Rating: 
Summary: Great Idea but Plagued with Problems
Review: I bought the sidekick 2 months ago for the same reason everyone did. 1. It was a cool toy. 2. I'd rather carry one device and combine a pda with a cell phone. Well the first 2 weeks it worked great. After that the screen would not light up when I flipped it open. I figured I just got a bad device. T-mobile graciously exchanged it with a new one. Well 2 weeks after receiving the new one, The battery would constantly die after only a few hours of use. Instead of trying a 3rd one, I decided to try my luck with the pocket pc. Hopefully that will be better. Maybe I was just unlucky! While it works, it is a great device although you can't download any programs to it.
Rating: 
Summary: Well done T-Mobile
Review: I must say that this phone is a real piece of art. The only thing that bugs me is every once in a while the signal changes drastically while I remain in the same place. Overall the phone and the service are great. It is a smart phone so you have to get used to its capabilities. It is an awesome step in technological advances in communication. Bravo T-Mobile. Bravo.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Thing So Far!!!
Review: I have used WAP enabled phones and PDA's to access the net since my HP 200LX (A GREAT PDA! BTW).I have to say, for my purposes the Tmobile Sidekick (Hiptop) by Danger Inc. does it all (almost!) Although it does not presently handle Java it certaily browses web pages well. The ability to view, send, and receive attatchments as well as text makes for a great mobile tool. Like many people these days my office PC is behind a firewall that blocks a LOT of sites like web mail, Ebay, etc. So, since I use Yahoo mail a lot and it is a site blocked by our firewall, I can still retrieve my mail, shop online (during breaks of course!!!) and do anything one needs to do. You can view spreadsheets, html's, graphic files, and .pdf files. Like Tmobile phones, coverage CAN be a problem if you travel out of the usual corridors but I am seldom out of signal. I use my phone a lot so I got the 3000 minute plan with regional roaming for $49.00 per month. I added the unlimited internet option for another $20 bucks per month. Since I work in a large Federal building I can be in certain places and lose signal. However, I seldom experience a loss of communication and am finding a 3-4 out of 5 signal strength most of the time. Even with a "one bar" signal strength the data still comes in loud and clear. Oh, BTW, the pages appear to load about the speed of a 33.6 modem speed if the graphics are on. It is VERY fast loading if you de-select the graphics option. Tmobile mirrors everything on a secure personal page so as soon as you enter data it is also entered there as well. Very handy when you want to add large amounts of information to your Sidekick. Just compose on a PC and cut and paste it into your web-based display and poof! it is on your Sidekick. VERY cool!
Rating: 
Summary: Now I know why this phone's first name is Danger.
Review: I jumped at Amazon's offer in November 2003 for a free sidekick if i signed up for a one-year T-Mobile contract. The device itself is extremely well thought out, and user-friendly. but I can't recommend this phone, because the T-Mobile service is too spotty. It's dicey making calls to anyone your care about (sorry mom) because you're going to get cut off. When I do have service, I like surfing the internet, and using the Instant messaging. But I'm also paranoid that this thing is going to stop working. When I bought my sidekick, I was unaware of a looming fatal hardware problem known as Net 7. After 3 weeks of using my new Sidekick i stopped recieving any signal. So I called customer service, and was surprised to learn that they would only offer me a refurbished phone. That was a drag, I bought it new and a month later I was using someone else's old phone. Sort of the old bait-and-switch. If you are looking for a hybrid device, i would consider the Handspring Treo, or shell out the big bucks for a Blackberry. The Sidekick is a neat toy, but if you need a phone to make calls and want to check your e-mail reliably, you're in for a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: I love my Sidekick!
Review: I bought a Sidekick in December and it is AWESOME! I love all of it's features. I always dreamed of having a wireless device like this for so long. Everytime that I looked up wireless stuff, it would scare me to see the prices! When I saw this and the Unlimited Data plan was so cheap, I knew I had to have it! It's great for people who are on the computer a lot at their houses for internet reasons. The AIM feature took about 3 minutes for me to get used to. The E-Mail program couldn't be any easier to use. The internet was a little bit tricky..I didn't know how to visit websites. Then I went back to my manual and it said to just start typing. I couldn't believe it! I was surfing the web wirelessly! I don't think I could live without my sidekick today. I love how I never miss an IM. The battery life is unbelievable! I take my phone with me in the day, and at night I let it charge. It's so easy to use. I think everyone should have a T-Mobile Sidekick.
Rating:
Summary: its a catch 22
Review: this phone will get you looks when u pull its out but, so many calls are dropped and when u call another person who has a sidekick its impossible to understand what they are saying. Its not always at full bars and once your in doors its goes out of service. i have a one year contact and i am on my 7th sidekick, there something always goes wrong, like sim card not ready or its freezes up. I like the keyboard and all the other stuff but the phone service sucks, you cant make your own ringtones and the web reads txt and gif and jpgs now flash or anything fancy.
if you get this phone get the warrenty you will need it and u dont have a cover for it, dust will get under ur screen and you cant get it out, it cant hold a battery for a full day, with everything running (aol, web, & phone)one good thing is that they do update over the air when they add new services and products. there is all way for the sidekick to be at full power..
Rating:
Summary: Great internet service
Review: As an auction goer, ebay and Amazon Marketplace seller, I demanded a lot from a wireless unit. Even though I was on the "edge" of T-Mobile service is my area, I wanted to try the Sidekick. So, I went to my favorite auction house, and wandered around the whole place trying to "get bars." I was told by the auctioneer that, yes, they are in a bad spot, that all the workers had to switch to Nextel... Well, I had zero bars, meaning zero reception, but attempted an internet look-up anyway. To my surprise and amazement, it still worked! Maybe ten seconds longer, but I could still look up items on ebay, with zero reception indicated. Wow. Looking up books on my ScoutPal program (www.scoutpal.com) was still a two-handed feat, as the numbers are all across the top, so you need to hold it in two hands to get all the numbers. Actually, I have just learned to set it on the book, and type with one finger anyway, so not such a problem. The phone works great, and havn't had a dropped call yet, in the Tacoma area anyway. I do wish Side kick has thrown in a few free minutes. I could add a $20 plan, but that would only get me 60 Anytime minutes a month, so I am just seeing how it goes with paying 20 cents a minute, and keeping the calls to a bare minimum. I really got it for my ebay/Amazon business anyway, not for the cell phone part. I was using a Palm IV for my interent look-ups, but at $35 a month, and no phone at all, well, the Sidekick is far better, and $30 for unlimited internet use. The color graphics are excellent; I can actually look up an item on ebay and see the photo clearly, in color, unlike the Palm, which was black and white, and useless for seeing photos on the web. I am having trouble accessing the ebay web clipped site (mmm.ebay.com,) but I hope to get that resolved. I can't speak much about customer service, as this is my first month. But I did call once to verify costs, and it was quick and easy.
Rating:
Summary: Great Idea Torpedoed by Lousy T-Mobile Coverage
Review: Don't get me wrong, this IS the multi-purpose device I'd been waiting for, ... It is very well designed with a great keyboard, fine clear color screen, a swell interface and snappy looks. It's just that the T-Mobile coverage is SO miserably spotty that I can't get even a hint of a signal at all at home. And folks, I live in Springfield, Virginia in suburban Washington, D.C, where there's a huge Interstate highways mixing bowl and it's only 15 miles from the Washington Monument...I'm not holed up underground in a lead-lined doublewide trailer with Geech the Sniff-dog somewhere south of Treefrog Holler. Even in Washington itself, near the Mall and with the White House in clear view, the connection can be pretty spotty. That's where I just called the T-Mobile support folks from to find out why I can't get any signal at home. Apparently, you can't trust the service area maps on the T-Mobile website, because after checking my address in some database that only they have access to, the tech guy cheerfully declared that I apparently live in an area of "marginal to no service" even though where I live is smack in the middle of what purports to be a "high coverage" area on their website map. I wish they'd make the REAL info available on their website. After much mulling it over, I've decided not to return the Sidekick. After all, it's a "mobile" and that's what I really need, but still, it would be nice to be able to use it at home too. Hopefully, T-Mobile will beef up their coverage around Springfield, Virginia a bit soon. As it stands now, I'd give the device itself four and a half stars (deducting half a star for not being able to handle javascript in the browser), while the T-Mobile coverage currently gets only a single star on account of lousy coverage in the DC Area. It's just unfortunate that T-Mobile has a monopoly on this device in this area.
Rating:
Summary: Very fun product but.......
Review: I researched the internet heavily before I bought this device, I like to sell a few things on the internet so I bought this to look up prices because it has an internet browser. It is also a phone, an e-mail send/receive, instant messenger thru AOL, contacts, notes, several sounds and music tracks for each function, all-in-all it is a very fun toy for an adult. When I took it into a store to look up things, the signal was gone, so there goes the reason I bought the thing, the telephone use on it is very funny feeling since you have to dial with it open and then shut it not to look like a weirdo, you have to open it to do most things, but it comes in handy when you have to wait in a waiting room (if the internet signal is working) or stuck in stand still traffic as you Californians well know. You can set it to no pictures or adds so it works alittle faster, but basically slower than some dialup plans (the internet browser). But I still cannot stay away from playing with it every night to read the internet news on all of the news websites while watching TV or it makes a great bathroom reader, just don't drop it in water...... I should have known about the T-mobile signal problem as I had a T-mobile phone before and would lose the signal all of the time. Nothing has changed about that. But the device is fun if you don't need a serious and fast PDA.
Rating:
Summary: Not All That..
Review: I purchased the sidekick thinking I can access the web for information, check emails etc... Forget it.. It was way to slow that the web page timed out. I was not able to check neither my excite nor yahoo email. Although, this device is excellent for AIM.
I had to purchased a different phone because my main reason for purchasing the side kick was for web access, which did not worked out for me.
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