HIPTOP REVAMPED TOP TO BOTTOM
Danger’s Hiptop smartphone, voted the gadget to have by experts at a wireless-tech convention in March, was updated this week. The theme: Less is more.
Sold in the U.S. by T-Mobile as the $299 Sidekick II, the redesigned phone is flatter and slightly longer than its predecessor, so it looks less like a hand-held gaming device and more like a sleek and sexy cell phone cum personal digital assistant.
The sharp color screen retains its horizontal perspective rather than the vertical screen on most cell phones. And the screen still pivots up to reveal a small keyboard that eases the chore of typing e-mail messages, Web addresses and appointments (and the Sidekick II comes with AOL Instant Messenger preloaded, and Yahoo! Messenger can be downloaded free).
On each side of the screen are buttons that help you hop around the Sidekick II’s easy-to-use operating system, and a scroll wheel tops off your navigating tools. These features make the Sidekick II not just easy to use but fun; with a couple of button presses and flicks of the scroll wheel, you can go from AIMing to reading your Yahoo! mail to playing games to answering the phone. I’d rather do all that on a Sidekick II than any other phone; the big screen and scroll wheel make it easy to read screens of text, and the 47-key typepad is much easier to type with than the 14 or so buttons on most phones.
Addition by subtraction
Even though the device has gone on a diet, it has beefed up its features. A VGA camera now comes standard (The previous model held space for an optional $40 camera attachment). Gamers now will find two shoulder buttons useful for killing demons, as well as a directional pad that’s available when the screen is closed. (The D-pad on the first Sidekick was hidden when the screen was closed.)
Callers will note the keypad now has numbers outlined in a slanted tic-tac-toe formation — enabling one-thumb dialing as on most phones — was well as arranged horizontally as on a computer keyboard. The new cancel button makes it quicker to back out of mistakes
Gone is the Bluetooth port for wirelessly syncing your Sidekick II to your desktop. T-Mobile now has a Web site that automatically finds new information or photos you’ve put in your Sidekick II. You log into the site from a Web-enabled computer. Changes you make on the site show up on your phone in seconds.
From the site you can download Intellisync to your PC (sorry, no Mac support) to sync your computer and Sidekick II’s Microsoft Outlook, contacts, calendar and to-do lists.
It’s no BlackBerry, but for most of us, it’ll do. It won’t fit into a pocket like a flip phone, and the scroll wheel pokes your ear when you’re on the phone (use the included earbuds.)
But as the day nears when we can surf the Web on a phone as fast as we can on a laptop, the phone to own (if you have T-Mobile) is the Sidekick II.
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E-mail Eric Gwinn at egwinn@tribune.com.
