Can't get over your affinity with your Sidekick? Bring your act to AT&T and score the Sharp FX, which borrows the old messaging phone's form factor and pairs it with a heaping of modern features.
Physically, the device takes on angled lines and a relatively large size. While it looks similar to the Sidekick, it does forego the swiveling display, opting for a simpler slide-up design to reveal the QWERTY keyboard. The pairing of a 3-inch touchscreen (400 x 240 resolution) and a full QWERTY keypad is great for a feature phone. We do wish the display offered better touch responsiveness, though.
As a phone, the Sharp FX makes for less-than-desirable calls. There's a very noticeable echo in almost every call we experienced and the lacking volume makes it hard to use outdoors. Speakerphone was similarly weak (with even less volume), so we’d rather not use it unless absolutely necessary. Battery is rated at three hours of talk time, so expect to require nightly charging.
While not a smartphone, it does pack a good collection of messaging, social and multimedia features, putting it on par with some of the more robust mid-range feature phones in the market. It's a quad-band worldphone with 3G support and WiFi too, so it's equipped to handle all of your connectivity needs.
It's got the usual phone features, such as a 500-contact address book, PIM tools and Bluetooth 2.1. For messaging, it's got SMS, MMS, mobile email and IM (AIM, Windows Live Messenger and YM). It comes with AT&T's Social Net (for access to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and RSS), the att.net browser (fast and decent rendering, but no Flash support), aGPS (AT&T Navigator) and a whole load of useful apps. The multitasking capability (yes, you can run multiple applications) is a neat surprise.
You get the standard AT&T music player, along with access to the carrier's numerous streaming services. It's a serviceable multimedia device, but is nowhere near heavy on the features. The 2.0 megapixel camera offers a good range of options and actually takes average-looking shots.
Overall, the Sharp FX pairs good hardware with a decent range of features. The call quality is upsetting, though. It's available for $99 with a two-year agreement from AT&T.
