Gear Eye: T-Mobile Sidekick II - Engadget - www.engadget.com In every school there was a guy who was almost a year older than the rest of the class. He didn’t get held back or anything, he was just born a few days too late for his parents to register him the year before. In grade school no one noticed, but in jr. high he hit puberty before everyone else. When he was gangly and awkward, everyone else in his class made fun of him, but by high school he was one of the cool kids. He started growing bigger than the rest of the guys in his class. He wasn’t stupid, just bigger, so he he used his size and age to his advantage. He was probably the first guy you knew who could buy you some beer with a fake ID. Girls all wanted to date him, guys all wanted to be his pal, but somehow he was never a popular kid — just the cool guy.

The Sidekick II (SK2), well, it’s exactly like that guy. The first Sidekick was a bit awkward and gangly, but the SK2 has matured into a smooth operator that just happens to be a bit bigger than his classmates. It’s really not fair to just judge the SK2 as a phone, when it does and has so much more than your average phone. It’s really more of a laptop in your pocket. Because of this, we’re going to make a few exceptions on our ratings, but we will make them consistent across smartphones—promise.

The Sidekick II will be available exclusively through T-Mobile for a while. If you don’t score one in Santa Monica today, you should be to get one at your local T-Mobile store in the next day or two. Our man Jacks got us one a few weeks early so we could give you something to drool over while all the Paris Hilton wannabes are down in Santa Monica gettin’ their new SK2s blinged out.