We’re getting a couple emails each day letting us know that PhoneDog is pegging the Sidekick 2009 release date for April 1st at CTIA. While we’re just like you guys, we hope the Sidekick 2009 comes out earlier rather than later, we’re not too sure if MSDanger/T-Mobile will be able to hit that date. Here are the thoughts we have:

* Releasing new products at CTIA isn’t great from a marketing standpoint. Your announcement can get lost in all the press about everything else.
* BUT we did however see the Sidekick iD info leak out accidentally via CTIA. It wasn’t an official announcement, but still something.

* An April 1st release does mean that the Grammy Tour could be used for some excellent marketing opportunities and increase the hype around this long-awaited upgrade to the Sidekick line.
* BUT last year’s Grammy Tour (also around April) saw the Sidekick LX as the showcase device, even though the Sidekick 2008 dropped 3 months later in July.

* We know the device is in the hands of some trial users and is being tested in the wild.
* We haven’t found a filing on the FCC for this device yet. With the Sidekick 2008 we saw FCC docs around May 2008, with the device releasing about 3 months later at the end of July. With the Sidekick LX we found FCC docs in the beginning of August 2007, device was released mid-October, again in the 2-3 month range. This FCC filing is legally required for the device to hit the market in the US, but companies don’t want to file early otherwise us rumor sites get some indisputable proof. Even if we find an FCC filing today, April 1st gives them only a month. Not impossible, but cutting it pretty close. Anyone found the FCC filing yet?

So, like I said, we want to believe, but every day that goes by without seeing any promotional material or FCC filings makes us less and less hopeful.

We got the above screenshot in our email. According to the sender and the contents, it appears to be a memo to a Telstra Manager talking about the plans for the “Hiptop LX 2009“. (The Sidekick is marketed as the Hiptop in non-T-Mobile markets) It says that the 2009 was supposed to be release early this year, but is delayed due to “software compatibility issues” and the necessary repackaging for it to say Hiptop/Telstra instead of Sidekick/T-Mobile. The email goes on to say that they expect these delays will “be resolved in the March/April period” and that more info will be sent out then. It mentions that Telstra is going to release the Sidekick 2009 before T-Mobile, much like the Sidekick Slide was released.

We’re filing this under “we hope it’s true” but are very very skeptical. The proof is lacking in context and easily replicated. Just grab a Telstra logo off the web, type up some text, slap it together in Microsoft Word, and save as a PDF. So, if there are any Australian readers out there that can get us more info, please do so! We’d love to hear that this is a worldwide release.

Alright gang, we’ve got some Sidekick 2009 info for you. Here’s the details on the camera that we’ve been able to find out so far.
* It will take photos up to a resolution of 2038 x 1536, meaning 3.2 megapixels.
* There’s a flash, so those grainy shot-in-the-dark photos will be possible.
* There is a new auto-focus feature, so you shouldn’t have to use the jewelry loupe/magnifying glass trick to get up close shots of things.
* Video recording sounds like it’s set to 15 frames per second for now. But might be possible for 30fps.
* You will be able to upload directly to MySpace, Photobucket, and YouTube
* It will support geotagging

All pretty much straight-forward information. For those that don’t know what geotagging is, it means that you can embed location information in the photos you take. So if you take a photo at your friends house and then upload it to a site that supports the geotagging info, it’ll show up on a map at the location you took it. This uses the GPS that’s coming in the Sidekick 2009. It’s all pretty good info, and about what we’d expect from a Sidekick camera.

Remember that Grammy Tour last year that was sponsored by the T-Mobile Sidekick? Well it’s back again this year. T-Mobile is officially sponsoring the 51st Grammy Celebration Tour and they’ve announced dates and some performers!

Leona Lewis will be kicking things off in LA on April 9th, Katy Perry will be doing Miami (May 13th), and LL Cool J will be rocking New York on May 28th. They haven’t announced all of the other artists yet (last year they had 2-3 artists for each show), but they will be over the next few weeks over on sidekick.com and grammys.com. If last year’s line-up is any indication (John Legend, Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliot, Seal, etc.) then it should be another not-to-be-missed tour for Sidekickers.

* April 9th – Leona Lewis in Los Angeles, CA at the Hollywood Palladium
* April 14th – ??? in San Francisco, CA at the Warfield
* April 28th – ??? in Boston, MA at the House of Blues Boston
* May 13th – Katy Perry in Miami, FL at Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater
* May 28th – LL Cool J in New York, NY at Terminal 5

So how do you get tickets? A limited amount of tickets will be available through special, in-store contests and giveaways at select T-Mobile stores in each city. The T-Mobile Sidekick website will also give you the chance to enter to win a VIP concert package.

Hope your city is on the list! I’ll see you guys at the San Francisco show!

Want to use the MyFaves interface on your Sidekick to make it quicker and easier to get in touch with your top 5 friends? Well, rumor has it that T-Mobile will be releasing the MyFaves interface to all Sidekick users for free come March 10th. Remember though, that this is just the MyFaves interface, it’s NOT the MyFaves rate plan where you get unlimited calls to your “Faves”. You’ll be charged the same rates for contacting these friends if you don’t sign up for MyFaves. For those of you that don’t know what the MyFaves interface has:

“The Faves home screen provides customers the advantages of a simple and convenient one touch connection for calling, texting, or sending photos to the people they (you) care about most.”

via CellPhoneSignal

…and cue comments about how this isn’t Sidekick 2009 news in 3…2…

We knew it was coming. We knew they were visiting and they answered the call. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the photo we’ve all been waiting for. May we present to you, the Sidekick 2009 aka the Sidekick Blade.

Some sad sad news today for our neighbors up north. Fido, the Canadian carrier for the Hiptop, is sending out text messages to their Hiptop customers saying “Fido info: We have some important information about your Hip Top option. Please call us at 1-866-273-FIDO (3436) and press 2”. Those calling the number are being informed that Fido will be shutting down the Hiptop service come April 30th, 2009. It’s a sad day, and many users are now trying to figure out what device to move to. Sorry to see you guys go! Here’s hoping the Sidekick/Hiptop makes it back up there under another provider! Maybe via T-Mobile? It’s been almost a year since they were rumored to be moving into Canada.

via

We’ve got another mock-up of the Sidekick 2009 sent in by a reader (who even watermarked for us!). If anyone thinks this thing isn’t confirmed by now, they aren’t paying attention. Now we’re just waiting for a photo of it in the wild.

*GEEK ALERT*
Want more proof of the Sidekick 2009 being out in the wild? Check out this entry in our server’s log files:

216.220.208.186 – – [09/Feb/2009:19:40:34 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.0” 200 68967 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Danger hiptop 5.0; U; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050920”

What does that mean? Well the User Agent (aka web browser name) of “Danger hiptop 5.0” means someone with a Sidekick 2009 visited hiptop3.com as recent as Feb 9th. We checked some older logs and there’s a ton of visits in the past few weeks too. Not only does this confirm that there are devices out there, it also confirms that it’s running DangerOS 5.0. If you’re curious about what other Sidekicks report as their User Agent, check out this handy post on PBD.

So Mystery Sidekick 2009 Users, how does the site look on the nice new screen? Want to send us a screenshot? 🙂

We’ve been emailing back and forth with a reader who claims to have actually held and played with the Sidekick 2009/Blade. We won’t spill the details on how because we don’t want anyone to get in trouble, but here are some of the things he said:

* It looks pretty much like the mock-ups we’ve seen so far, stripe along the back and all
* It’s lighter and “has a more grown up feel to it”
* The keys are more flush with the device and are “flat not round like the lx”
* The USB and headphone jacks are indeed on the bottom of the device
* There is a flash for the camera
* There’s an app for your “My T-Mobile info” that lets you pull up your info (minutes used, sms sent, account info, etc)
* There are lights running along the top of the screen part. Mood-lights anyone?
* It’s being called “Montreal” as an internal codename for T-Mobile. “Blade” is the internal name at MSDanger. It will be sold as the Sidekick 2009.
* It will be running DangerOS 5.0

I know, this is just “some guy said” sort of news, and as such we’re still kind of required to toss this in the “Rumors” category. That being said, we’d put money on the above statements being true.