The T-mobile Sidekick 2 - the joke without a punchline

I own a tmobile sidekick 2. In fact, I am posting right now, in the middle of class, on it. This device is amazing. It features a full web browser, aim and yim services, calendar, camera, email, and it's a phone. You can also play games on it. You might be thinking, "wow! I want one! This device is amazing!" unfortunatly, it is not amazing. Here's what the hype won't tell you.
First of all, the service. I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but the service here sucks. There are maybe 5 people in my town that have a sidekick. Ohio is not a huge 'hipster' area. But for the past week, I've been lucky to have data service. It is constantly down, and tmobile just says reboot it, and wait, and then they give me bonus minutes.
The web browser. Basic html. No animated gifs, no movies, no sound, no java/javascript. All the web pages have a white background. It does show picture, though. No flash/shockwave. Many pages unaccessable because of those flaws.
Downloads for the device. This deserves its own category. If you have tmobile for a service provider, all you get is what's in the download fun catalog. Unless you become a developer and void your warranty, you have no choice. YIM is a free download, and you can download one game. Don't plan on downloading games from online, no matter who your provider is. Ringtones can be downloaded on non tmobile (aka outside of america) phones.
The camera. Not too many complaints, except that the quality is crap. Also, no mms. You have to email all your pictures.
Txt msgs. Slow, and unreliable. But free with the plan! I guess its ok
YIM and AIM. Yim never stays connected and stops responding about once every 10-30 minutes. You sometimes won't get messages at all, and sometimes the person you are talking to won't, either. AIM is ok, but sometimes lags for up to 5 minutes.
The phone. I've never had any problems, but others have complained about the phone dying while moving, and only having 3 minutes talk time before it disconnects. I have talked on my phone for almost an hour straight with little problems. It is very quiet, though, and I find myself turning speakerphone on when it is up by my ear, just to hear it.
Over all, the phone is crap. lack of security is a huge part (paris hilton's account got hacked online). Don't get this if you want a reliable phone. Its just a very nice toy
Thank you for reading this
Aaron

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I think the phone is ok. I dont have Tmobile with it but i have ameritech with it and it works just fine. I can download a whole bunch of ringtones. and I can also download more than one game. So its the phone looks cool and is fun to use for me but i guess it sucks for you. Maybe its just Tmobile sucks as a company.,

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

is it that t-mobile ppda i made a topic about with my old acount/?

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I was so close in getting a t-mobile sidekick. I was debating on whether to pay $199 or go the cheap way and just buy a phone with a gud text messaging plan. I don't feel bad with going with buying a phone because all your complaint is what i thought would be the good thing about the phone. I mainly MM on my phone anyway and i have up to 2500 messages i can do for $20 so it's no biggie. I love Cingular!

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Well, after a few more weeks of use, I have found yet more flaws. The internet/email/im data services were out for 4 days straight. Tmobile, as a company, sucks. They have locked the SK2 to be unable to save ringtones from email and also it is locked from outside ringtone websites. Another thing that is locked is multimedia messaging. The phone is not for ubergeeks, such as myself. The security on it is 64 bit at best. CPanel through astahost (I don't have a site here yet) is completely inaccessable. While the sidekick seems like a nice gadget, that's all it is.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Well, after a few more weeks of use, I have found yet more flaws. The internet/email/im data services were out for 4 days straight. Tmobile, as a company, sucks. They have locked the SK2 to be unable to save ringtones from email and also it is locked from outside ringtone websites. Another thing that is locked is multimedia messaging. The phone is not for ubergeeks, such as myself. The security on it is 64 bit at best. CPanel through astahost (I don't have a site here yet) is completely inaccessable. While the sidekick seems like a nice gadget, that's all it is.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Ok, we got a new device update.
Time to change my review of the sidekick.

AMAZING. We now have javascript support, the web is so much faster. We now have colored text and backgrounds...

But still, some flaws are the same, no java or flash support, we can't save our own ringtones (because T-Mobile locked that feature... )... Trap17 looks beautiful now, but I'm not sure if I can log into cpanel (I'm not hosted yet). And we still can't download apps and games that aren't in the catalog.

All in all, the device is great now, and I'd give it a 8/10. Definetly a good device.

And firestorm, I doubt that you have it with another company, as you can't use data service unless you're on the original provider's service (t-mo, suncom, fido, starhub... Etc...)

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

The sidekick 2 has just came out in england, and I'm the only person I know who has one everybody thinks it is really cool but it isn't really that good. Before they came out in the uk, I got one from america but it didn't work properly over here so when it came out over here I was glad. I love being able to have acess to the entire internet with just my phone, but it's annoying that pages won't load up. Also I hate that you can only download the games and ringtones that come on the download fun catalogue, I would like to be able to download other ringtones too because the ones in the download fun catalogue aren't very good. But the difference between the american phone and the english one is that we can get mms, which is great because we don't have to send all photos by email. But I haven't yet been able to get my aol instant messenger working yet which is very annoying. Luckly I have good network coverage in my area which is really good because I can use my phone most places except for indoors at college. So overall I don't think that the sidekick is at all that good and I'm seriuosly considering by in a new phone.
Thankyou for reading this.
Leanna

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I had one and the screen went completely black and they gave me like three new ones and the same thing kept happening and it happened the last time and they told me they were voided from warranty because so many people were sending them in and so I had to go back to my old phone.

-Christian

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

__BoReD2DeAtH__
The T-mobile Sidekick 2

I have the sidekick2 and the first 3 days I had it the backlight broke out of nowhere. And my camera wont take pictures so I am switchin it for the sidkick Lx

-__BoReD2DeAtH__

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)