sidekick

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__Hardware__
The T-Mobile Sidekick is marketed in Canada as the Danger Hiptop and was designed by Danger Inc. and manufactured by Sharp in Japan. Both communication technologies are GPRS EGPRS mobile phones and have wireless Internet available as well. There is also a catalog of downloadable software applications, email hosting, instant messaging and web proxies.

Progression


 * HIPTOP 1**

[[image:sidekick1.JPG width="206" height="199"]]
//**HIPTOP 2**//

[[image:hiptop2.JPG width="207" height="201"]]

 * //(NEW) SIDEKICK 3 (166mm x 66mm x 23mm)//**

"The Hiptop has had four revisions currently. The original had a greyscale screen. The color screen was the second revision. The Hiptop 2, now replaced by the Hiptop 3, added an extra front button, two top buttons (for phone and camera use), a speakerphone, a camera and a new screen swivel style. The Hiptop 3 is the latest model featuring a 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, EDGE, a mini SD slot, removable battery, hard gel keyboard, and a mini Mp3 player" (Wikipedia).

Web browser
The Hiptop Web browser requests pages through a proxy running on Danger's servers. The browser itself supports XHTML 1.0, CSS 1 with some CSS 2, JavaScript (Hiptop 2 and 3 only) and CSS 3 (Hiptop 3 only).

Email client
The Hiptop email client supports outside mail accounts as well as the vendor-provided one, and can display attached images, PDF files and Microsoft Word documents.

IM client
The Hiptop offers AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger clients. The AIM client is built-in, while the Yahoo! client must be downloaded to the phone and is only available on the Hiptop 2 device. The AIM client can also connect to ICQ (also owned by AOL), and it has hidden support for AIM chat rooms. A user logged into AIM from a Hiptop has a miniature device as their icon, rather than the standard mobile phone-shaped "mobile" icon. The Hiptop 3 device adds MSN Messenger to the mix, allowing people to talk across all three major IM networks.

Oraganizer
The Sidekick three incorporates an organizer to make the lives of the users much easier. It offers an address book, calender, a to-do list, notebook and a schedule.

Accessibility
The Sidekick has accommodated people with hearing/deaf imparities, they have added TTY software to go along with the Sidekick offered by IP-REPLAY which gives users with hearing problems the ability to still make outgoing calls assisted by an operator serve (Wikipedia). For those who would like this feature it is added to the package free of charge, there are usually a discount rate set up for those with hearing disabilities which gives a discount on the sidekick itself and monthly fee is reduced because users usually request data package alone. There has not yet been any other accomodations for other physical disabilities.

__So . . .__
At about $299.99 for the brand new model of the Sidekick, it hardly seems worth it to pay for the Internet when you can get it at home for about an eighth of the cost per month. This is especially true when you factor in monthly bills and upkeep of the phone. However, the Sidekick - or HipTop - is a celebrity favourite hence making it popular with the rest of the public. The idea behind the Sidekick is unique in that it provides an all-around communication service at a moment's notice. Celebrity endorsement such as Paris Hilton are often used to encourage the use of side-kicks. Despite how pricy the item may be, the functions that are included are highly integrated into our daily lives.

References:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_Hiptop T-Mobile: http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/phones/default.aspx?compatable=false&manufacturer=dfc0fe3e-bf69-4c82-aa1a-24a0cc37d6b0