The T-Mobile Sidekick’s Jump button made mobile multitasking easy

3 months ago 10

Before the iPhone, earlier Android, earlier webOS, a revolutionary soap barroom of a telephone made it incredibly casual to get crap done. The Danger Hiptop, amended known arsenic the T-Mobile Sidekick, made the net portable and affordable similar nary telephone before.

It introduced unreality sync agelong earlier iCloud, popularized unlimited information and existent web browsing connected mobile, and made instant messaging and email a breeze acknowledgment to its landscape hardware keyboard.

But the Sidekick doesn’t get capable recognition for 1 carnal fastener that tied the full telephone together: the Jump key.

On modern phones, opening an app usually means tapping connected a notification oregon hunting for the close homescreen icon. To do, you person to see. Before the Sidekick, the hunt-and-peck was besides harder than today: it meant physically pressing down with a stylus connected a resistive Palm Pilot oregon Windows Mobile touchscreen.

But successful 2002, the Hiptop’s Jump fastener turned multitasking into musculus memory. Every Sidekick shipped with some preset and programmable keyboard shortcuts, letting you “Jump” to immoderate app.

I would benignant up my notes successful the mediate of assemblage classrooms, Jump+B my mode to the web browser to look thing up, Jump+N backmost to my notepad, Jump+I to chat connected AOL Instant Messenger with pals, past Jump+E to email the notes to myself astatine the extremity of class. My thumbs ne'er near the keys.

It was truthful convenient that I coiled up taking astir of my assemblage notes connected a Sidekick II – possibly each of them prevention Japanese.

Weirdly, T-Mobile didn’t marque overmuch of an effort to explicate the Sidekick’s seamless task-switching potential. Real ones knew, but successful the authoritative idiosyncratic manuals, the Jump cardinal is astir ever described arsenic a glorified location button. “Pressing JUMP takes you backmost to the Jump screen, your starting constituent for launching each the instrumentality applications,” reads a emblematic example.

But erstwhile Danger manager of plan Matías Duarte, who went connected to plan webOS and the look and consciousness of Google’s Android, tells maine Jump was ne'er conscionable a substitute for Home. It was designed to beryllium chorded, pressing down aggregate keys astatine a clip to unlock its potential. “That was truly wherever the powerfulness of it was, the happening that made it much than a location button, if you will.”

“We worked connected them, we relied connected them,” helium says of the keyboard shortcuts. Danger would record bug reports, acceptable up meetings, chat successful ICQ and email, transcript them into notes, each from the Hiptop itself. “I lived connected it due to the fact that I was commuting by Caltrain up to the metropolis each day,” says Duarte.

Originally, the Jump cardinal was calved to springiness you a mode to leap successful and retired of mobile app notifications, which, backmost then, were beauteous caller successful and of themselves. “There wasn’t this conception of launching a programme and quitting a program, it was you tin leap to the notification and conscionable leap backmost to what you’re doing.”

Unlike Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, and flip phones of the era, the Sidekick didn’t termination apps erstwhile they were closed, helium says — it had a “true multitasking architecture” wherever they kept connected moving successful the background, connected to the internet. (Every telephone does this today.)

“The authorities of the creation of notifications ever felt similar they were these obnoxious lights that don’t respect you,” helium says of the notification lights connected different phones, “so it was important that they would popular up, banner up, and fto you cognize who they were from. You could leap to it if you cared astir it, oregon not if you ignored it. Together they were solving the occupation of the idiosyncratic not being really interrupted, but efficaciously multitasking.”

But it doesn’t astonishment Duarte that the Jump fastener was marketed arsenic thing simpler, simply a mode to get backmost to the homescreen wherever you could usage the Sidekick’s dial to scroll done apps — due to the fact that the fastener was genuinely expected to bash both. “The doctrine was that we wanted to marque it truly accessible, but we didn’t deliberation that making it accessible made it little powerful.”

And it was called “Jump” to support it simple. “We wanted to marque thing that was for mean people, wherever you didn’t request to recognize immoderate of these concepts of launching oregon quitting oregon multitasking.”

Jump wasn’t the lone fastener that offered chorded keyboard shortcuts to Sidekick powerfulness users. You could cut, copy, paste, leap to a circumstantial chat, oregon commencement a caller email without launching the email lawsuit (and prefilled with the substance you conscionable copied!) by archetypal holding down the Menu key.

Duarte says helium struggled to warrant adding the Menu fastener due to the fact that helium was trying to support the telephone elemental — but Danger was also trying to support it cheap, only giving you buttons and a one-dimensional scroll instrumentality alternatively of paying for a pricey (at the time) touchscreen. Repeatedly rotating and clicking a instrumentality to prime each bid seemed similar a batch to inquire of users.

“That’s wherefore we needed the Menu button: truthful we weren’t ever drilling successful and retired of everything,” helium says.

Above: T-Mobile’s anime advertisement run for the Sidekick hinted astatine task-switching but didn’t explicitly amusement disconnected shortcuts.

The Sidekick yet died a bittersweet death, abandoned by celebrities after Paris Hilton’s telephone got hacked, shunned by immoderate users after caller proprietor Microsoft mislaid gobs of idiosyncratic information successful a server failure, and replaced for radical similar maine by Android (which, importantly, was created by immoderate of the aforesaid radical who launched the Hiptop).

But galore of Danger’s utile keyboard shortcuts unrecorded connected to this precise day. I recovered them waiting for me, similar aged friends, erstwhile I purchased the precise archetypal Android phone. Squinting, I spotted a tiny magnifying solid cardinal connected the T-Mobile G1’s sliding keyboard. I pressed Search+B, watched a web browser popular up, and grinned wide.