Samsung Sidekick 4G
Phone Scoop Review
Apr 18, 2011 by Eric M. Zeman
The Sidekick 4G, made by Samsung, looks to revitalize one of the brands that gave T-Mobile its street cred back in the early 2000s. Samsung has a lot of high heels to fill with this device. Does it? read review ›
User Reviews
Average Ratings
Sidekick 4g initial experience
Bought 2 SK4's yesterday, upgrading one Moto Cliq and adding me (hated to let my SERO plan go but life goes on).
Initial setup was pretty easy except for a bit of difficulty finding where PoP email setup is done. The phone seems pretty well built, is quick (consistently stays on TMo's 4g here in Manassas).
Pros:
Fun to use, like previous SK's but Android is a better OS choice I must admit.
Nice assortment of applications available - I am going from a MotoQ running WinMo 6.1 to Froyo so am probably easy to impress.
Phone sound and signal quality are great and it synced with my Ford Sync system perfectly and all features work except the Sync texting but most phones don't support that anyway.
Everything else seems to work as it should so I am giving a 4 star rating based on the total package and hoping that the speed issue mentioned below as a Con is related to today's conditions or my current location.
Cons:
Internet speed was pretty slow and inconsistent. Running Ookla's speed test on 4g I got a range of .39 to .9 gbs upload and about .56 download speeds. Ping was high at over 500 ms consistently. This test was run while the phone was indicating a 4g connection on TMobile's system.
As I said, some things, like the PoP setup are not easy to find and necessitated a call to customer service to locate.
Keyboard lights seem to go dim in about 2 seconds - probably another buried setting that I need to find.
Volume key is on the bottom, right where I grab the phone when picking it up so I have to be careful not to turn it down accidentally.
I like it ... But..
So for those who thinks that just because this phone is an android that it has to be a monster, your wrong. This is an entry level smartphone. By that I mean, you will not have the specs, bells and whistles as an iphone or the late and great samsung galaxy s3 or htc one.
There are several glitches with this phone. The display light dims on its own even when the automatic brightness is turned off. It lags and freezes on a daily basis, depending what you are doing in the phone.
Although it carries 1Ghz ... it is pretty slow. The cam is left to be desired. Although it takes amazing pics for being a 3mp, and the auto focus is great, it has no flash so indoors or when its dark out, pics will look terrible. Not enough phone memory. Not all apps can be stored in your sd card so you can't download many apps or you will use up all the memory.
Pros:
Battery last long... not all day. I.e. take it off the charger at 6am and won't hve to recharge until 6pm
after a heavy use. Definitely ok in my book.
Downloads are fast. The keyboard is excellent. The best ever on any phone. The call quality and sound is amazing!! Best ever seen on any phone. Charges pretty fast. Can connect to the internet fast. I am writing this review from my sidekick, so its good.
Overall, its a great phone if your willing to overlook the cons ... for some the cons are 1 too many. But I am satisfied with this phone for now. However its not a keeper, I will eventually be upgrading to the htc one s
Samsung's version of the Sidekick
This is Samsung's unique version of the sidekick. In my opinion they did an amazing job at keeping the traditional Sidekick overall look and feel. It's much sturdier then any of the older versions. Has the best keyboard of all of them as well. I recently switched from the Samsung Behold II, and before that I had a Sidekick 08. I love both the android and the sidekick firmwares, so when I heard that they were coming out with a sidekick that was als an android it caught my attention big. Now after using this phone for a while and going throught everything here are some pros and cons about the phone.
Pro's:
-The keyboard is phenomenal. (best by far of any phone)
-Phone is fast and I've never had a problem with connection (constantly on 4G).
-Web is the fastest I've ever used on a phone.
-Despite what others say about the mouse sensor out works perfectly fine for me.
-The phone hadn't lagged on me once.
-All the apps run smoth and fast.
-The quick reply in the notification bar is amazing and makes the phone easy to multi-task without closing what you're doing.
-The battery life is amazing compared to most Androids or Sidekicks.
-Group texting is fun and allows you to connect with all your friends fast and easy.
-The Mobile Hotspot works great. (I play my PS3 usingthe phone signal)
Con's:
-The camara is kind of a disappointment considering it's a Samsung and an Android. (With Samsung having such a good rep for building high quality devices)
Overall the only thing I could find wrong with it was the camara only being 3mp other then that the phone is amazing and I recomend it to anyone looking for a fun phone experience. 5/5
Not Good, Not Awful
Pros: great keyboard, great harware placement of buttons, dedicated camera shutter button, battery life
Cons: major checkerboard effect on websites (must wait until site has loaded b4 checker board goes away), laggy, freezes up, and loads apps slowly
The sidekick of yesteryear is gone and has been replaced with this Samsung branded hardware. A very lite touchwiz-like user interface is seen in camera, video and app launcher...(this could be a good thing and a bad thing). However, the android platform is not fully served by the unnecessary "jump" key due to the redundancy of hardware vs widget. Needless to say, the handset is a decent "entry level" device worthy of those who do not desire fluid browsing and good quality app integration. The camera is just barely usable (due to lack of flash and lackluster photo editing options)
Samsung's Vision of the Sidekick is Outstanding.
I purchased the Sidekick 4G two days ago and must admit that the overall performance is quite good! Ever since the G1, I've been holding off on buying an Android phone due to the fact that I wanted to allow time for the young OS to mature.
I was the previous owner of an HTC Tilt with a custom 6.5 WinMo rom. It was actually not that bad, even though it would only connect to T-Mobile's Edge network. It called it quits after a year five months ago and had to resort to using my wife's HTC Wing....ugh.
Being a fan of qwerty touch phones, when I read the news of the Sidekick 4G it was like the perfect time to upgrade.
Not being a fan of T-Mobile's junkware, I quickly flashed the phone to a custom Android rom and it is quite a speed demon now. I haven't had an opportunity to run a internet speed test, but the 4G network plays youtube flawlessly using Opera Mini 6.1.
PROS: Regardless of other people's experiences with the Sidekick 4G, the phone has never once froze or crashed on me. Applications load quickly and are very responsive.
The full keyboard layout is awesome and the keys are spaced far enough apart to provide a great texting/chatting experience.
The front facing camera is a plus and fring runs perfectly on wifi and 4G. The rear camera lacks a flash but is not that big of a deal.
Video playback using Rockplayer is smooth and audio quality is clear.
CONS: For some reason, the shortcuts on my homescreen keep disappearing after disconnecting from my PC using mass storage mode. I'll look into that further.
Also, at times, when sliding the screen to use the keys, I sometimes touch the screen and open up an app. It does get frustrating at times.
Another weird thing...when creating a folder called Clips on the sd card using mass storage and copying a clip, the whole folder disappears after disconnecting.
Overall, despite the weird stuff, it is a well made phone and I feel was worth the wait. It's no Sensation, but still offers good quality for the price.
