We’ve had a number of people write in to point out what looks like a Limited Edition Famous Stars and Straps Sidekick LX on the Famous website. It turns out that unfortunately this isn’t a limited edition that we’ll see being sold in stores. It was a special batch of devices just for Travis Barker, a long time Sidekick user, and crew. I know I know, based on the number of Famous Stars and Straps themes that have been uploaded, I bet a lot of you would be waiting in line to buy this device if you could. In the meantime you’ll just have to make your own with Colorware or a can of spray paint.

We received the above screenshots from a Best Buy employee (they have access to see inventory coming) from their internal tools. Looks like T-Mobile switched around the misspelling of “Gecko” and are calling it the Sidekick Gecco. There’s not a whole lot of details other than the name of the device, the size and weight of the box, and the release date of July 27th that we knew about long ago. Oh wait, what’s that? $299? Is that the price of the Sidekick Gecco? Hmm.. Needless to say, this is exciting and only a couple weeks away!

Big thanks to our anonymous tipster

Boy Genius report is now reporting that the Sidekick LX OTA could start rolling out as soon as this week! See our previous post Here covering the 4.6 release notes. Keep in mind that the OTAs are sent out in groups. It might take a few weeks for everyone to get their Update, but everyone WILL get the update. Just have patience.

via Boy Genius Report

We’ve been saying it for months and months, but T-Mobile has finally put out the official confirmation in their press release yesterday. The Sidekick LX is getting a video OTA. In case you missed it in the press release about the Tony Hawk Limited Edition Sidekick LX, here’s the snippet:

This summer, all Sidekick LX customers will receive an over-the-air update that includes the new functionality that is integrated in the T-Mobile Sidekick LX Tony Hawk Edition, such as video recording and playback ability, an alarm clock, stereo Bluetooth support, and Bluetooth file transfer support.

Rumors flying around are that it’s going to drop on July 15th, which makes sense.

Looks like press photos of the Tony Hawk Sidekick LX that we’ve been waiting for are out. Rumor from BoyGeniusReport has it that it will have grip tape on the back. And like we’ve been reporting, it’s probably going to have all the features and improvements that are coming with the Sidekick LX OTA. Basically it’ll be running the same version of the operating system as the Sidekick LX after the OTA to come. We haven’t gotten official word from T-Mobile yet, so of course the obligatory “grain of salt” is required, but as soon as we have the official word, you will be the first to know!

We’ll be keeping an eye on eBay to see if a Tony Hawk Sidekick pops up. Any bets on how much they go for?

via BGR

Sharp (you know, the guys that make all the Sidekicks except the Slide) have announced a new tiny but high resolution (5MP) camera that even has auto focus. If you ask us, this looks amazingly similar in size and shape to the cameras currently in the Sidekick LX. Sharp says the new camera will be available for mass production in July so chances are we won’t see this in the Sidekick Gekko. But this would be something to keep an eye out for the Hiptop m3 (or whatever they’re going to call it), which we speculate will be coming out at the end of the year.

via CrunchGear

What you’re looking at is the required FCC label for the next Sidekick. What we’re assuming is the Sidekick Gekko/Aspen is now up on the FCC site as a device manufactured by Sharp named PV210. It’s always nice to see a device confirmed by the FCC because that means their is actually a physical device in the hands of someone. Even with the recent excitement of T-Mobile launching their 3G network, the PV210 is not a 3G device, it’s just good old GSM-850 and PCS1900. Beyond that all we can gather from the FCC docs is that it still uses a microSD card, which means support for music, (probably) videos, themes, and more. Oh, and it has a removable battery, no big surprise there.

The confidentiality on the filed documents expires on August 16th, so unless the FCC screws up then we won’t be seeing the FCC filed pictures of the device until after the rumored July release date. We’ll just have to find some other way to get pictures of the device in the wild. But this date means we’ll definitely be seeing a new Sidekick by August!

FCC Docs

For all those that were doubting us when we said that video was coming to the Sidekick LX via an OTA, we present you with a page straight from T-Mobile.com. The text reads:

Viewing available memory for pictures and videos
To view available memory for pictures and videos, perform the following steps:
1. At the Jump screen, roll to and select Camera.
2. The available space for new pictures appears in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

The original page for the Sidekick LX can be found here (if they haven’t pulled it yet). There’s also the same page for the Sidekick Slide, although we haven’t heard any details on an OTA for you Slide owners yet and there’s also this page which says: “The Sidekick Slide does not support sending video messages.” So we’re going to stick with saying to expect the video OTA for the LX, but not for the Slide. Sorry Sliders.

Pictures and videos man. Pictures AND videos.

-Thanks to Ryan for catching this.

A screenshot of a Javascript error was posted on the PBD forums. It says nothing about a Sidekick Gekko. It just happens that the engine that Danger uses for the Sidekick browser (on all their devices) back-end web proxy (to be exact) is based on the Gecko layout engine, just like Firefox and Netscape. So, nope this doesn’t confirm anything about the Gekko sadly. Not to mention that this sort of screenshot is easily faked with literally 1 line of code on a webpage. The original screenshot below:

Post on Boy Genius Report

Or at least not planned yet… Joel Evans over at Geek.com is saying that a little birdy told him that there is no plan in the near future for a Windows Mobile Sidekick. He was told this at a pre-Mobius event. Mobius is an invite only community run by Microsoft that apparently hasn’t found our address to send us an invite yet. Actually what he quotes is “no new phone” is in the works. We already know that Danger is working on new devices, but this confirms that Microsoft isn’t working on new hardware and we highly doubt Danger has made any efforts to get Windows Mobile running on their current platforms.

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