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>> Greetings, everyone, I'm Veronica Belmont from cnet.com and this is Prize Fight, the show where the best gadgets in the world compete to take home the gold. Wait, no, they don't; they compete to win my personal seal of approval and a hug. In the ring today we have two multi media and messaging phones that want to appeal to your hip side. The LG NV versus the T-Mobile Sidekick 3. Five rounds, each round worth up to five points, the most points at the end wins. Let's get ready to rumble with round one - sexiness. Oh, wait, full disclosure: this is actually my T-Mobile Sidekick 3, so we'll see if I made the right decision. The Sidekick 3 has certainly slimmed up since the bulky Sidekick 2. It's a hair larger than the NV and the difference in weight is noticeable. If you want to stay in fighting shape, you have to lay off the cheesecake, Sidekick. The NV just looks a lot more sleek and more tech, less like a toy. Also, the display on the NV, when you open it up like this, is a lot brighter even though it is a little bit smaller. For this round I'll give the NV a respectable 4 and the Sidekick a 3. [ Bell ] Now, how easy it is to get to those fancy features? Round two is navigation. The NV's keyboard looks nice, but I found typing on the Sidekick way easier. Oooh, gut punch. My favorite part about the Sidekick is the scroll ball, which makes moving through menus a snap. The navigational control on the NV can be programmed with shortcuts to your favorite functions, which is one saving grace. But the menu system on the Sidekick is so intuitive that you probably wouldn't need shortcuts on it. The Sidekick ends up on top in this round with a 5 and the NV gets a 4. [ Bell ] Round two ends in a tie but we've got three more rounds to make the hard choices. Up next is the big one - features. These phones love features and they both do a lot of the same things. However, for everything that the Sidekick can do, the NV does better. The 2-megapixel camera looks much nicer on the NV compared to the 1.3-megapixel on the Sidekick 3. Oh, and the NV does video. It also has super fast endo [phonetic] connection, and you can download music on the fly with a V-Cast service from Verizon. The Sidekick hits back by holding 1,000 more contacts and by being a world phone. The NV gets a big old 5, and the Sidekick gets kind of a paltry 3. [ Bell ] Another close-ish round. Oh, and I forgot to mention the most annoying thing about the Sidekick 3. It has no alarm clock. Like, seriously? Let's see if it does better in round four - image and music quality. So, about that Sidekick 3 doing better in round four thing I mentioned - no luck. This is definitely the NV's round since the image and music quality is far better than the Sidekick 3. The pictures taken with the Sidekick are, well, kind of depressing, and the NV has nice streaming video, which the Sidekick can't do at all. [ Audience noise ] Ooh, the audience is getting all worked out in this round. What are the scores now? Well, the NV gets a 5 for this round and the Sidekick gets another 3. [ bell ] Ooh, the Sidekick 3 got pretty pummeled. Up next it's call quality. The call quality wasn't too different between these two phones but I have to deduct a point from the Sidekick because of the terrible quality of the speakerphone and spotty T-Mobile reception in San Francisco, although it kind of all depends on where you are. The NV wasn't perfect either with some hiss on the line and a slightly tinny sound. Tie for this round, 4 for each. [ Bell ] So what is our total today? Well, the NV gets a 22 and the Sidekick 3 gets an 18. [ Bells ] Despite the Sidekick's reputation for being a hot phone amongst the rich and famous, the LVNV tops it with souped-up features and great multimedia quality. Quite the upset from this newcomer. If you'd like to give me suggestions for future shows, you can write me at prizefight@cent.com. I'm Veronica Belmont, and I'll see you next time.
