Video: T-Mobile Sidekick 4G

The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G (aka the Samsung SGH-T839) looks very much like a classic Sidekick, but this is all Android. The screen is a bit on the small side (just 3.5") but the keyboard looks brilliant. Hopefully either T-Mobile or Samsung will sell this outside of the T-Mobile USA network.

The Sidekick is back.. running Android!

TmoNews has some spy shots of what appears to be a new 4G T-Mobile Sidekick device, built by Samsung and running Android 2.2.

The original T-Mobile Sidekick line has been dead for a while - they were proprietary devices developed by a company that got taken over by Microsoft. The result was one of the biggest disasters in recent tech history, a cock-up so great that it effectively killed off the line.

An Android-based Sidekick seems like a great idea, although it has to be more than just an Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard - the appeal of the original Sidekick was the ease of use especially with messaging, something that T-Mobile will have to replicate.

There's no word on availability, but these pictures show a pretty well rounded piece of hardware, so perhaps an official announcement will come at MWC next month.

[Via]

Video: T-Mobile G2

A video about the upcoming G2 that also seeks to clarify that there's more than one handset with the G2 name..

T-Mobile G2.. no, it's *another* G2.

Confusingly, there are two phones with the name T-Mobile G2, one is the T-Mobile G2 Touch which is a version of the HTC Hero launced last year. This new one is just called the T-Mobile G2 and is T-Mobile's version of a new upcoming phone codenamed HTC Vision, initially heading for T-Mobile USA.

This is a QWERTY slider running Android 2.2 on an 800 MHz Snapdragon MSM7230 processor (allegedly faster than the 1GHz CPU found in rivals). There's a 3.7" display on the front, a 5 megapixel camera with HD video recording capabilities on the back and a very nice looking keyboard, but the G2's key selling proposition is the inclusion of HSPA+ data.

HSPA+ gives a theoretical maximum download speed of up to 21 Mbps, but real world figure will be two-thirds of that or much less. And of course you'll need access to an HSPA+ network, which is still being rolled out by T-Mobile USA.

T-Mobile are pushing HSPA+ as a 4G technology, it is just an enhancement to 3.5G technologies and is probably best described at a 3.75G technology.. 4G isn't here yet and for most customers it won't be for some time.

The G2 should be available to T-Mobile USA customers sometime this month, but we would expect to see it available worldwide under the HTC name by the end of this year.

Via [1] [2]