The T-Cell Sidekick’s Bounce button made cell multitasking simple

International Courant

Earlier than the iPhone, earlier than Android, earlier than webOS, a revolutionary cleaning soap bar of a cellphone made it extremely simple to get issues achieved. The Hazard Hiptop, higher generally known as the T-Cell Sidekick, made the web transportable and reasonably priced like no cellphone earlier than.

In right this moment’s digital age, it typically seems like {hardware} has taken a again seat to the software program that drives our units. Button of the Month is a month-to-month column that explores the bodily components of our telephones, tablets, controllers, and past.

It launched cloud sync lengthy earlier than iCloud, popularized limitless information and actual net searching on cell, and made on the spot messaging and electronic mail a breeze due to its panorama {hardware} keyboard.

However the Sidekick does not get sufficient credit score for one bodily button that ties the entire cellphone collectively: the Bounce key.

Most bear in mind the swiveling display, however there was rather more to a Sidekick. Picture by Sean Hollister / The Verge

On fashionable telephones, opening an app often means tapping on a notification or trying to find the proper homescreen icon. To do, you need to see. Earlier than the Sidekick, the hunt-and-peck was additionally tougher than right this moment: it meant bodily urgent down with a stylus on a resistive Palm Pilot or Home windows Cell touchscreen.

However in 2002, the Hiptop’s Bounce button turned multitasking into muscle reminiscence. Each Sidekick shipped with each preset and programmable keyboard shortcuts, letting you “Bounce” to any app.

I’d kind up my notes in the midst of school school rooms, Bounce+B my solution to the net browser to look one thing up, Bounce+N again to my notepad, Bounce+I to speak on AOL Immediate Messenger with buddies, then Bounce+ I emailed the notes to myself on the finish of sophistication. My thumbs by no means left the keys.

Bounce + B would convey up the net browser. Sadly, I could not discover a battery and charger for this previous cellphone. Picture by Sean Hollister / The Verge

It was so handy that I wound up taking most of my school notes on a Sidekick II – possibly all of them save Japanese.

Weirdly, T-Cell did not make a lot of an effort to clarify the Sidekick’s seamless task-switching potential. Actual ones knew, however within the official consumer manuals, the Bounce secret is virtually at all times described as a glorified dwelling button. “Urgent JUMP takes you again to the Bounce display, your start line for launching all of the gadget purposes,” reads a typical instance.

I did discover these Bounce Shortcuts on web page 38 of a 2003 consumer guide. Picture: Hazard

However former Hazard director of design Matías Duarte, who went on to design webOS and the appear and feel of Google’s Android, tells me Bounce was by no means simply an alternative to Dwelling. It was designed to be chorded, urgent down a number of keys at a time to unlock its potential. “That was actually the place the facility of it was, the factor that made it greater than a house button, if you’ll.”

“We labored on them, we relied on them,” he says of the keyboard shortcuts. Hazard would file bug stories, arrange conferences, chat in ICQ and electronic mail, copy them into notes, all from the Hiptop itself. “I lived on it as a result of I used to be commuting by Caltrain as much as the town daily,” says Duarte.

“Bounce” really appeared on the unique Bounce key within the first-gen Hazard Hiptop / T-Cell Sidekick. Picture by Matias Duarte

Initially, the Bounce key was born to provide you a solution to soar out and in of cell app notifications, which, again then, had been fairly novel in and of themselves. “There wasn’t this idea of launching a program and quitting a program, it was you may soar to the notification and simply soar again to what you are doing.”

In contrast to Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, and flip telephones of the period, the Sidekick did not kill apps after they had been closed, he says — it had a “true multitasking structure” the place they stored working within the background, linked to the web. (Each cellphone does this right this moment.)

“The state-of-the-art of notifications at all times felt like they had been these obnoxious lights that do not respect you,” he says of the notification lights on different telephones, “so it was necessary that they’d pop up, banner up, and allow you to know who they had been from. You can soar to it when you cared about it, or not when you ignored it. Collectively they had been fixing the issue of the consumer not being really interrupted, however successfully multitasking.”

A former Hazard engineer discovered this pristine Sidekick II in a second bin. Picture by Sean Hollister / The Verge

However it does not shock Duarte that the Bounce button was marketed as one thing easier, merely a solution to get again to the homescreen the place you can use the Sidekick’s dial to scroll by way of apps — as a result of the button was genuinely imagined to do each. “The philosophy was that we wished to make it actually accessible, however we did not suppose that making it accessible made it much less highly effective.”

And it was referred to as “Bounce” to maintain it easy. “We wished to make one thing that was for regular folks, the place you did not want to grasp any of those ideas of launching or quitting or multitasking.”

Bounce wasn’t the one button that provided chorded keyboard shortcuts to Sidekick energy customers. You can reduce, copy, paste, soar to a selected chat, or begin a brand new electronic mail with out launching the e-mail consumer (and prefilled with the textual content you simply copied!) by first holding down the Menu key.

Duarte says he struggled to justify including the Menu button as a result of he was making an attempt to maintain the cellphone easy — however Hazard was additionally making an attempt to maintain it low cost, solely providing you with buttons and a one-dimensional scroll wheel as an alternative of paying for a dear (on the time) touchscreen. Repeatedly rotating and clicking a wheel to pick out every command appeared like quite a bit to ask of customers.

“That is why we wanted the Menu button: so we weren’t at all times drilling out and in of all the things,” he says.

Above: T-Cell’s anime advert marketing campaign for the Sidekick hinted at task-switching however did not explicitly showcase shortcuts.

The Sidekick finally died a tragic dying, deserted by celebrities after Paris Hilton’s cellphone acquired hacked, shunned by some customers after new proprietor Microsoft misplaced gobs of consumer information in a server failure, and changed for folks like me by Android (which, importantly, was created by among the identical individuals who launched the Hiptop).

However a lot of Hazard’s helpful keyboard shortcuts stay on to this very day. I discovered them ready for me, like previous buddies, after I purchased the very first Android cellphone. Squinting, I noticed a tiny magnifying glass key on the T-Cell G1’s sliding keyboard. I pressed Search+B, watched an internet browser pop up, and grinned broadly.

My T-Cell G1, initially the HTC Dream — the primary Android cellphone. Picture by Sean Hollister / The Verge

For extra on the Hazard Hiptop, I like to recommend co-founder Joe Britt’s 2007 Stanford lecture on the way it was constructed, Chris DeSalvo’s essay on its improvements, and retrospectives from MrMobile and TheUnlockr.

The T-Cell Sidekick’s Bounce button made cell multitasking simple

World Information,Subsequent Huge Factor in Public Knowledg