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Sidekick owners may not have one but two new messaging buddies in the offing. That's right; according to the Internet rumor-mill, two new T-Mobile Sidekick models are in the works: the Sidekick LX and the Sidekick Slide.

Geared towards the young of hip, the messaging-centric (e.g. IM, texting, e-mail) device has, with each succeeding generation over the last five years, gained more features, while becoming thinner and more compact along the way. The exception being the most recent model, the Sidekick iD—introduced in April as an entry level model.

Sidekicks, which run on the Hiptop operating system developed by a company called Danger, are significant because they're one of the few smartphone lines outside of those built on Windows Mobile, the Palm OS, or Symbian platforms to gain a loyal following and some market share.

Here's what the rumor-mill has to say about the Sidekick LX and Sidekick Slide:

The Sidekick LX’s code-mane is shuriken, but is often known as the Sidekick 4, as it is the follow up to the last major Sidekick offering, the Sidekick 3.

As with previous Sidekicks, the Sidekick LX's display flips up to reveal its QWERTY thumb-keyboard. However, at 3 inches and 320 X 240 pixels, the display is larger and sports a higher resolution than the Sidekick 3's 2.6-inch, 240 x 160 pixel type screen.

Like the Sidekick 3 the Sidekick LX (see top image from Engadget) has a memory slot. Unlike the previous model, however, the new one accepts tinier microSD cards rather than still small but not as tiny miniSD cards.

Both the Sidekick LX and Sidekick 3 share the same resolution camera, a 1.3 megapixel type.

Reports indicate the Sidekick LX will ship sometime during the fourth quarter of this year.

The Sidekick Slide, code-named Zante, is supposed to be thinner than all previous Sidekick models, including the upcoming Sidekick LX.

While Sharp has built and designed all Sidekicks over the last five years, the Sidekick Slide is supposed to be work of the company that made ultra-slimness a key ingredient to mobile phone success with the RAZR series, Motorola.


Sidekick Slide (image from Boy Genius Report)

It appears the Sidekick Slide will feature also 1.3 megapixel camera, but its display drops down to 2.4 inches in size—at the same resolution, 320 x 240 pixels, as the Sidekick LX’s, however. There are also game controllers, Bluetooth, a miniSD card slot, and 128MB of internal memory.

T-Mobile is expected to ship the Sidekick Slide in October.

We'll report additional details about both new Sidekick models as they become available.