Yes, you read the title right. Amazon is back in the business of offering Sidekicks for super super cheap. They’ve got the Sidekick 2008 up for $0.01 after an instant discount of $250 if you sign up with T-Mobile and stay with them for over 3 months. Unfortunately this doesn’t work for existing T-Mobile customers, but for those of you out there thinking of getting your first Sidekick, or coming back from another carrier, now is your chance. The product page says that it’s the black T-Mobile Sidekick, but it comes with the green shell as well. In the end, the color doesn’t matter since you’ll be customizing it with your own shells and free Sidekick themes.

T-Mobile Sidekick Black Phone (T-Mobile) for $0.01

T-Mobile has a couple designer Sidekick shells available that look pretty sweet.
Jessica Gonacha

Susie Ghahremani

iLK

Aleksander Velasevic

Check them out here. What do you guys think?

Since most people have a Sidekick that plays video these days, one of the most asked questions is how to get video converted so you can actually watch it on the Sidekick, especially YouTube videos. CubanitaStylez (the same one that puts together those awesome themes) has recorded a video walking you through the steps to download a YouTube video to the Sidekick. You’ll need to use a website to download from YouTube and the video encoding program eRightSoft SUPER. Here’s the video walking you through it:

This should work for converting videos for the Sidekick LX, Sidekick Tony Hawk, and Sidekick 2008. For more details and other handy videos, check out cubanitastylez.blogspot.com

Want to theme your Sidekick LX or 2008/Gekko to mimic the G1 device? CubanitaStylezz, a talented and well-known theme artist, has put some G1 Themes up for the Sidekick. You can get them over at sk08Themes.com and skLXthemes.com.

Remember how we mentioned that SunCom Hiptop users would need to get a new Sidekick with the switch from Suncom to T-Mobile? Well we got some word from a T-Mobile spokesperson that (former) SunCom customers with a Hiptop device will be provided with a T-Mobile Sidekick 2008 free of charge. You should receive a letter from T-Mobile that provides your options for this upgrade, and you’ll need to either visit a nearby store (indicated in the letter) or call Customer Care at a number provided in the letter. In addition to the new Sidekick 2008, T-Mobile will also provide customers with the Intellisync software to help transfer your information from your old Hiptop to your new Sidekick via a computer. Needless to say, I think those of us without the Sidekick 2008 are a bit jealous!

No, this isn’t some new fancy device that’s going to kill the Sidekick. It’s a corrupted 3gp video file that has the potential to hard reset a Sidekick with very little user interaction that’s out in the wild. That’s right, hard reset, as in wipe out all of your data and force you to redownload it from Danger’s servers. Luckily with the way the Sidekick is designed you won’t lose anything, but it’s still an annoyance to have to wait for all your email, settings, etc to download. It’s also a really nasty trick to play on someone you don’t like.

This was first posted in the PBD forums under a thread titled “Virus In Email?! Important!! Read!!”. I know, my first thought too was, “yeah right, Sidekicks don’t get viruses”. Technically this isn’t a virus, and it isn’t even malicious in intent. It looks like it’s just a bug with the way the email application handles a corrupted video. Needless to say though, it is a serious bug that Danger will hopefully fix in an OTA quickly. This currently affects the new Sidekick 2008, as well as Sidekick LXs with the video OTA.

Want to protect yourself from this sort of crash? In your Email, go under Menu->Settings->Attachments->Remove Attachments of these types, and check “Multimedia”. This will remove any movie files that are attached to emails sent to you, including this nasty one.

The confidentiality request for the FCC docs for the Sidekick 2008 (Gekko) has expired and all the docs submitted to the FCC are now available on their site. There’s not much new and exciting since the Sidekick is already out and everyone and their brother is picking one up. But there are some internal photos of the device as well as some photos showing how they test the device to make sure it doesn’t microwave your brains. It’s also kind of interesting to know where the actual antennas are located on the device. If that kind of stuff interests you, here are some of the pics we pulled out:

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Original FCC Docs

For all of those of you out there that are still wrapping their Sidekick 2008 in saran wrap to keep from scratching the screen, your wait is over. InvisibleSHIELDs for the Sidekick 2008 went up on their site today. Head over to the Sidekick 2008 Screen Protector page on Sidekick Shopper to get the 15% discount for Sidekick users and get yours now. They’ll even hook you up with free shipping! They’re a bit pricey, but when you think about how much you spent on your Sidekick Gekko and how much $$$ you’ll want to get when you sell it to buy the Sidekick 2009, it’s worth not having scratches all over the screen.

UPDATE: Here are some pics sent over of a Sidekick 2008 with the full body invisibleSHIELD applied to protect the shell.

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Want to watch YouTube on your Sidekick? Well you’re out of luck for streaming, but you can convert the videos from YouTube to a Sidekick friendly format on your PC. Dave writes in to our comments about how to convert YouTube videos for watching on the Sidekick:

Guys please listen up closely and read carefully.

Ok, I did a little research and figured out how to Download the videos off youtube and convert them to mp4 so they can be added to your phone.

Follow closely these steps and read carefully, its fairly simple.

1. Download Free Youtube to Ipod Converter
Link: http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/download/FreeYouTubeToiPodConverter.exe

2. Open the converter and Add a Youtube link to it. For Example…This random video I chose!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4UuTiK4a7o&fmt=18

(Now notice, that in the end of the link theres a “&fmt=18″. That is very important and It must be there, If it isn’t then add it onto the link”

Simply place that in the Input URL.

3. Select the Output.
Click Devices, Choose MP4 Mobile Phones, and select The Standard Quality. Then just simply edit where you want the video to be downloaded to and the name you want it to have and just download it.

4. Plug in your phone through the USB connector to your pc, and open the Music Folder. Simply click and drag the video in there.

5. Unplug your USB, and check your Music Player library, and there should be a video in the videos tab. Just click and viola.

Your welcome in advance

Thanks Dave!

Looks like we’ve got our first custom Sidekick 2008 Shell unboxing. Kyrios, a PBD regular, sent this in to us. It’s a PoweredByDanger themed shell. Looks like they’re quality! You can make your own over at sidekickshells.com.

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