We’ve got another mock-up of the Sidekick 2009 sent in by a reader (who even watermarked for us!). If anyone thinks this thing isn’t confirmed by now, they aren’t paying attention. Now we’re just waiting for a photo of it in the wild.

*GEEK ALERT*
Want more proof of the Sidekick 2009 being out in the wild? Check out this entry in our server’s log files:

216.220.208.186 – – [09/Feb/2009:19:40:34 -0500] “GET / HTTP/1.0” 200 68967 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Danger hiptop 5.0; U; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050920”

What does that mean? Well the User Agent (aka web browser name) of “Danger hiptop 5.0” means someone with a Sidekick 2009 visited hiptop3.com as recent as Feb 9th. We checked some older logs and there’s a ton of visits in the past few weeks too. Not only does this confirm that there are devices out there, it also confirms that it’s running DangerOS 5.0. If you’re curious about what other Sidekicks report as their User Agent, check out this handy post on PBD.

So Mystery Sidekick 2009 Users, how does the site look on the nice new screen? Want to send us a screenshot? 🙂

We’ve been emailing back and forth with a reader who claims to have actually held and played with the Sidekick 2009/Blade. We won’t spill the details on how because we don’t want anyone to get in trouble, but here are some of the things he said:

* It looks pretty much like the mock-ups we’ve seen so far, stripe along the back and all
* It’s lighter and “has a more grown up feel to it”
* The keys are more flush with the device and are “flat not round like the lx”
* The USB and headphone jacks are indeed on the bottom of the device
* There is a flash for the camera
* There’s an app for your “My T-Mobile info” that lets you pull up your info (minutes used, sms sent, account info, etc)
* There are lights running along the top of the screen part. Mood-lights anyone?
* It’s being called “Montreal” as an internal codename for T-Mobile. “Blade” is the internal name at MSDanger. It will be sold as the Sidekick 2009.
* It will be running DangerOS 5.0

I know, this is just “some guy said” sort of news, and as such we’re still kind of required to toss this in the “Rumors” category. That being said, we’d put money on the above statements being true.

Want to see how much better the screen resolution on the Sidekick LX 2009/Blade is going to be? Check out this image comparing the different sizes that Mike sent in. Click on it to get the full resolution. Of course the screen isn’t going to be that big, it’s just a comparison of how many delicious pixels are going to be crammed into that screen. It should be looking awesome as there are very few phones on the market with this high of resolution, especially in the US.

No idea what we’re blabbing about? Want a refresher on display resolution?

We’ve been hoping for an official Twitter application for the Sidekick for a long time now. Those of us with developer keys have enjoyed different Twitter applications on our Sidekicks, but had to endure complaints from all our friends who were stuck with SMS and the browser for their Twitter fun. It looks like in the near future these friends won’t be complaining anymore as an official MSDanger app for the Sidekick appears to be on it’s way.

Clue #1: We’ve seen and heard rumors about an internal Twitter application at Danger that was being developed.
Clue #2: Developer apps for Twitter have not made any progress towards getting into the catalog and several have been made. You would think with a service like Twitter that is growing more and more popular everyday that a cheap application for it would make it’s way into the catalog.
Clue #3: Remember that screenshot from the online survey that mentioned Twitter?
Clue #4: There’s a whole lot of people Twittering from an application that’s only identifying itself as “hiptop”. Several of these people are known to be Danger employees.

So, we’re almost positive you’ll be seeing a Twitter application on the Sidekick LX 2009 / Blade when it drops. We also hope that MSDanger offers a Twitter application in the catalog (or via OTAu) for those users on the older devices. It would definitely round out the social networking capabilities of the Sidekick.

Follow Hiptop3.com on Twitter.

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.