OK, I felt the need to clear some things up regarding NetBSD being used for the m3/Sidekick Blade/Sidekick LX 2009.

What does it mean for you? Nothing. You still won’t see any Non-Catalog 3rd party applications, you won’t see a “Jailbreak”, you won’t see free rangt0n3z… none of this will happen with the Blade running NetBSD as it’s foundation. Sorry to burst any bubbles.

What you might and probably see however… is a more stable, reliable and powerful device. NetBSD/*nix is a rock solid foundation to build on top of (Bravo Danger for the choice) and I’m going to bet you as the end user will see a much more stable device that doesn’t crash and reboot nearly as much as previously (Although for us the LX was/is a very stable and reliable device).

So, let’s break this down again. No free applications or ringtones outside of the catalog on the blade.

* GEEK ALERT *

Wow, here’s a nice shift. Remember all those concerns you guys had about Microsoft switching the Sidekick to *cringe* Windows CE? Well worry no more. The next Sidekick will run the free open source NetBSD operating system. Yes, you read that right. Don’t worry, you won’t have to know how to use the command line to make a phone call, your Sidekick LX 2009 will have the same old Danger User Interface we all know and love.

How do we know this?

– We’ve confirmed this via sources that wish to remain anonymous, but we know that’s not good enough for you guys….

– A job posting (also posted here) looking for “a talented NetBSD software developer interested in helping Danger (a subsidiary of Microsoft) ship the next generation of Danger’s Sidekick platform.” (full text of job description below)

Location: Redmond, WA
Client: Microsoft.
Job Description:

Seeking a talented NetBSD software developer interested in helping Danger (a subsidiary of Microsoft) ship the next generation of Danger’s Sidekick platform. Specifically, we’re looking for NetBSD developers interested in commercializing the NetBSD platform for an embedded mobile computing device, focusing on performance and optimization, bug fixing, and integration with Danger’s higher-level platform code, with an emphasis on kernel and driver support.
Qualifications:
– 8+ years of software development experience
– 8+ years experience with C
– Strong understanding of OS concepts (particularly with NetBSD) such as multi-threaded program design and synchronization, processes & memory protection, etc.
– Strong communication skills
– Strong understanding of the NetBSD/GNU software development process and embedded development & debugging techniques
– Deep understanding of NetBSD, including timers, RPC, TCP/IP, etc.
– Experience with ARM processors highly desirable

– A post on a NetBSD mailing list from a Danger employee saying “that Danger is actively and openly working on NetBSD”. Full post:

Subject: Arm support for TI SDP2430, ARM 1136, ARMv6 and ARM VIPT cache
To: None From: Martin Fouts
List: port-arm
Date: 09/25/2007 12:46:40

I’ve just attempted to send-pr a patch that adds support to release-4 for the TI SDP2430 evaluation board, the ARM 1136 processor core, ARM V6 cache support and VIPT support for ARM.

The work represents the effort of Matt Thomas and Cliff Neighbors of 3AM Software Foundry for Danger, Inc. as well the efforts of many people at Danger, including Marty Fouts, Todd Poynor, Ken Sumrall and others. It builds on the previous OMAP port to NetBSD submitted by “Picovex” containing the port to OMAP by Scott Anderson and others at Danger.

Matt Thomas is currently committing the changes to the matt-armv6 branch.

The port is reasonably stable: It has self-hosted on an NFS mounted file system on the SDP2430 board.

Now that Danger is actively and openly working on NetBSD, we will be making some of our other drivers and ports available to the community as they become stable.

– There’s also this post about porting yaffs (Yet Another Flash File System) to the NetBSD/Sidekick.

’nuff said.

Thanks to Ryan who just sent in a clearer picture of the Sidekick LX 2009 from the survey we previously posted. After further investigation and confirmation, we’re calling this 100% true. This is the Sidekick Blade. I think we all agree that it looks good, and that it’s a Sidekick worth getting excited about again. No word yet on release date, but we’re guessing about 4 months. That however is totally a guess.

We got the above image in our inbox. The reader sending it in danielle says she was taking a survey about smart phones on QuizPoints and was presented with this one. Here are the specs it lists in the photo:

Social Networking Suite of Apps
– Facebook
– MySpace w/ video upload
– Twitter
– YouTube Mobile Access via browser

GPS Location Based Search
– Turn by Turn Navigation
– Microsoft Live Local Search and Maps

Content Creation
– Blog publishing, editing, and management client
– Photobucket Upload and Management
– Video recorder and upload to MySpace/Photobucket

Communications
– Signature Sidekick IM/SMS/E-mail Experience
– Microsoft Outlook/Exchange synchronization

Hardware
– Large (3.2 inch WVGA) screen with sharp 854×480 resolution
– Thin design
– 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video recording
– Large QWERTY keyboard
– Expandable memory up to 8GB via MicroSD

Everything seems to match up with what a Sidekick LX 2009 would have. It mentions 3G, which is pretty much a given at this point. The introduction of Microsoft Live Search and maps makes a lot of sense since Microsoft now owns Danger. The addition of GPS (finally!) is also a nice complement to the maps and helps the Sidekick compete a little bit with the iPhone and other location-enabled devices. But I’m sure the thing that everyone is freaking out over now is the mention of YouTube mobile access. It’s probably the #1 request for the Sidekick by the majority of the users. It doesn’t seem that out of reach since the Sidekick can play video already, it just needs a way to get it from YouTube. None of the apps are groundbreaking, but they’re things that a lot of us would agree it would be nice to have on our Sidekick.

The hardware looks about right too. A 3.2MP camera isn’t the 5mp camera we hoped for, but it is a god bump up from the 2MP camera in the Sidekick 2008 (not to mention the 1.3MP in the LX). The screen is higher resolution (too early to start working on those new themes?) and of course the familiar keyboard is still there.

Is this the Sidekick Blade that we’ve been hearing whispers about? Hard to tell. We know that “Blade” is a codename and that internally (in software) it’s know as the “m3“. The “m2” was the Sidekick 3, so one would guess the “m3” would correlate to the elusive Sidekick 4 and a “large” upgrade in device. (FWIW, the Sidekick LX was the “m2-hd”) Could MSDanger be working on two devices? It’s very possible, but we don’t have anything to back this up or refute it yet.

So is this for real? We think so. At least we think it’s specs drawn up by someone official that is testing the water with consumers to see what they think. Whether it’s what we actually see in a device in the future, I’m not 100% sure. I think it definitely sounds like the next revision of the Sidekick LX. It’s not too ambitious, but does add a few of the most requested features. Seems to be the way that T-Mobile/MSDanger like to do things with the Sidekick.

An otherwise boring article posted on TWICE has one sentence that sparks a little bit of hope in Sidekick lovers. The article is about Personal Communications Devices (PCD), a cellphone marketing/distribution company. They work with manufacturers to get their devices out on the market. The interesting tidbit is:

In its 2009 product roadmap, PCD will continue to offer HTC-made phones, will offer a “couple” of new Sidekicks for T-Mobile, and plans a second-generation Quickfire multimedia phone for AT&T with a touchscreen and slide-out Qwerty keyboard.

A couple new Sidekicks for T-Mobile? Could this be multiple models? Maybe some Limited Editions? The Sidekick 2009? Details are of course slim, but we’ve already heard whispers of trial devices of the next Sidekick being out there.

(Thanks Mike!)

Tired of hearing about all your friends bragging about their 3G speeds? Well us Sidekick users won’t have to wait forever. We’ve heard from sources about the next Sidekick. We don’t have a release date yet, so start making your guesses, but we can almost guarantee you that it won’t be out this year. It’s Danger codename is “m3 Blade” and we hear that it will cut closer than ever before! For those that don’t remember, the Sidekick II was codenamed “m1” and the Sidekick 3 was “m2” so if you wanted to, you could call this the Sidekick 4 I guess. It’s also going to be 3G, which is no big surprise considering the enormous rollout of 3G coverage that T-Mobile has been doing. Other than that we’re speculating that it will have a better camera since we saw Sharp put out a 5MP camera awhile back. Last we heard there wasn’t GPS on it, but we’re hoping that will change. If you had your wishes, what do you want to see on the next Sidekick? (Other than YouTube support of course)

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