I never thought the Sidekick on T-Mobile was a great phone at all.  I mean, sure it has all these useful applications that allow you to connect to the internet and instant message people.  But, it just always looked ugly to me.  Now, Motorola is making me think again about the Sidekick with the Zante.  It looks like it belongs in nightclubs just so you can get emails and phone numbers from people…just don’t spill your drinks on it.

The Motorola Q900 (Zante) features full multimedia playback support, JAVA, game controllers, Danger OS, EDGE connectivity (via T-Mobile), 128MB of internal flash RAM, MiniSD card slot for 2GB, 5.9 hours of talk time. The phone also supports MP3, WAV, MIMI, AAC, AAC+ and WMA formats. The 2.4″ QVGA display boats of 65K TFT screen. It has a 1.3 MP camera and large 5-row QWERTY keyboard. Bluetooth, Push Email, SMS, MMS and IM are the other specs.

Pricing is about $269, a nice compromise to the iPhone. 

The keys can be easily remove and rearranged, and offer variable resistance. What more can one ask for in a keyboard? This could be particularly valuable if they produce multiple languages. My Russian wife would kill for one of these, if they offer Cyrillic. No word on pricing or availability, but I’ll be keeping my eye out.

So here’s what’s been confirmed about the Apple iPhone and the tid bits it doesn’t have. I have to admit, some things on the list suprised me. Why take a step backward on these features?

Stuff in Bold = Are you kidding me?

Doesn’t do this:

• Songs as Ringtones
• Games
• Any flash support
• Instant Messaging
• Picture messages (MMS)
• Video recording
• Voice recognition or voice dialing
• Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
• One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)

Stuff we already knew it didn’t have:
• 3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
• GPS
• A real keyboard
• Removable battery
• Expandable Storage
• Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)

Just when we thought the 3 in 1 combo was enough.  Some of these missing in the iPhone are crucial to the way we communicate via cell phone.  Now here’s a few good reasons why you might want to wait for the second one.

Bluetooth keyboards and mice are sometimes a bit laggy, in my experience, and so it’s not at all bad that the new Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 (now, that’s a mouthful, and shouldn’t "ergonomic" be assumed?) uses a different wireless standard. It’s 2.4GHz, and so hopefully that won’t interfere with other wireless devices, but if eliminates the lag it’s worth the risk. If you’re a fan of the split keyboard design and are jonesing for a decent wireless setup, this might be the one. Be aware that the street price is around $125, though, so save your pennies

P-ISM : A Pen-style Personal Networking Gadget Package, basically its a Palm Pilot in a pen. It has some pretty neat features though: a pen-style cellular phone with a handwriting data input function, virtual keyboard, a very small projector, camera scanner, and personal ID key with cashless pass function.

The best part of them all is that they are all connected with one another through short-range wireless technology. The whole set is also connected to the Internet through the cellular phone function. This personal gadget in a minimalistic pen style "enables the ultimate ubiquitous computing".

Personally, I wouldn’t buy it, but what i think has real promise is the keyboard, although my fingers would get super tough from typing on the hard floor or table all day, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Fingers of steel? I’ll take it!

Until next time…