|
Tuesday, October 1, 2002 |
"You better get yourself connected, writing's on the wall"
Henry Norr reviews the T-Mobile Sidekick, which is the consumer version of the Danger HipTop that has been showing up a lot in mobile gadget news stories in recent months. It does instant messaging, web browsing, works as a basic PDA, and can be used as a cell phone, all for two hundred dollars.There are several things to like here: comfortable sizing, what reviewers are generally calling a usable keyboard, and unlimited data network use for it's browsing and chat functions (but not for cell phone calls). It supports multiple e-mail accounts, which is important as more and more people use multiple addresses as a way of managing their growing mail queues (now if PDA makers would just support multiple email address fields in their software!).
Best of all, it's designed for use in public: you can tell it not to make noise during various times (such as during the workday), and it's designed to be used with an earpiece. Norr thinks it's a flaw in the device that it 's awkward to use without the earpiece, but I think it's the way to go. What strikes me as awkward is the people I see on campus, every day, their heads tilted to one side and elbows sticking out like a poster for bad ergonomics as they press a phone to their ear (it's even more terrifying when I see them driving this way). Handsets are awkward even for landlines; they're a really bad idea when you're mobile. I'm not sure why earpieces aren't more common in Madison; I started seeing them commonly in use whenever I was out in San Francisco more than five years ago, but I think they're going to end up as the right way to use a mobile phone for at least another decade, till we get working "earring and sunglasses" VR devices, a la various cyberpunk novels.
Norr's other two objections are that there isn't a good way to synchronize your address book data (this is annoying, but common enough in cell phone designs that I doubt it's an overwhelming issue), and that the initial contract offerings from T-Mobile have a poor distribution of talk time minutes. Both of these problems are fixable without altering the Sidekick itself.
The whole mobile world just keeps getting more interesting.
