The original OS had some great functionality, but a few things set it apart from anything that had been done before.ĪIM - this was the first phone that did Instant Messaging well (and had push messages!). The first thing everyone noticed about the Sidekick is the way the screen flipped up to reveal the best keyboard made on any phone (to this day, I am still faster on Sidekick keyboards than I am on any other devices except - maybe - a full computer keyboard). Eventually the guru at the shop said to me, "Give up on that thing and get a Sidekick. I had been testing a Tmobile Windows CE device at the time and kept having to take it back to the shop. But the first minute I got my Sidekick, I knew I had something very special. Some crazy WAP phones without much direction from Nokia.Windows Mobile phones that were almost unusable and required a stylus to make a call.Treos which were good organizers but painful on the Internet.Early Blackberries that barely did anything beyond email.The only other smart devices back then were: It was 2003 when I got my Color Sidekick (the Black and White one debuted a year earlier). In fact, I'd venture to say that the Sidekick was the first real smartphone ever made. My first smartphone was a Tmobile Sidekick. Google, in turn, made Rubin the Director of Mobile Platforms. Rubin later formed Android, which was then bought by Google. They created an entirely new platform and with the help of Tmobile, revolutionized the way phones worked. The Sidekick came out of the efforts of a few ex-Apple Engineers, Andy Rubin, Joe Britt, and Matt Hershenson, who started Danger in 2000. Perhaps this switchover was part of the reason for the outage?īut really, the Sidekick was already dead, Microsoft was just the latest to put a nail in its coffin. Microsoft may or may not launch the Pink line of smartphones which are based on the same Sharp hardware and will supposedly replace the Sidekick in the near future. This incident effectively marks the end of the line for one of the most important devices in gadget history. All models are now showing " temporarily out of stock" on the company's website.Īdditionally, a warning has been added to the post on T-Mobile's forum which reads: "Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power." T-Mobile has halted the sale of new Sidekicks. I really hope a lot of Sidekick users used the Intellisync software that pushes data to the desktop and would have backed their data up. And they have – for sure – released some unusual devices.But customers will be happy to know that Tmobile is offering a free month of data (not a free month of service, just the $20 unlimited data plan) for all of their information. After all, they’ve got nothing to lose anymore. What do you guys think? If you could pick a manufacturer – in a completely make-believe, never-gonna-happen dream world, who would it be? For me, I’d love to see a BlackBerry-made device. Anything without those two key ingredients isn’t a true Sidekick. As long as it had the 180-degree mechanism and the physical keyboard. ![]() If any manufacturer did decide to give it another go, I’d buy one in a heartbeat. It was never market-leading, and never sold in astronomical numbers. I’ve written before how much I’d love T-Mo to bring back the Sidekick range, and I know many out there will agree with me. I couldn’t use any of the web-based services on this old device, and that made me sad. Now, any old Danger Sidekick is nothing but an expensive and rare paperweight. And two years later, in 2011, the company pulled the plug on the very thing keeping old Sidekicks running. Things were already going downhill before Danger’s infamous server crash of 2009. It was geared to be a fun, communication-centered product. The original model featured monochromatic display, a scroll-wheel which lit up in all the colors of the rainbow and even shipped with a plug-in camera. It went through many changes throughout its life as a range, eventually ending up as a Samsung-made Android device which was a pale imitation. Its iconic 180-degree rotating display and awesome physical keyboard made it stand out in a market full of candybar style and flip phones. Having originally launched in 2002, the T-Mobile Sidekick became of the most instantly-recognizable phones on the market. Today was one of particular interest to TmoNews readers and T-Mo fans alike. Some of you who follow me on Twitter will know I’ve been running a series of retro phone reviews over on PhoneDog’s YouTube channel.
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