![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynI have a new Sidekick.. After much delay and considering assorted options, I decided to get the new Sidekick LX. The decision to do it this weekend was reinforced by my SK3's increasing unreliability: I hadn't been able to get it to connect to the Internet all weekend.
One of my motivations in getting the LX model, instead of a used SK3, was to make myself feel less stupid about having broken my SK3. If I paid $100 or whatever for an SK3, I'd be in the same position I'd be in if I just hadn't broken my SK3 in the first place. Except $100 poorer. Now I'm $350 poorer, but I have a shiny new SK LX.
It is indeed, very shiny.
It's not as pleasant to hold as my SK3: the back is flat with a little ridge at one end, instead of slightly convex. The SK3 just felt nice to hold. This design is sleeker and a touch lighter but not as comfortable. The keys are a little stiffer, but the layout's not as bad as the SK Slide. It's also not a slide: the screen swivels out just like the older SKs. I asked Krysti, the saleswoman at the kiosk I always go to, "Am I going to hate the keyboard?"
Krysti said, "No, the keyboard on the LX is good. You'd hate the keyboard on the Slide." This is why I always go to Krysti.
I couldn't, bizarrely, buy the SK LX from Krysti, which annoyed me. It turns out the kiosk I always go to isn't actually owned by T-Mobile. It's owned by a third party vendor that T-Mobile licensed to sell their products. But T-Mobile only lets them sell phones with a new contract because they're having production shortages, and I wasn't eligible for a new contract because I have a year left on the old one. Fortunately, there's a kiosk in the same mall that is owned by T-Mobile, so Krysti sent me to them to get it.
The saleswoman there, Jimmie, was very helpful, too. I don't know what T-Mobile does to deserve such nice staffers. I told her, "I want to buy a Sidekick LX."
"All right. Are you already a T-Mobile customer or are you getting a new account?"
"I'm already a customer, I'm not eligible for an upgrade, I'm going to pay full price for it and I'm OK with that," I told her with a smile.
As it turned out, I was eligible for a partial upgrade. Which meant that instead of a $170 discount for a brand new 2-year contract, I could get a $70 discount by signing a 2-year contract effective now -- in essence adding a year to my existing contract. "Sure, why not? I've been with T-Mobile for six years now, I don't think I'll be cancelling in the next two years, either."
Thus, I walked out with my newest toy.
So far, I don't hate the keyboard but I'm not used to it yet.
The screen, on the other hand ...
The screen is beautiful.
I told![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telnar, "I got it for the resolution. It's got a better resolution than what I use on my desktop."
"I can believe that. My desktop monitor is 22" diagonally, and 1600x1280 or something, and my iPhone is, what, 3" diagonally and it's something like 480x320 -- "
"No, I don't mean 'it's got a better resolution per inch'. I mean it's got a better resolution overall. I don't run my desktop monitor at its maximum resolution; I run it at 1160x800 or whatever. The SK LX has a resolution of 1280x1024."
It's gorgeous. Both my new SK and my old one automatically resized images to fit horizontally on the screen. But on the new LX, I can actually see all the details on the tiny images. I can read comics on the LX, like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bad_rabbit. No, really. I have to take my glasses off to do it and it's probably bad for my eyes, but I can.
I don't know if it's enough to make up for the inferior feel in my hands and of the keyboard, but I may get used to those and they'll be fine. My excuse* for buying it locally instead of getting one used off ebay or something was that I get a two-week trial period from the store, so I can return it if I don't get used to it.
In the meantime: ooooo, shiny ....
* My real reason is that it was easier and more satisfying to go to the store and pick it up than to set up an ebay account, figure out how to pay for it, and wait for it to arrive.
One of my motivations in getting the LX model, instead of a used SK3, was to make myself feel less stupid about having broken my SK3. If I paid $100 or whatever for an SK3, I'd be in the same position I'd be in if I just hadn't broken my SK3 in the first place. Except $100 poorer. Now I'm $350 poorer, but I have a shiny new SK LX.
It is indeed, very shiny.
It's not as pleasant to hold as my SK3: the back is flat with a little ridge at one end, instead of slightly convex. The SK3 just felt nice to hold. This design is sleeker and a touch lighter but not as comfortable. The keys are a little stiffer, but the layout's not as bad as the SK Slide. It's also not a slide: the screen swivels out just like the older SKs. I asked Krysti, the saleswoman at the kiosk I always go to, "Am I going to hate the keyboard?"
Krysti said, "No, the keyboard on the LX is good. You'd hate the keyboard on the Slide." This is why I always go to Krysti.
I couldn't, bizarrely, buy the SK LX from Krysti, which annoyed me. It turns out the kiosk I always go to isn't actually owned by T-Mobile. It's owned by a third party vendor that T-Mobile licensed to sell their products. But T-Mobile only lets them sell phones with a new contract because they're having production shortages, and I wasn't eligible for a new contract because I have a year left on the old one. Fortunately, there's a kiosk in the same mall that is owned by T-Mobile, so Krysti sent me to them to get it.
The saleswoman there, Jimmie, was very helpful, too. I don't know what T-Mobile does to deserve such nice staffers. I told her, "I want to buy a Sidekick LX."
"All right. Are you already a T-Mobile customer or are you getting a new account?"
"I'm already a customer, I'm not eligible for an upgrade, I'm going to pay full price for it and I'm OK with that," I told her with a smile.
As it turned out, I was eligible for a partial upgrade. Which meant that instead of a $170 discount for a brand new 2-year contract, I could get a $70 discount by signing a 2-year contract effective now -- in essence adding a year to my existing contract. "Sure, why not? I've been with T-Mobile for six years now, I don't think I'll be cancelling in the next two years, either."
Thus, I walked out with my newest toy.
So far, I don't hate the keyboard but I'm not used to it yet.
The screen, on the other hand ...
The screen is beautiful.
I told
telnar, "I got it for the resolution. It's got a better resolution than what I use on my desktop.""I can believe that. My desktop monitor is 22" diagonally, and 1600x1280 or something, and my iPhone is, what, 3" diagonally and it's something like 480x320 -- "
"No, I don't mean 'it's got a better resolution per inch'. I mean it's got a better resolution overall. I don't run my desktop monitor at its maximum resolution; I run it at 1160x800 or whatever. The SK LX has a resolution of 1280x1024."
It's gorgeous. Both my new SK and my old one automatically resized images to fit horizontally on the screen. But on the new LX, I can actually see all the details on the tiny images. I can read comics on the LX, like
bad_rabbit. No, really. I have to take my glasses off to do it and it's probably bad for my eyes, but I can.I don't know if it's enough to make up for the inferior feel in my hands and of the keyboard, but I may get used to those and they'll be fine. My excuse* for buying it locally instead of getting one used off ebay or something was that I get a two-week trial period from the store, so I can return it if I don't get used to it.
In the meantime: ooooo, shiny ....
* My real reason is that it was easier and more satisfying to go to the store and pick it up than to set up an ebay account, figure out how to pay for it, and wait for it to arrive.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 03:26 pm (UTC)My spousal unit says that the screen is actually 400x240, and that it's the camera that's 1280x1024...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 04:17 pm (UTC)The screen looks several times better than the resolution on my SK3 did, which was 240x160. The text on my friends page is so small that it's actually a little hard to read, but it's perfectly crisp. I have hard time reading the text on
So yeah, I'll be impressed if it looks this good on just 400x240. And equally happy, since it's still just as pretty. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 08:24 pm (UTC)It did strike me as a ridiculously high resolution for such a tiny screen, so I won't be horribly surprised if it's not the screen resolution. Although it's very mediocre for camera resolution, too, so that seems like an odd thing to crow about too. Unless the marketers were deliberately hoping to confuse people, which is always a possibility ...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 03:37 pm (UTC)Amusingly, it can run the big-screen project I'm working on, which is at that resolution precisely. Does it have any touch-screen sensitivity?
===|==============/ Level Head
no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 03:45 pm (UTC)Except that it's surprisingly effective. It seems like this should be inferior to an actual pointer, but after wrestling with the stylus on a windows-based cellphone, I realized just how much I prefered scrolling around with the little trackball. From day one the SKs have been very much plug-n-play, with few struggles to figure out how to do anything. It's a nice, user-friendly OS for what it does.