The 50th Grammy Celebration tour that kicks off in April is going to be sponsored by the T-Mobile Sidekick LX. The tour is going to hit 5 cities, with a different musician performing in each one. The press release says “The tour will provide music and Sidekick fans exclusive access to a concert tour featuring a broad lineup of GRAMMY-nominated and -winning artists”. T-Mobile is being hush hush about who is actually going to be performing. So far we only know the first artist is going to be John Legend, an R&B singer/songwriter/pianist who has won a handful of Grammy Awards. As for the other artists, it’s still unknown for now. Here’s what we do know so far though:

April 3rd
Chicago, IL
John Legend @ The Vic Theatre

April 9th
New York, NY
???? @ Webster Hall NYC

April 16th
Miami, FL
???

April 23rd
Dallas, TX
???

“Early May”
Los Angeles, CA
???

A limited amount of tickets for each of the stops on the tour will be available through special in-store contest giveaways at select T-Mobile stores in the 5 cities. But don’t worry, if you miss out on those opportunities in stores, you’ll have a chance to win the “VIP concert package” through Sidekick.com.

Some keen eyes have spotted what may be an icon for the next Sidekick ID in the Catalog. On the Sidekick LX, if you go into the Theme section of the catalog and look at the newest themes, you’ll see that the phone icon is different. (Or if you don’t want to open the catalog, compare the phone icon in the first image above to the familiar icon in the second one) It’s yellow around the edges as if it has bumpers, but it has a wider screen than the normal SKiD, one that looks more like a Sidekick LX screen. My first thought was, it’s just an LX with yellow plastic pieces. But if you look close enough (I know, we’re examining like 10 pixels) you can see that the yellow part does not match up where you would replace the pieces on a Sidekick LX. Could we be seeing a new version of the Sidekick iD coming out soon? Did someone slip up and take screenshots on a new iD since it would have the same resolution as the LX if it was sharing a theme? We’ll let you guys know what we find.

The Boy Genius Report received a tip that Deutsche Telekom (aka T-Mobile) might be spreading its reach into Canada sometime in the future. This is totally in the rumor category, so take it with a grain of salt of course. Here’s what they’re reporting:

* Deutsche Telekom has been pre-approved for a financing and protocol agreement which will allow them to introduce T-Mobile to the Canadian market (subject to restrictions in all provinces except Ontario during a 6, 12 and 18 month trial period that expires in 2010), and also pre-approves them for testing roaming, cell tower reception and international data agreements.
* The person heading up the Canadian division of Deutsche Telekom will be Canadian, in compliance with the Canadian Business Ethics law
* Deutsche Telekom already owns the name T-Mobile in Canada under a US Parent Office international exchange program.
* They plan to launch T-Mobile in Canada in 2009.
* Currently, as we all know, Rogers is the only GSM game in town. With T-Mobile’s entrance into the Canadian market, data rates are going to plummet quickly. DT also plans to introduce an unlimited BlackBerry plan to the Canadaian market to be priced at $75/month. Basically telling Rogers to go screw themselves.
* T-Mobz Canada is set to offer many of the devices we’re used to seeing here in the U.S. like the Sidekick line and T-Mobile’s HTC products. I guess that’s bye bye Fido Sidekicks?

article and image via The Boy Genius Report

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft crazy-guy CEO, has made some comments on the future of Danger, now that Microsoft s buying them. He say:

“The Danger acquisition is really about building up an application and service aspect on top of our Windows Mobile platform. Danger is really a service application experience and we want to make sure we get that in market on a great set of phones.”

Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good for the DangerOS that we’ve all come to know and love. Maybe there’s hope that they’ll keep developing it for a little bit longer, but are the Sidekick’s days numbered? Microsoft definitely sounds like their interested in the over-the-air delivery of updates and applications, more so than the incredibly easy and intuitive user interface and hardware. It’s too early to tell, but we hope that the line of Danger devices doesn’t disappear. (How’s that for alliteration, eh?)

via (Thanks for the link Alex)

So you didn’t keep an eye out for a Sidekick thief while texting on the subway like we told you to and now your Sidekick is gone. After reporting it to T-Mobile and the proper authorities, what is one to do? Well, if you’re like NY teenager Yudelka Polanco you’ll start doing detective work. The great thing about the Sidekick is that you can still log in to your desktop interface and find out how the person that stole it is using it (as long as they didn’t pull the sim and login as a different user). Most thieves are dumb and will leave behind some clues. Yudelka was able to get ahold of her thief’s email address and through a search on MySpace pulled up his profile. Through some additional detective work online she was able to get some pictures an information on the guy and took that info to the police. The police were able to identify 16-year-old Victor Hernandez and busted him for the theft of the Sidekick Slide as well as a number of other charges. Way to go Yudelka!

via gothamist

Grant Duval, from The Connection (a student newspaper in Sacramento, CA), has put together an editorial titled “What does your cell phone say about you?” In it he mentions Sidekick users:

Sidekick owners have a ton of friends. Even their phone is their “Sidekick.”

People who own Sidekicks are addicted to their friends, not the ones they are with, but the ones at the receiving end of their witty texts.

Sidekick owners are young and may or may not idolize Jay-Z. They are also highly lazy. If spelling out words without using abbreviations and predictive text is too hard, what else is too hard? Getting a job? Paying taxes? I’m on to you Sidekick owners.

Personally I would have said Lil Wayne (based on the number of Lil Wayne Sidekick themes out there) and I’d disagree that we’re lazy and don’t have jobs. How else could we afford such expensive devices? What do you guys think?

If you live in Boston (or anywhere else for that matter) you may want to pause from IMing and texting your friends every now and then to make sure you aren’t about to be robbed! Bostonist is reporting that Sidekick users who are distracted by typing are a target for phone thieves. WBZ TV reports that 23 Sidekicks have been snatched in the last two months from users riding the T (Boston’s subway system).
“Basically they have their heads down,” said Transit Police Sgt Michael Rutledge. “They’re not paying attention to their surroundings and people are taking advantage of that opportunity. When the train doors or bus doors open they’ll snatch the cell phone or Sidekick and run off with it.”

So keep an eye out next time you get sucked into an AIM conversation with the hottie you met last night at the club. Before you know it you may have lost her screenname AND your phone.

A recent patent application from Research In Motion, makers of the ubiquitous Blackberry, shows a mobile phone with a “handheld device with trackball navigation and Qwerty hide-away keyboard”. Sounds kind of familiar, eh?

via gizmodo