals (more on this later).

Design

Whilst not technically classed as a Smartphone it does look like one and Motorola have tried to style the device like a console in some roundabout kind of way.

Mainly because in operation you really have to hold the device with two hands (and it’s a touch bulky).

Either side of the 2.4" screen you will find a set of buttons (phone and menu), including a Blackberry Pearl style trackball for navigating around the propriety interface.

The interface itself is kept colourful and relatively neat considering the size of the screen, but all email accounts were crammed into one inbox (though the Americans had a firmware update at the time of our first look at the sidekick, which allowed tabbed views).

The back of the Sidekick is coated in a rubberised material which helps protect the device when placed on the desk and under some protective covers you can gain access to your headphone socket (2.5mm mind) and USB port.

Taking off the back cover and removing the battery is also needed to insert the microSD card, which as you can imagine was not the most appealing of design traits.

When the screen is flipped up you will find a backlit keyboard underneath and whilst the keys are small, slightly flat and don’t offer much feedback, they do provide an extra row of numbers above the Qwerty keys and after a fashion the keyboard can be used successfully for typing email or texts.

The keyboards biggest problem however is that it is recessed slightly, which means when you type you have the side facing walls of the phone to contend with and one handed typing is made impractical as a result.

Features/Software

The sidekick slides biggest selling point comes from its push email support, IM (Instant messaging) and server side facilities.

From a business point of view though the sidekick does not support Exchange (unless this has changed since we last looked at the device), but as mentioned it does provide its own server side web and push email solution straight out the box .

What this means is that when you configure your T-Mobile account or by adding your own existing POP/IMAP accounts, any emails that are sent to you are pushed straight to your device, thus you don’t have to manually initiate a collection of your mail.

What's more any of your emails (html, plain text), contacts and calendar entries are also backed up automatically to a remote server and then these can be accessed via a web browser from any location.

However there are limitations placed on the number of emails that can be stored onto the server, so you still need to maintain a tidy inbox.

Any changes you do from the website are also re-synced back to your device. But we did feel this was not as quick as it could be and also the push email facility was also hampered with intermittent issues which would results in some emails being instantly delivered, whilst others would take several minutes to arrive (even with small attachments).

Though the above may be down to signal strength and the fact that we were testing the device indoors.