ORLANDO—I'm a little bit in love with the new Sidekick. I kind of want one.
Is that okay? Really? I'm a 36-year-old man, after all, not the Sidekick's target market of teens. And I wasn't much of a personal fan of the old Sidekick's beepy-boopy noises and "disco ball" glowing trackball. But the new Sidekick looks—dare I say it—grown up.
The Sidekick looks even better in person than it does in photos. The matte black model is smooth and soft, made of solid plastic, with a confident feel to it. The 3.5-inch, 800x480 screen is bright and tight.
Teens will still love this phone, because it's a texting beast. Samsung, smartly, kept the terrific Sidekick keyboard, with its slightly stiff, well-separated and bubbled buttons. The phone can be used closed, as a touchscreen phone with a virtual keyboard, or can snap open smartly with the screen sliding up to reveal the keyboard.
The Sidekick is an Android 2.2.1 phone with some pretty heavy customizations, but I think they're good looking. You can look at the slideshow in this story and decide for yourself. Pretty much everywhere you'd expect to see either text or a rectangle on an Android phone has been edited a bit. A little bar across the top of the screen keeps track of which of the seven home screens you're on. The standard Android icon font has been replaced by a small, all-caps font. At the bottom of the screen (or the side, depending on how you're holding it) are the words "phone," "apps," and "contacts" rather than confusing icons representing the same ideas.
Now that I think about it, the fonts, boxes of colors, and use of text rather than icons rather reminds me of Windows Phone 7's Metro design language, which makes an odd sort of sense: Microsoft bought Danger, maker of the old Sidekicks, and while that team wasn't involved in this phone, their spirit lives on.
The four Sidekick "jump" keys around the edges of the phone seem a bit vestigial, and they are; they played important roles in the old Danger OS, but here they're really just programmable shortcut keys. Three customizable colored LEDs along the top of the screen play the role of the old "disco ball," telling you about new messages. I like how they're customizable; you can turn them on or off as you like.
The purely cosmestic customizations don't seem to drag down performance. The Sidekick felt even zippier than the usual Samsung Galaxy S phone, which was surprising given that they share the same 1GHz Hummingbird processor. And there's all the usual Android goodness in here, including the excellent Web browser and the 100,000-plus Android Market apps.
I didn't get to test the Sidekick's Internet speeds, but I'm expecting good things: this is an HSPA+ 21 phone, and thus it'll be quite fast on T-Mobile's network. The new Sidekick 4G will cost $149.99 with a two-year contract when it comes out this spring; you can get a $50 rebate if you sign up for a higher-priced data plan, and it will also be available for more money on prepaid plans, T-Mobile told me.