Europe, Say 'Hello' To The T-Mobile Sidekick II

june 1, 2005

Europe, say "hello" to the T-Mobile Sidekick II. And, if I may say, good luck. I love and hate my previous Sidekick II (that got sold on Ebay not long ago). The device itself is awesome, the OS and all of its related applications are brilliantly designed and integrated. The integration between the device and its mothership server is also a brilliant design -- all data is stored on both, but they are always in sync. The data communcation (web, IM, and other stuff) is well done and designed. The only thing I hated was the weak backend. It would go down for days on end on multiple occasions during the few months that I had my Sidekick II. It was very frustrating to have a data convergence device that was nothing more than a brick while the backend servers were down. Yes, T-Mobile eventually gave out freebies (one month free service, downloads, etc) to make up for the downtime, but the loss of service was still very annoying. The device also does voice, but does not do it very well -- the voice fluctuation problem is well documented (search HipTop Forums to see). Also, there have been multiple reports of people replacing their SKII units for a heap of manufacturing problems (radios gone dead, keyboards peeling off, screens not functioning, cameras going dead because of a bumper mounting clip mashing into a cable, and a few more). Yes, the Sidekick II is a damned good device by design, but the execution -- both with the backend server and manufacturing -- leaves a lot to be desired. And for that, I wish the Europeans luck with their new T-Mobile Sidekick IIs.


<< back || ultramookie >>