| I resisted buying my own cellphone for a long time as I always worked for companies that provided them for me. Then got a job where they required me to provide my own.
My first phone purchase was the first generation SideKick Color, and I loved it! I still have the SideKick II that replaced it (I traded my original one in on it pre-public-release). I still have the external camera that plugged into the SK Color's headphone jack too. The screen was gimmicky, but oh-so-cool... it got everyone's attention, and allowed me to show people what it could do. Everyone was impressed - until they asked about ringtones. T-Mobile's laser-focus on hip-hop was a real blow there... I'm not into it, nor were any of the people I showed the device to. It really turned people away from it when they realized the target market was teenagers (even though it was an awesome techie's device). The terminal program was my favorite part (I was a Unix Systems Architect at the time) and it got a great deal of (ssh) use. I loved reading through the various descriptions of the apps being developed on the developers site (skdr?) and waited so patiently for T-Mobile to give the green light to so many of them (including a super-simple one, the voice-note-recorder), which they never did. I tried to get my own developer status (can't remember the term they used) so I could get a key and load the apps directly onto my device (via usb), but that was shortly after T-Mobile had made the process extremely difficult with huge forms to fill out and some catch-22 requirement that you had to already have a program published to get the dev kit (or something like that). I read a lot of complaints about that. The best part of the device was the keyboard. It had the best layout and by far the best feel (and spacing) of any phone thumb-keyboard I've used since. Better than the Nokia N800 (NIT, not phone), better than the original Android G1, even better than the N900. It's the only thumb-keyboard I ever used that I could type on without looking at the keyboard, and quickly... far more quickly than anything remotely similar that I've tried. After they cut the service, I used mine as a dumb-phone for a while until the microphone finally stopped working. That forced me to finally get a replacement (my N900). One thing that's pretty impressive about the SideKick II... mine is still running (never been rebooted) since before T-mobile cut the service! I've had it plugged in the entire time for fear that if the battery dies, it will lose the games and programs I have installed (it acted sort-of as a thin client and downloaded all apps you had allocated upon powerup). Pretty darned amazing uptime, considering what it was. :) |