by Matt | Mar 29, 2005 | Tech
Well, will wonders never cease. Apparently T-Mobile came through. I guess shipments got delayed because of the holiday weekend. The tracking numbers show that they were delivered yesterday. I stand corrected.
So, the instant I caught sight of the DHL package on the doorstep I immediatly ripped it open. Inside were three boxes, two containing my boss’ new V600’s and a slightly larger one with my Sidekick II in it. I figured I’d give everybody a run down of the phone, from the outside at least, while I wait for it to charge. The manual suggests 4+ hours of charging, so when I get home I’ll turn it on and play with all the features. I’ll give a full review tomorrow once I’ve had a chance to play with it more. For now, it’ll just be my first impressions. Click the thumbnails to see the larger images.
First off, after getting through the packing peanuts and whatnot, the first thing we find is a standard product box, the kind you’d get it you purchased the phone from a store. The box is decorated in “urban flava” to appear hip to the youngins.
Inside the box are the standard assortment of ads and flyers for other crap you don’t need along with the phone and its components. Included with the SideKick II is a hands-free earbud (I refuse to call it a “headset” unless it covers both ears) cord, a standard charger, the phone itself…
…a nifty leather pouch with beltclip (it actually feels sturdy and useable)
…and more manuals and documentation than the space shuttle.
I was impressed with the feel and weight of the phone right off. It feels sturdy and well built, not flimsy and plastic like the Treo I’ve held.
It’s also not a whole lot bigger than my pervious phone, the Nokia 3390.
Sliding the screen up with your thumb reveals the haralded qwerty keyboard. The buttons are the small “chicklet gun” type and appear to be sealed from the elements and grim. They have a nice tactile feel and your hands rest easily on either side for perfect “thumb typing”.
Lastly, on the back we have the very large speaker phone, the camera lens (right most circle), the flash (left) and mini-mirror for taking self portraits (middle).
There you have it. After the Sidekick gets a good full charge I’ll pop in my sim card and call customer support to activate the phone. Hopefully that shouldn’t take too long. After that I’ll have to check out what MegaTones and HifiTones are available for it. From all the message boards I’ve seen, the Sidekick is aimed directly at the urban black teenage market and apparently so are all the wallpapers and ringtones. Hopefully there’s something other than rap available. I wasn’t expecting MegaTone support (actual clips of music), I thought I was stuck with HiFiTones (instrumental pieces of the same music). That was an unexpected surprise. Also, from the press release last month from Danger, they’ve gotten certified as a Java platform by Sun and will be rolling out a new OS via the network later this summer. It’ll be downloaded automatically. It’s supposed to open the platform up a bit and lead to more games, programs and a wider variety of compatable media (ringtones and screensavers, etc). As it stands now, without hacking it you’re limited to whats in the “pay for download” menu on the phone itself.
We’ll see how long Matt keeps his unhacked… bets range from “he hasn’t done it already?” to “by the end of the week”. 🙂
by Matt | Mar 28, 2005 | Culture
Well, T-Mobile customer support is either on crack or just plain lazy. Both are equally annoying. My boss ordered the new phones last Monday with customer support telling him they’d be there by Thursday. Guess what SHIPPED on Thursday? Yup, the phone. We’ll be lucky if we get them this week.
In the meantime, I’ve taken to the web to find out every trick and tip out there for my new SideKick 2. Apparently I can hack the shit out of it. If you download a developer’s SDK from the Danger (manufacture’s) website, you can do all sorts of crazy shit with it. Out of the box it doesn’t suppoer mp3 or mmf ringtones, only Poly and Midi. Unlocked, you can play anything you want. You can even use Java J2EE and Apache Ant to compile custom programs to run on the thing. I’m also on the lookout for a discontinued program called Hiptones XP. It’s apparently THE hack for the sidekicks but Danger got pissed, threatened to sue and now it’s gone underground. If anyone can find something like that online, it’s probably me.
This is gonna be good.
The only thing I need to figure out is a way to upload pictures to my journal. There’s a WordPress hack that lets you add images in-line within the “Blog by Email” feature, but to use it you have to have an unsecure pop3 account, something I don’t want. You also have to set up Cron jobs to automatically check that unsecured email account, something else I don’t want to fool with. So, I wonder if some sort of FTP program might be possible, I’ll have to keep digging. I’ve already found small communities of Hiptop/Sidekick developers making interesting programs.
Matt out.
by Matt | Mar 22, 2005 | Web
I’ve decided to play around with a few WordPress plugins lately. One of these is a Gravatar plugin. A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar (G.R.Avatar). It’s main purpose is to put in a use icon/avatar as easily as humanly possible. All I have to do is add 1 line of code to my comments page. All YOU have to do is upload a gravatar to their site. It’s simple. You upload an image, it can be anything, but it’ll be 80×80 pixels in the end, so keep it small. The site generates a keyhash based on your email address. Since you use your email address in the comment field of this (and other) web pages and journals, any site operator can use gravatars. When you put in your email address, it automatically looks up your avatar and adds it to the comment page. I don’t have to do any work, YOU don’t have to do anywork (outside of uploading an initial image that is). It’s really a piece of cake. So, if you guys want to, this is completely optional, you can upload a picture and every time you make a comment here it’ll get used. Cool huh?
Check out the site here: gravatar.com
by Matt | Mar 22, 2005 | Friends and Family
A quick little shout to my buddy Nagle. I caught him on IM for about 15 minutes yesterday. Life in Savannah seems to be going well for him. He’s even gotten a nifty little website up, complete with journal. So, make sure you check out Penquins and Polar Bears and say hi.
On the subject of SCAD friends, it’s been far to long since I’ve talked to any of them. I really miss those guys. It was college and it wouldn’t have been the same without a roommate who sleeps 18 hours a day or without someone’s couch to hang out on. Last week when we were at Dave and Busters I kept wondering if Nagle wanted to play that virtual boxing again.
Anyway, enjoy the linkage, he’s been added to the BlogRoll as well. And Nagle, I hope that house works out for you.
by Matt | Mar 21, 2005 | Culture
You know that phone I said I was getting… well, it turns out that it sucks monkey balls. Yeah, I know, I thought it was going to rock too. Apparently T-Mobile decided not to make a data plan available for that phone. That means that you have to pay for each and every text message, email and web browsing minute. The design of the phone was cool, it felt solid, but when you can’t check email on it, it defeats the purpose of having a keyboard doesn’t it?
So, whats the solution? A SideKick II of course!
I’ve wanted one of these things for about as long as they’ve existed and now I’m going to get one. It’s already been ordered, it should be here Friday. My choice of replacement phone was between 3 similar but different items. The Palm Treo 600, the BlackBerry 7730 and the SideKick II. I’ve had 3 different people tell me the Treos are nice but flimsy and that they didn’t last more than 6 months. Lauren’s old boss went through 3 of them in 2 months. The BlackBerry I know to be solid and of good design. The main problem with that is those things are 99% email oriented. Voice, web and everything else is secondary. I like to check my email, but it’s not going to be the top priority of my phone. I briefly considered staying with the A630 anyway just because it’s a cool phone and had the features I wanted. Then I reconsidered what I really wanted. My list is pretty short:
-email and easy text messaging FOR FREE
-camera
-bluetooth
-keyboard
-mp3 ringtones
The Sidekick has all these features except bluetooth and the mp3 ringtones. I can live without mp3 ringtones but I was really looking forward to a little bluejacking and the wireless headset capabilities. I had to choose between bluetooth and free text basically. I chose the service. I want to be able to look up movie times, write emails and text msg and I valued that over being without a 2 foot piece of wire.
The A630 is a nice phone, just not the phone for me. It lacked the one reason I was getting it in the first place. My new Sidekick will be here Friday. I can’t wait. They’re really solid and I like them a lot. It should be a good phone.
I also went a little crazy and wrote up a whole diatribe about cell phones, stupid people and the dumbing of America. If you’d like to read it you can click “more” at the bottom. It was originally going to go in the main post, but it’s about as off topic as you can get. The summation here is that I’m getting a different new phone than I planned. Oh, and stupid people piss me off… but that’s not really a new thing is it?
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