It's not too big of a deal, but it's nothing fantastic. Even moving the frame around to get the picture looks like a cheap $15 digital camera. The front camera, however, is very noticeably of lower quality. It has a some shooting modes and can take panoramas, which I like. It has got the standard features that come with a stock camera app. I must say, this thing takes surprisingly good pictures with the rear camera. It should be noted that the camera button is directly cross from the power button so, sometimes, when you want to turn off your screen, you'll just end up snapping a picture. With the phone open, it's on the bottom right. If you hold the phone in your left hand, the power button is in your palm with your right hand, you'll be using your pinky to crane across and unlock your screen. You may be thinking "Samsung? It could be on the top, or perhaps on the top right or top left for easy access with your index finger, right?" Well.no. On a Samsung device, we've come to expect a slightly different power/lock button placement but, seriously, this one is weird. It is, to say the least, a massive pain.Īnother slightly odd button decision that Samsung made was the power button. In addition to that, this symmetrical layout leads to the fact that, when using the Sidekick while closed, the Jump and Home buttons are ABOVE THE SCREEN. If you, like me, take your phone out of your pocket and start "using" it before you look at it, this will be pretty annoying. The real issue, though, comes from the fact that, when closed, it's almost impossible to tell which side of the phone is the top without looking at the speaker and trackpad. It doesn't help that the Jump key and the Menu button look really similar so, if you're relying on the pictures to know what you're hitting, you could be a bit disappointed. It will take some getting used to, but that happens. First off, with the phone open which, realistically, is how the Sidekick is intended to be used primarily, it puts the Home and Jump key under your left thumb, the Back and Menu buttons under the right. Those essential keys, Home, Back, Search, and Menu, dictate a large portion of the user experience and, for the most part, Samsung snapped that branch a little bit. The Sidekick knocks the normal layout on its ass a little bit and, a lot of the time, this can get crazy frustrating. There are some standard keys that Android phones require to function properly. Here's where things start to fall apart a little bit. It does, however, have some weirdness with the menu, jump,home, and back key layout as well as a hinge that comes with a learning curve. The automatic brightness may have become self aware and wants to mess with me.įor me, the keyboard is killer and, in conjunction with that Hummingbird processor, makes this phone a very viable option for a messaging fool and social butterfly. You'll have to watch the video to really understand this part. This is especially annoying when it happens with the lockscreen when you slide the phone open when the screen is off. Even with a 1 GHz processor, it still chokes really hard sometimes.You can't just start typing without the keyboard open, but the search button is on the keyboard. No search button is present when the phone is closed which, on an Android handset, is when you'd actually need it.Due to the smaller screen, using the phone while it is opened gives you very little screen real-estate when using an app that scrolls vertically.Using the phone while it's closed just feels a little.weird.The button layout is kind of horrible when you use the phone closed.Enter the Sidekick 4G, holding the same classic form factor but, this time around, rocking Android 2.2 Froyo, manufactured by Samsung, and possessing one of the wonkiest button layouts I've ever seen. Now that Danger Incorporated is dead, though, can there still be a Sidekick? Well, since Andy Rubin was part of the mastermind team behind Danger and is now heading up the mastermind team behind Android, it's safe to say a worthy successor is possible. It did that job, and it did it damn well. It was all about staying in contact with your friends, shooting out emails, and texting all the time, no matter how fast you were driving. It was built for one main purpose, though messaging like a demon. It was the phone that did all the smartphone-y things first. It was the phone to have back before smartphones were a normal, everyday thing. "Let's keep everything pretty much normal - except for those buttons that everyone relies on.".
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