The Sidekick LX is the followup to the Paris Hilton-era popular Sidekick from T-Mobile and Sharp. The phone isn’t really meant to be a phone, but more a personal assistant for cool people, if that personal assistant could get you vanilla latte when you clearly asked for a mocha. Even though I don’t drink coffee, using the Sidekick has been that kind of experience, with expectations that aren’t necessarily broken, just misguided.

When you pull the LX out of your pocket, you’ll still be making a statement. The phone retains the iconic swivel design and form factor. The major change to the body came as a slimming of the phone, and elongating of the device overall. The Sidekick LX will fit nice in most late teen to adult hands, but 14 year old high school girls might have some trouble holding it comfortably when making phone calls. If ever there was a device that needed a touchscreen and an accelerometer, it’s the Sidekick LX. The giant display is gorgeous, but I kept wanting to navigate with my fingers rather than the track ball. Touching would be more intuitive, and the trackball doesn’t provide as smooth of an experience as it should. I often would scroll through the hemisphere-style menu and overshoot because the interface would lag behind the scrolling. When I tried to scroll back, I would again overshoot simply because the trackball wasn’t sensitive enough. I was able to adjust the settings to the point where it was manageable, but the interface seemed a little counter-intuitive.

As far as the phone software itself, it’s received some upgrades that previous Sidekick users will probably love. With built-in Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook clients, users can access mobile versions of the popular social networking sites to stay updated on the go. This is where the main draw of the Sidekick is supposed to be: the ability to connect users with their texts, email, chat and social networks. The original Sidekick was a pioneer with this feature set, and gave users one of the first non-smartphone QWERTY keyboards to make bastardizing the English language all that much easier, lol. Yet the LX didn’t seem to update ANY of those features. You’re still limited to 100 text messages in your inbox, and I was only allowed to add 3 external email accounts. The AIM and Yahoo chat clients worked well, but were just like any other mobile phone chat clients. I’m sorry, but shouldn’t a phone that champions mobile networking and chatting feature some insanely different and improved software to set it apart from the rest? Using Facebook and Twitter were fine, but that’s it. It was just any other mobile browsing experience this side of a smartphone.

It dawned on me that this isn’t a revolutionary, groundbreaking device. The Sidekick is happy with what it created for the world, and every mobile phone after it copied the mobile social networking features. The LX is simply an update for current users of the Sidekick who want a new phone with some crazy-cool lights and a gorgeous display. Confusing menus and buttons aside, there is nothing wrong with the LX at all. Instead, I’ve been spoiled by phones that are now mimicking the iPhone, and having never used the first Sidekick, I didn’t really understand the design philosophy of the device. Again, the phone is a solid phone for those who are used to this sort of thing. They’re going to love the new look, the display, and the incorporated notifications for their mobile applications (I found myself loving the Twitter updates right on my home screen). The phone calls were clear, and the camera takes surprisingly good pictures for a 3.2 MP camera (though the flash had a tendency to wash out the photo if you were too close). The keyboard was very nice to type on, and provided for almost no typos at all. The menu system, after a long confusing time trying to figure out which button did which (manuals? Who needs those?) started to make sense, and navigating the phone became less painful. It was as if the spirit of Paris Hilton was guiding me…wait, she’s not dead yet? Never mind.

As I said before, I had certain expectations of this phone that were determined by my experience with other mobile devices such as the iPhone. The phone wasn’t meant for me, and therefore, my expectations didn’t match the purpose of this device. The LX’s solid construction, comfortable keyboard, bright display and thinner form factor will appeal to current users, and potentially text-addicts who have been eying a simpler phone than a Blackberry. This is a text centric device, that also happens to browse the internet and make phone calls; a social butterfly’s Sidekick if you will.

Video demo of the T-Mobile 3G Sidekick LX coming shortly.