The summer 2008 software update for the Sidekick LX handheld fixes some of our top complaints about the device. But at the end of the day, the LX is still really bulky and doesn't have enough storage for text and e-mail messages. If you're an existing LX user, download the free software, but if you're in the market for a new device, get the new Sidekick 2008 or a BlackBerry instead.
The Sidekick LX, which we reviewed when it first launched last October, is a messaging limousine, a gigantic device that's 5.1 inches long with a 3-inch, 400-by-240-pixel screen. Its 1,540-mAh battery lets it run for almost 11 hours of talk time. Compare that with the new Sidekick 2008, a more compact model, at 4.7 inches, that has the same 400-by-240-pixel resolution on a 2.6-inch screen and achieves about 8 hours of talk time on its smaller battery.
Check out our original review for the basic details of the Sidekick LX. We'll focus on the 2008 improvements here.
We dinged the Sidekick LX for not supporting stereo Bluetooth for music, video recording and playback, or Yahoo! Mail. All those features are here now. The LX paired easily with our Plantronics Pulsar 590 stereo headset to play unprotected AAC, MP3, and WMA files. The LX also plays small video files—like the ones sent in MMS messages. It doesn't do a good job of playing larger files, though; even our relatively undemanding 320-by-240, 15-frame-per-second 3GP test file was jerky and choppy.
Video capture is strictly for picture messaging, but it's here. The LX now takes wobbly, pulsing, and grainy 176-by-144 videos of up to 20 seconds in length and stores them on a memory card. Our 8GB SanDisk microSD card worked fine as a source and destination for music, photos, and videos.
Yahoo! Mail has joined the e-mail client, and now there's spell-check too, but the LX still has a major, potentially fatal flaw common to all Sidekicks: a way-too-small mailbox. With space for only 6MB of e-mail and 100 SMS messages, you'll be cleaning out your inboxes frequently.
A few minor changes to the Web browser are pluses, but they fail to make the browser desktop-quality. You can now zoom out to see everything on a page before zooming in on a particular part of the page, and you can save images from pages to your memory card. But many pages still display awkwardly, especially if they use JavaScript or DHTML.
A neat new feature, Quick Find, lets you search all of the phone's databases for a name or date from the home screen.
We can't see many advantages the updated LX has over the new Sidekick 2008, which is smaller but still has an excellent keyboard and a sharp screen. Its features are very similar to those of the LX (they're running the same version of the OS), but a lousy 2-megapixel camera has replaced the LX's 1MP model. More exciting for the average Sidekick user, the new 2008 model features completely user-customizable cases, which the LX lacks. The update also still doesn't put the LX ahead of the BlackBerry Curve 8320 which does pretty much everything the LX does, just better.
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