Everyone is slipping these days. Looks like the Rebate guys over at T-Mobile were a little quick to jump the gun and information on the Sidekick iD’s release date, rebate amount, and available colors slipped out. The rebate will be $50, the release date looks like April 18th, and you’ll have your choice of blue, pink, or yellow at first. From what we hear the colors will actually be changeable, so no need to buy all three to match your outfits. They’ll be like the bumpers were on the Sidekick IIs. With the already low price and the rebate, these are almost like disposable Sidekicks, handy for the situations where you wouldn’t want to take your several hundred dollar Sidekick 3.

Rebate Form (PDF)

Thanks Engadget

Looks like the OTA is upon us. A couple of good ones in this update. Character count is back in SMS messages, MyFaves support, saving photos, and the ability to download themes from the catalog. Free themes are still possible though.

From Danger’s Help page:
Release 3.4 Over-the-Air Update for Sidekick 3 Users

This Over-the-Air Update contains the following new device features:

* Support for myFaves phone plan – If you sign up for T-Mobile’s myFaves plan, you will see a new “myFaves” application on your device. To add myFaves contacts, go into the application, press MENU and select either Add myFaves Contact (to add a new contact) or Add from Address Book (to add an existing contact). Read more in the myFaves help page.
* Download “themes” from the Catalog – You can use the themes you download as backgrounds to your application splash screens. To apply a downloaded theme as your background, press JUMP to go to the Jump screen. Then press MENU and select Backgrounds. In the submenu that opens, your downloaded themes will appear at the top of the list.
* Save photo attachments – You can save Email photo attachments to your device. To save a photo, open the message then scroll down to the photo attachment you want to save. Scroll down to just below the photo and select the Save to Album button. Your photo is saved to the Device Album in the Camera application.
* Text message character counter – As you compose a text message, you can see a running count of the characters you’ve typed against the message character limit. You’ll also see the number of SMS messages required to send what you’ve typed. For example, if you see “2 140/146” below the message you’re composing, it means you’ve typed enough characters to require two text messages. It also tells you that in the second message you’ve typed 140 characters against the limit of 146 characters.

Note: Not all characters count the same. Some characters count as two and therefore decrease how many characters you’re allowed in any one message. Also, the message limit varies depending on how many messages you’ve typed. Check the count/limit indicator (e.g., 140/146) to see where you stand.

Thanks to Brandon for the heads-up

For those looking to add a little bit of customization to their Sidekick 3 without having to buy a limited edition device or deal with the task of disassembling and spray painting their device there is now an option. Colorware, the company probably best known for giving Apple users a choice other than black and white, is now coloring Sidekick 3s. You’ll have a huge choice of colors that you can mix and match at your command. It’ll only cost you $99-$129 depending on your color choices, and you’ll have to send in your Sidekick 3 and wait about a week. Not only will you have new colors, but you’ll get some additional scratch protection and color that won’t fade. All the more reason to buy a Sidekick 3 and make it your own.

Thanks to everyone submitting this, sorry it didn’t go up earlier. We were in the process of moving to California to get closer to Danger headquarters. 😉

Is video on the Sidekick finally coming?! A recent surf of Danger’s job page has given us an insight as to what the next generation Sidekick might have instore. With the combination of TMo’s EDGE and the eventual roll out of UTMS, it seems that broadband video could become a reality on everyone’s favorite device! As always, this is just speculation at this point, but it sounds like the Sidekick 3/4 might handle MPEG-4, H.263, H.264/AVC, WMV 7/8, VC-1/WMV9 codecs.

For those interested (and hopefully someone qualified) here is the job description:

Senior Video Software Engineer
Department: Library
Location: Palo Alto, California

As a Senior Video Software Engineer, you will be responsible for moving Danger’s hiptop platform into the video age. We already have the best audio system in the mobile industry; now leverage your deep knowledge of video to take our multimedia architecture to the next level.

Responsibilities

* Help craft the video strategy for Danger’s hiptop platform, including evaluating various 3rd-party video solutions, and recommending hardware changes for future devices.
* Integrate 3rd-party video software into the existing platform and audio engine. Optimize, debug, and maintain this code. Most of this work will be done in straight C, but some inline ARM assembly and DSP coding will be required.
* Expose video features through an extensible and customizable Java library API. Tutor application-level Java engineers, both internal and external, on this API, and help them make best use of it in their code.
* Search for innovative ways to incorporate video into the hiptop experience, including leveraging the unique Danger service architecture.
* Create test suites and work with QA to deliver the highest quality mobile video applications in the industry.

Qualifications
* BSCS/BSCE/BSEE degree and 8 + years continuous experience developing in C/C++, preferably in a technical lead role for some of this time
* 2 years experience developing in Java, preferably with some object-oriented library and API development
* 2 years experience focused on video record and playback, including codec and DSP experience
* Familiarity with popular video codec formats, such as: MPEG-4, H.263, H.264/AVC, WMV 7/8, VC-1/WMV9, etc.
* Familiarity with popular video file formats, such as MP4, AVI, etc.
* Experience integrating and debugging 3rd-party source and object code
* A solid understanding of multithreaded programming concepts
* Experience with ARM9 and ARM11 assembly language programming in an embedded environment, and TI OMAP DSP programming, is highly desirable

The first and most popular Sidekick Themes site has just gotten an upgrade to a brand new server. Gone are the error messages when the site got too busy. There are now almost 500 full themes available, as well as 6000+ unsorted user created themes. New features are being added in as testing permits. The latest and greatest is that you can now see both backgrounds (in themes that have them) simply by passing your mouse cursor over the screenshot. On the list is support for adding sounds in the Sidekick theme creator. Got any other suggestions for sk3themes.com? Leave them in the comments!

it may take up to 24hours for some people to see the new server as the DNS propagates

Gearlog is reporting from CTIA with a new T-Mobile mystery. The logo above was spotted on all the phones on display at CTIA, both low-end and high-end. Anyone have any ideas on what it could be? What does it mean?

We’ve done a lot of thinking the past few weeks in regards to custom themes/backgrounds on the Sidekick 3. Everyone and their brother knows about the undocumented but easily accessible custom themes feature on the Sidekick 3 now. We’ve even gone as far as to put up a site with with 4000+ Sidekick 3 themes submitted!

At the same time that we’re enjoying this customization, there’s a lot of talk about how the next OTA may disable this feature in order for TMobile to sell Sidekick users premade wallpapers. In all honesty, we’re hoping they’ll realize that for every custom made theme, that’s one more Sidekick 3 that will be pulled out of a pocket to show off to a friend. One more custom hinge sound that noone has ever heard on a phone that will draw the attention of strangers when you flip the screen.

Is it wrong to think that custom themes are a good thing, both for users of the Sidekick 3 as well as TMobile? With the new themes, we all get a chance to make the phone “ours” whether it means loading a background of Jay-Z, a pair of Nikes, Mariah Carey, Tron, or our geeky favorite, a light saber sound for the screen. In our opinion, this makes us even more devoted and attached to the glossy little gadget.

Want to change the background on your Sidekick 3? It’s possible! Check out the thread on our forum for more info. We’re also working on something to make it real easy for anyone to create a theme from a picture. Stay tuned!

Want to download some pre-created themes? sk3themes.com has some already!

Got a picture and want to make your own theme? Check out the SK3 Theme Generator

There have been rumors of TMobile rolling out UMA sometime in the near future. Looks like some pictures of TMobile’s UMA beta test kits have leaked out recently. The kit appears to consist of a UMA enabled phone (Samsung T709) plus a wireless router (DLink or Linksys). So why the heck are we reporting this on here? That’s no Sidekick 3! Remember that old post about the Sidekick roadmap? Here’s the pic:

Notice the Sidekick 3 with UMA? Does this mean the roadmap was an lucky fake or does it give some validity to it? The release of the Sidekick 3 was pretty close (about 2 months) and we all have heard about the Sidekick 3 Razr. Are we just grapsing at false hope here? What we’re wondering is how they’re going to fit anything else in the device without absolutely killing the battery life.

Article on Engadget

Looking for some tips on improving to quality of the pictures taken with your Sidekick? Here are some generic tips that apply to most camera phones:

13 Tips for Improving Camera Phone Photos

Some of these don’t apply to the Sidekick 3 (like the zoom), but others are useful things to keep in mind. Anyone have any additional tips that are Sidekick 3 specific? Our #1 tip, be patient and let the Sidekick 3 adjust to the light. Oh, and try to keep it still.