FCC Tees up Sidekick Slide

Remember those spy shots back in July of a new, Motorola-made Sidekick? Well, it looks like the long-rumored successor (or cousin, perhaps?) to the Sidekick 3 is about to rear its glossy head. The Sidekick Slide (a.k.a. Zante) just got the stamp of approval from the FCC, which means it should be hitting stores within weeks.

Engadget Mobile has a gallery of snapshots from the FCC filing, in which T-Mobile's logo appears prominently (no official word from T-Mobile HQ, however). The new pictures show some changes from the spy shots we saw in July: the rows of keys on the QWERTY keypad have returned to the slightly staggered alignement from the older Sidekicks (rather than the squarish-design on the leaked photos), and the trackball is back (and on the right side of the screen). Also, the Slide will apparently do away with the Sidekick's swiveling display, replacing it with a slide-up screen (natch) instead.

Beyond that, the Slide's specs still look more or less the same as those on the Sidekick 3: you'll get a music player, a 1.3-megapixel camera, instant messaging (including AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo! Messenger), quad-band GSM and EDGE data support, Bluetooth, Web browsing, e-mail, and microSD memory expansion. That said, there are also hints that the Sidekick's OS has gotten a much needed update, plus a higher-resolution screen to go along with it.

Overall, nice but not terribly exciting; however, there are rumors of yet another upcoming Sidekick that may be the Sidekick 4. Details are sketchy, but click on through to the Boy Genius Report for fuzzy photos.

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Sidekick Slide hits the FCC, user's manual and all [Engadget Mobile]