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Yes, that's a ridiculous question for a device that's become the top mobile messager for teens and young adults: Why would it want to grow up when it still feels fresh and connected, and has a legion of followers?

But we're not talking about the device's image. We're talking about the features. The new top Sidekick, the LX, sells from T-Mobile for a hefty $299 with two-year commitment, but isn't all that much improved over the Sidekick 3. You'll get a larger screen and a few software improvements, including multimedia messaging, but there's no great leap ahead.

We'd like to see the Sidekick either become a whole lot thinner, or else stuff considerably more functionality into that shell. We'd start with video recording, customizable e-mail schedules, and decent Web page rendering, and don't forget Wi-Fi and Bluetooth headphone support, which are still absent.

The Sidekick LX is just a hair thinner than the Sidekick 3 (5.1 x 2.4- x0.7 inches versus 5.1 x 2.3 x 0.9 minches), so it's still not something you could call "sleek."

Perhaps the biggest improvement is the larger 3-inch screen, offering a 400 x 240 pixel, 65,536-color display. As with all other Sidekicks except the recently released Slide (watch for our upcoming review), the display swivels upward to reveal a QWERTY thumb-keyboard.

The Sidekick's layout has always been strong, so it hasn't been altered much here. You'll get the same button arrangement that lets you quickly navigate the circular on-screen menu. New, however, are lights on the four corners, which give the device a little more visual flair.

While the Sidekick LX offers some important improvements, they mostly fall into the "what took you so long?" category.

The LX offers Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), letting users attach audio clips or images to text notes, but how has the Sidekick not had that from the beginning? Users can also now play MP3 files as well as unprotected AAC and WMA files, broadening the types of music it supports.

The LX promises speedier Web page delivery thanks to pre-optimized pages, but we found that pages still load slowly over T-Mobile's EDGE network. Worse was how pages looked: Rather than loading pages with their standard layouts and letting users scroll down or sideways, the Sidekick loads them in a stacked, one-column view, so you usually need to scroll past navigation bars and ads to find the actual content.

An improved e-mail experience makes the Sidekick a lot more pleasant to use when checking messages. You can now view all of your e-mail accounts in separate tabs, which makes it far simpler to organize your mail.

But we're disappointed that you can't customize the schedule the Sidekick uses to check for new messages. It checks roughly every 10 minutes, depending on how busy the server is, but you can't set the interval.

That's typical of the Sidekick, which makes keeping in touch via e-mail, text messages, IMs, MMS notes, or phone calls simple, but doesn't offer the fine-grained control of a more mature smartphone.

Besides the phone itself, buyers get a belt clip case and wired headphones in the box.

While the Sidekick is still a great way to stay in touch with your buddies, the developers are offering small improvements when they should be thinking bigger. The Sidekick should always be young-at-heart, but we'd love to see the features finally grow up.