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>> Hello, it's time for another Prize Fight. And I'm Veronica Belmont. Today we bring back the much loved Sidekick Three and pair it up against the new Helio Ocean. Which phone is best suited for your fun-loving phone needs? Round one is up first, sexiness and navigation. The Sidekick Three is definitely an improvement over the last Sidekick, but I don't know if I would call it sexy. The Ocean has a great design. I like the slider a bit more than the flipping action of the Sidekick. You can slide it up this way, or you can slide it up like this. And it's just smaller and lighter overall. However, I still think that the navigation on the Sidekick has always been one of the easiest I've ever used. I'm giving the Ocean a slight leg up in this round for the better look and feel. The Ocean gets a five, and the Sidekick gets a four.
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Coming up is round two, messaging.
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Both of the devices are great if you're sending text and IMs. And the QWERTY keyboards are also a huge help. Yet the Ocean has built in integration with a bunch of popular email sites, like Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail, as well as additional POP three addresses. Active Synch and Push Mail are also on the horizon for this device. They're both good in this department, but the Ocean takes it to the next level. I'm giving the Ocean another five, and the Sidekick Three a four.
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An early lead for the Ocean, but can it hold on. Next is connectivity.
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Neither has Wi-Fi, which is kind of a downer, but here's what they do have. The Sidekick has Bluetooth and Edge connection, not terrible. The Ocean also has Bluetooth, and 3G EVDO support. You can surf My Space even faster with 3G kids, it's true. I'm giving the Sidekick a three and the Ocean a four.
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Frankly I think it might be mathematically impossible for the Sidekick to win at this point. But let's keep going anyway. Multimedia is round four.
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Isn't getting any better for you Sidekick Three. The Ocean has a two megapixel camera to your one point three, plays video, has wireless music downloads. And the Sidekick does have a nice music player, but yeah, the Ocean's is better. Well, awkward. I'm giving the Ocean a five and the Sidekick Three a three.
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Okay, one more round, and I'm starting to feel kind of depressed for the Sidekick. Round five is call quality.
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Neither is crystal clear, but you know what? They both sound pretty good. Like equally as good. Speakerphones could be better, but I didn't notice a difference between the two. Yeah, I'm giving them both a four.
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That's it. What a freaking slaughter. Twenty three to eighteen? Let me tell you, if you ever thought I was biased for Sidekicks because I used to have one, well you'd be sadly mistaken. That's it for this edition of Prize Fight, thanks for watching. If you want to leave comments or suggest a match-up, you can do so at prizefight@cnet.com. I've Veronica Belmont, I'll see you next time. Man, I gotta get me one of these.
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