I know, I know.. this post is almost blasphemous, but I thought it might be helpful for some of you out there. After all, Android is another project by the same guy that helped bring us Danger! (I’m talking about Andy Rubin) Don’t worry, I’m keeping my Sidekick LX 2009, and hiptop3.com will continue running. We ain’t going nowhere.

That said, the Sidekick Disaster of October had a lot of people start thinking about leaving the Sidekick, but the big question is and was: which device to jump to? It seems like there are three solid choices: iPhone, Blackberry, and Android. Each one is different in its own way, and none of them compare to some of the features that the Sidekick has. From my experience and talking with people it feels like the Android platform comes the closest to the Sidekick.

So I sat down and put together Android Shopper to help compare all the different Android devices on the market right now. If you’re thinking about buying an Android device but aren’t sure which one, I’d recommend checking out the comparison of Android phones. If you’ve already switched to an Android device (or tried one in the past), please leave a comment on the “More Info” page for the phone you tried telling everyone what you loved/hated about it!

BTW, anyone want to start a petition to get Android on the Sidekick platform? 🙂

Life as a Sidekick user is starting to return to normal as T-Mobile/Microsoft/Danger slowly announce each piece of data that is restorable as they make progress. We’ve gotten back Address Books, Calendars, To Do Lists, Notes, and most recently Photos. I know a lot of people are still waiting on Bookmarks and I imagine that will be next in line. However one of the hallmarks of the Sidekick is still missing and we haven’t heard any word on when it will return.

I’m of course talking about the Download Catalog, aka the first App Store. The Catalog has been down for over a month and this sucks both for Sidekick users as well as Sidekick Developers. I’m sure T-Mobile is feeling the hurt too as a large source of their income from Sidekick users comes from selling applications, ringtones and themes.

While there are no other ways to get applications (save having a developer key), it is possible to get ringtones and themes while the catalog is down from unofficial sites. Themes for most Sidekicks can be found at Sidekick Themes and if you have a Sidekick LX 2009 you can get free ringtones at Skringers.com.

UPDATE (2009-11-11): We’re hearing through the grapevine that the Download Catalog may be up by Saturday if things go well! Keep your fingers crossed.

It is time for all of you that were waiting on your other data to rejoice. You can now recover your Calendar, Notes, and To Do lists!
T-Mobile posted the following this morning:

Updated: 11/05/2009 8:30 AM PDT
Sidekick Restoration and Software Update
T-Mobile is pleased to announce that Calendar, To Do Lists, and Notes are now available for restoration on My T-Mobile. Microsoft/Danger continue to work on settings and photo restoration. We hope to have these available for our customers very soon.

Like they said, just jump onto My.T-mobile.com and click Restore Your Info. You’ll select the Calendar, Notes, and To Do List items and then click sync. Automagically your data should then sync back to your Sidekick over the air. Let us know how it worked for you. Are you missing any data still or did they recover it all?

UPDATE: In case there’s any confusion, T-Mo put together a How-To.

It seems like a lot of the Sidekickers out there are being lured away from the Sidekick, while other die-hards are staying true to the Sidekick. I’d love to hear what you have decided.
[poll id=”5″]

T-Mobile reports:

Microsoft/Danger have now made the necessary fixes to their network to restore the ability to sync your data. This means that your contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, tasks, etc. will now sync on the network, just like they did prior to this data disruption. However, you must power cycle your device following the steps below in order to begin the synching process.

But they do add the discaimer that things are still “unstable” and that you should back up all your data. Note that a power cycle is going to Menu -> Power Off, letting your Sidekick turn off on its own and then powering it back up. Do NOT do a hard reset as your data will be lost.

We’re still waiting for the official word from Microsoft/Danger that they promised us “on Monday”, but we’re hearing a few people report that they magically got their data back. Posts over on the official T-Mobile forum (and an uncensorable thread started on the new skfail.com) are giving us some hope that maybe all this data isn’t truly lost.

tommyd2107 says:

I was just on my phone and when I got off my phone all my contacts returned. I do not know if this will last for long but the site of my contacts returning is encouraging.

dariahna says:

The same thing happened to me…I shut my phone off several times without removing the battery…voile’! My contacts returned!

generalblue says:

Got my contacts back too! My phone froze up on me and since I have already lost everything anyways, I just took the battery out and put it back in. Once my phone was on about 5 minutes later I checked my address book for some reason and they were all there. I saved all my contacts to my simcard.

Anyone else out there have any luck?

Another tip that is being reported on poweredbydanger.com that is unofficial, not 100% tested, try at your own risk, might just work, etc. is if you have an old device that has your contacts and info you might be able to do a reverse sync (i.e. device to server). Make sure your old device is turned off, plug it into the wall, remove the battery, insert your SIM, replace the battery, power up, and cross your fingers. With any luck it’ll update Danger’s servers with this info, and then you can switch back to your newer Sidekick which will pull it back down. This is at your own risk and should only be tried after you’ve backed up all the contents on that old device. If you do try this, let us know if it works for you.

If you haven’t lost all your contacts, calendar, to-dos, etc start backing them up now. Seriously, stop what you’re doing and back them up.

silversidekick also let us know a handy tip. If you already lost all your data but you have an old Sidekick laying around that you’ve used in the past, there’s a chance it might still have your contacts on it. Fire it up and take a look.

For most people the most important things are their contacts, so here’s the best way we’ve found to back them up:

1. Open your Address Book.
2. Highlight the first entry
3. Hit Menu + M
4. It will bring up an email with a .vcf attached.
5. Type an email you have access to on another computer.
6. Copy that email address so you won’t have to type it every time.
7. Hit Menu + M to send.
8. Scroll to the next Entry
9. Menu + M (To open email with contact attached)
10. Menu + V (to paste email address in To: field)
11. Menu + M (To send email)
12. Repeat steps 8-12 until done.

You’ll end up with a ton of emails in your inbox, and if you’re using GMail or something that handles filtering messages, it should be relatively easy (although time consuming) to save all these vCards into some other application. More info on these vCards (.vcf files) can be found here.

For notes, emailing them is the best bet too. Menu+M, Menu+V, Menu+M again. As far as To-Dos and the Calendar events, I’m still investigating.

Many thanks to Ian and Nicole for the quickest way to export contacts that we’ve heard so far. If you’ve got any tips on how to save your info, drop them in the comments.

Did your weekend suck because you didn’t have data service? Were you one of the unlucky ones who had a hard reset and spent the weekend with an empty address book and no social life? Give T-Mobile Customer Care a call (611 from your Sidekick or 1-877-453-1304 from any phone) and request a credit on your account for the data service downtime. We’ve heard reports of varying credits ranging from $5-$30, so good luck! Let us know how much you get and when you finally get data service back! We got a credit, but are still waiting on that pesky G to come back. We recommend you straight up ask them for a full month of service credit.

T-Mobile is reporting that users should be getting service back shortly, and that you’ll need to log in to the Danger servers with your username and password that you probably setup ages ago. If you can’t remember your login info and you didn’t get a reminder text from T-Mobile, give them a call to reset it.

Theme by swaggerlikeme from sklxthemes.com

The reports are lighting up like a Christmas tree on SignalStrength and T-Mobile’s Customer Care confirmed that we are in the midst of a nationwide outage of the Sidekick Data service. It started late last night/early this morning and the 2-dots have been dancing all day long for everyone. So stop toggling airplane mode, put your Sidekick down, take a deep breath and relax. We’ll get through this together. T-Mobile didn’t give an estimated time of resolution, but said things should be fixed “shortly”. If it’s really impacting you, you might have some luck calling Customer Care and requesting a credit on your bill for the outage. Usually this will be in the form of free minutes or a $5 credit.

Happy Birthday to our dear little friend. That’s right, 7 years ago on October 1st, 2002 the Hiptop was released to the general public in the US. Seven years later and here we are. In some ways the Sidekick has been improved greatly (remember the terrible camera back then when cellphones didn’t have cameras?), and in other ways it’s stayed the same. For better or worse, the Sidekick will always have a place in our hearts.