(yeah, i know i wrote ‘eminent’ in the title before and it’s the wrong spelling, but it’s now fixed)

Way to drop the ball, Jay! I didn’t go into the detail I had wanted on my mobile phone history, and in just a couple short days, the 2009 Sidekick LX will be released upon an eager public.

I am part of that public. Horribly eager, as T-Mobile had informed me I’d be receiving it a week and a half after I’d made the pre-order, and then quickly placed in on ‘backorder’ status. After that it was a nightmare discussion with their Customer Care department, as they wouldn’t give me a straight answer about its shipping.

But all shall be well. I receive on May 12, and review on May 13. As promised, though, a few brief words on my old mobile phones.

Keypad/keyboard Design

I really dug my old Treo, though you may not have known by how I talked of it back in the day. The damn thing was a heavy lump. The graphics were circa 1991, and it broke easily. It was really just the model I had that was the problem. Other models had better screens and faster processors, and the housing didn’t feel like the same plastic made to use Happy Meal toys. But it had my favorite keyboard. The buttons were easy to press, and if need be I could glide across them in a line to create an interesting keymash. Plus, it was the only touch-screen phone I owned.

My least favorite was the BlackBerry Pearl. SureType was a nice feature, incorporating two letters per key and generally guessing the right words, but the keys wore out fast, and lighting-typing became so much of a hassle that I moved on to the T-Mobile Dash. A major improvement in key design, but nothing compared to the Sidekick ID, which I loved to death.

The Sidekick ID’s keyboard, accessed when you flip the screen and enjoy the kickass metallic sound effects, offers well-spaced, round plastic keys. They’re slightly raised and easy to press. Even more so than my Palm Treo 600′s keys, my fingers can glide right across to produce a keymash of epic proportions—something very necessary since I keymash on a regular basis now. Typing accuracy with this phone is the best I’ve had compared to all phones, including the normal non-smartphones (anyone remember the ‘dingly’ story?).

A cool feature on Sony Ericsson phones—like the k700i I loved until it conked out on me, constantly looping through its boot sequence—was a little four-way joystick which I loved and hated. I loved it when it worked properly, hated when it stopped becoming responsive. Oh well, no more 3D Tennis for me.

Display

The first phones I owned had small screens and generally low resolution. The Palm Treo, as I’d mentioned, was the worst of the bunch. A clunky Palm Pilot with phone capabilities and horrible resolution, the damn thing’s display was just a matrix of pixels. Never mind photographs on it.

My favorite screen on a regular phone was the Sony Ericsson’s k700i. Simple, colorful, beautiful.My favorite screen on a smartphone was the T-Mobile Dash. It was just a 320×240 screen, but at least everything looked pretty on that phone. Plus, since it ran on a Windows Mobile OS, I was able to easily learn how to use and hack it, which is nice for customization but not much else.

As cell phones gained in technolical ability, it was never simple enough to just rate a phone on call quality and signal reception. Nowadays, websites like CNET and Engadget end up rating cell phones based on things like cameras and web browsing. It’s a fascinating new world that communications and digital technologies have brought to mobile phones. They have evolved just like computers.

In a couple of days I will have a personal review of the Sidekick LX 2009. I’d read about improvements to the Sidekick line since the iD, so I know what to expect. I just don’t know how I’m going to react to the new phone.

Look forward to review, just as I’m looking forward to the phone itself. Who’d have thought that the kind actions of a community administrator would spawn such a voracious addiction to the Sidekick line?