Display & Audio
The screen on the Sidekick 3 is a mixed bag. While the 2.75" TFT screen offers plenty of real estate, decent brightness, and 65,000 colors, it's rather low-res at a resolution of 240 x 160 pixels. As such, text and menus lack crispness, colors don't "pop," and many images look somewhere between lackluster and horrible.
Menus and other interface elements were designed with the limitations of the screen in mind, so after awhile I forgot about the resolution and got lost in my Instant Messaging and Emailing instead. But holding the SK 3 side-by-side with most any other current phone with a quality display really makes the Sidekick look like yesterday's news. Put the Sidekick next to a phone like the
Samsung T809 with its gem of a screen and you'll think there's literally something wrong with the SK 3.
That being said, the Sidekick 3 is primarily a Messaging and Email device, and when used as such the display is more than passable. Those relatively few pixels render nice and big across almost three inches of display, making text easy to read. Then again, imagine how great a screen of the same size with a QVGA resolution at 16 million colors might look...
Call quality on the Sidekick 3 was excellent. If this is your primary mobile handset, you'll likely wind up using a headset (the included wired one or a wireless Bluetooth add-on) since the device is somewhat awkward to hold up to one's ear. But it does sound good.
The tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz GSM radio performed well on T-Mobile's network, pulling in reception on par with other tri- and quad-band phones I've tried on the same network here in the San Francisco bay area. Voices were generally clear and callers reported no trouble hearing me on the other end.
Audio quality was also pretty good using both the included stereo handsfree headset and a Bluetooth headset. The stereo headset also works pretty well for use with the audio player. A third-party adapter is available to transform the SK 3's 2.5mm headphone jack into a 3.5mm port compatible with standard stereo earphones. The built-in speaker phone generally worked well, though I did get a few complaints about my sounding "far away" or muddy when on speaker.
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4.3
