The T-Mobile Sidekick — the first commercial implementation of the wonderful Danger Hiptop PDA/phone — is now onsale and the reviews are starting to appear. As soon as I'm in San Francisco for more than a couple days straight, I really think I'm going to pick this up.
That's partly because it costs less than half as much as its current competitors — $199, compared with $450 and up for the others. In the same spirit, T-Mobile will offer unlimited data usage on its new, relatively high- speed "GPRS" network for $40 per month — far below what a serious surfer would likely rack up under competing wireless-data plans. (Voice time is another story — more on that later.)
Another reason I like the Sidekick's prospects: It was designed for, and will be pitched to, a very different market. While vendors of the competing hybrids focus on "enterprise" customers — the big businesses that are supposed to have deep pockets for this sort of thing (even though most clearly don't at this point) — Danger and T-Mobile are targeting, in their own words, "Internet-savvy, primarily urban, young adults in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic."
I am that demographic!
(Thanks, Steve!)
