We went from the device being rumored, to T-Mobile’s CEO sort of announcing it at a press briefing inside of a town hall, to a more official unveiling, and now first video of the device being used. Joe Fernandez from T-Mobile gives us a quick look at the device and shows you what to expect once you boot it up for the first time out of the package.
T-Mobile’s doing everything they can to make sure that the messaging experience that made the original Danger-equipped Sidekick phones so good translates well to Android. We didn’t get a deep look at their instant messaging features – something Sidekick fans are very critical about – but I’m sure that’s something that has come up as a priority in research and design.
One thing we were wondering about was the device’s opening mechanism – would it flip or would it slide? It slides, and does so pretty well. Once open, the display is slightly tilted toward you so you can type at comfortable viewing angles. Things looked pretty snappy, but that’s to be expected with Samsung’s 1GHz Hummingbird processor inside.
As far as the custom user interface goes, it’s definitely some form of TouchWiz but has been customized specifically for the SideKick 4G – that much is apparent simply by looking at the lockscreen and the applications dock. It looks like they’ve included some new widgets too, but it’s hard to tell what exactly they are.
We’re hoping to get a closer look at this device next week as T-Mobile is expected to show up to CTIA in a big way. Look forward to our coverage when that time comes.