I had a T-Mobile Sidekick II for about 18 months before I destroyed the LCD screen. Many things about it were really annoying, like its huge size and incessant alert windows not dismissable by the "end call" button. But it definitely aced one thing: sound management.
Most people have some idea of how they want their cell to make sounds, but these ideas vary. For example, I just had a conversation with a coworker that went like this:
Matt: I wish my phone had an option to silence all sounds.
Ed: Mine has that, but I wish it wouldn't silence alarms.
Matt: Then it wouldn't be all sounds.
Enter the Sidekick's sound profiles. The Sidekick has something like six default sound profiles: All off, buzz, low, medium, high, maximum. Ok, great, but what if I want incoming calls to ring but text messages to vibrate? You can go into the profiles and edit the volumes for all types of sounds. Want everything but new voicemail to make sounds? Go right ahead. The Sidekick also allows you to add or remove profiles and even to order them (since you usually select them with the volume buttons).
But wait, there's more! You can tell the Sidekick to automatically use certain profiles at certain times of day. The designers clearly had working people in mind when they added the options for "weekend only" rules. So after about 15 minutes of customization, I never had to worry about the Sidekick's sounds again!
As much as I love my new phone (Samsung t629, a sexy little number), I have toggle vibrate twice a day. Anything that I have to do repeatedly in software should be automated.
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