If you haven’t lost your contacts from a hard reset, start copying them to something else right now. Microsoft has officially announced that your contacts, calendar, and other data has “almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger”.

Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power.

Updated: 10/10/2009 12:35 PM PDT

T-MOBILE AND MICROSOFT/DANGER STATUS UPDATE ON SIDEKICK DATA DISRUPTION

Dear valued T-Mobile Sidekick customers:

T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption.

We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers.

Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger. That said, our teams continue to work around-the-clock in hopes of discovering some way to recover this information. However, the likelihood of a successful outcome is extremely low. As such, we wanted to share this news with you and offer some tips and suggestions to help you rebuild your personal content. You can find these tips in our Sidekick Contacts FAQ. We encourage you to visit the Forums on a regular basis to access the latest updates as well as FAQs regarding this service disruption.

In addition, we plan to communicate with you on Monday (Oct. 12) the status of the remaining issues caused by the service disruption, including the data recovery efforts and the Download Catalog restoration which we are continuing to resolve. We also will communicate any additional tips or suggestions that may help in restoring your content.

We recognize the magnitude of this inconvenience. Our primary efforts have been focused on restoring our customers’ personal content. We also are considering additional measures for those of you who have lost your content to help reinforce how valuable you are as a T-Mobile customer.

We continue to advise customers to NOT reset their device by removing the battery or letting their battery drain completely, as any personal content that currently resides on your device will be lost.

Once again, T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger regret any and all inconvenience this matter has caused.

I am speechless.

Original post

There’s an extensive (and well written) article over on RoughlyDrafted about Microsoft, Danger, Windows Mobile, Apple, et all. If you have the time, I highly recommend you read it to get a much fuller picture on the state of things. It’s one of the most comprehensive and up to date “State of the Union” when it comes to Danger/Microsoft/Project Pink/etc. That said, I know not everyone has the time to dive into such an article, so here are some highlighted snippets from a RoughlyDrafted’s Microsoft/Danger source that I thought would be most interesting to Hiptop3.com readers:

# The source says that the details about the Project Pink phones are true and that they wouldn’t be surprised if the photos were an intentional leak, however the rumors about Microsoft working with Verizon and the unhappy employees are definitely from an unhappy (ex) employee.

# What about handset makers?

“Let’s start with the handset makers. Motorola has announced their intention to abandon WinMo for Android, and Palm has already abandoned WinMo in favor of their own WebOS. A few others, such as HTC, have been hedging their bets, announcing their support for Android, but not yet willing to publicly disown WinMo. Now the story has been leaked that Microsoft has been secretly working with Sharp on this (doomed) [Pink] project for over a year, cutting everyone else out of the picture completely.

”You figured out the likely consequences of this over a month ago so I won’t belabor the point other than to say that Sharp, who has been a terrific partner to Danger throughout the Hiptop/Sidekick era, was no doubt hoping that Pink would allow them to expand their phone offerings in the Americas, a dream which has now been dashed due to typical Microsoft blundering. I doubt that either Sharp or any of the other handset OEM’s will ever take Microsoft at their word again.

# Trying to build 4 versions of the Pink phones?

“the Pink planners decided to try to build both UMTS and CDMA phones in both form factors, for a grand total of four different SKUs. None of the other smartphone platform builders were foolish enough to try to build more than one phone at a time, and whoever made this decision didn’t take into account the added complexity involved in coding to support two different radio modules (from two different vendors, no less!) for two completely different radio technologies, not to mention validating and testing the RF performance of four different antennas (since each form factor and radio technology requires its own antenna design). At some point the UMTS project was placed on the back burner, and for all I know it may have already been cancelled, but the damage to the project has been done.”

# Pitting Verizon against T-Mobile

”The final operator who is going to be pissed is T-Mobile, who has been just as loyal of a partner to Danger as Sharp has been. I don’t know exactly what Microsoft has been telling them, but they have no doubt realized that they’ve been cut out of this deal in favor of their largest competitor. What’s worse is that apparently Microsoft has been lying to them this whole time about the amount of resources that they’ve been putting behind Sidekick development and support (in reality, it was cut down to a handful of people in Palo Alto managing some contractors in Romania, Ukraine, etc.).

“The reason for the deceit wasn’t purely to cover up the development of Pink but also because Microsoft could get more money from T-Mobile for their support contract if T-Mobile thought that there were still hundreds of engineers working on the Sidekick platform. As we saw from their recent embarrassment with Sidekick data outages, that has clearly not been the case for some time.

# So what happens now?

“The most likely possibility is that anything worth salvaging from Pink will get folded into the larger WiMo 7 project, where it should have been located in the first place. Another possibility would be another massive layoff and shutting down the Danger offices, but with the economic crunch, I doubt that Microsoft would choose to take the hit of handing out severance packages to all the affected engineers, and breaking the lease on the buildings.”

# And finally, what all of us wish would happen, and the reasons why it probably won’t:

”The smartest course of action (and therefore the one that Microsoft is least likely to take!) would be for them to recognize the value of the original Danger platform that they acquired, and to rebuild the Hiptop/Sidekick into a force to compete with Android (which is, after all, “Sidekick 2.0” in many respects). This won’t happen for three reasons: 1) Microsoft’s irrational hatred of Java, 2) Microsoft’s irrational love of Windows in all of its horrible flavors, and 3) all the Danger folks who loved the Sidekick platform have left or likely will leave soon, and Microsoft has no in-house expertise in Java or the Danger platform.

Did your weekend suck because you didn’t have data service? Were you one of the unlucky ones who had a hard reset and spent the weekend with an empty address book and no social life? Give T-Mobile Customer Care a call (611 from your Sidekick or 1-877-453-1304 from any phone) and request a credit on your account for the data service downtime. We’ve heard reports of varying credits ranging from $5-$30, so good luck! Let us know how much you get and when you finally get data service back! We got a credit, but are still waiting on that pesky G to come back. We recommend you straight up ask them for a full month of service credit.

T-Mobile is reporting that users should be getting service back shortly, and that you’ll need to log in to the Danger servers with your username and password that you probably setup ages ago. If you can’t remember your login info and you didn’t get a reminder text from T-Mobile, give them a call to reset it.

Theme by swaggerlikeme from sklxthemes.com

The reports are lighting up like a Christmas tree on SignalStrength and T-Mobile’s Customer Care confirmed that we are in the midst of a nationwide outage of the Sidekick Data service. It started late last night/early this morning and the 2-dots have been dancing all day long for everyone. So stop toggling airplane mode, put your Sidekick down, take a deep breath and relax. We’ll get through this together. T-Mobile didn’t give an estimated time of resolution, but said things should be fixed “shortly”. If it’s really impacting you, you might have some luck calling Customer Care and requesting a credit on your bill for the outage. Usually this will be in the form of free minutes or a $5 credit.

Missed the T-Mobile Sidekick Grammy Tour this year? Well two more shows have been added in September. Catch Kinky and Jesse Y Joy in either Houston or New York! Don’t forget to bring your Sidekick for VIP access and all sorts of free stuff. More info over on the Sidekick Grammy site.

Houston
Kinky / Jesse Y Joy
September 26th, 2009 at the Warehouse Live
more info

New York
Jesse Y Joy / Kinky
September 30th, 2009 at Webster Hall
more info

We’re a sucker for a well-done commercial and it’s not often T-Mobile has one. But this time they pulled one out with their new Sidekick LX 2009 dance-off commercial. I’m really not sure how these people in the video do the things they do with their bodies.

For more behind the scenes of the making of this commercial and even more crazy dance moves, check out T-Mobile’s YouTube channel.

I just turned on my Xbox 360 and what do I see but a giant Sidekick LX 2009 3G staring back at me! T-Mobile is teaming up with Microsoft for a special Sidekick promo on Xbox Live. If you download the T-Mobile Gamer Picture you’ll be entered in a contest to win a free Xbox Live Gold membership. In addition, the weekend of August 29th-31st will be a free Gold Weekend. That means that any Xbox Live Silver members will have all the privileges of Gold accounts for the weekend.

More info

Been holding out on the Sidekick LX 2009 because of the price? Well it’s dropped. You can now pick up an Orchid or Carbon Sidekick LX 2009 for only $175 (with a 2 year contract). This is pretty cheap, considering they’re going for $200-300 on eBay!

Thanks Jonny!

In some very sad news, it looks like T-Mobile Germany may actually be bringing down the axe on the Sidekick. There is a post over on teltarif.de that gives some cause for concern. What, you can’t read German? Here is the content of the article, translated via Google:

T-Mobile announces Sidekick services on 31 December
The reason is termination of service by American producer Danger

T-Mobile announces the remaining value of a current Sidekick, the Sidekick service as well as the Sidekick Data option on 31 December this year. This confirmed a spokesman for the company over teltarif.de. The reason for the termination of the options is to set the Sidekick service by the American producer Danger. The smartphone of the Californian company, originally under the name Hiptop become known in Germany and were initially exclusive to E-Plus markets. Later, T-Mobile devices on the German market. The mobile telecoms subsidiary called smartphones, but – as in the U.S. – Sidekick.

Termination option, but not termination

As the T-Mobile Press Office notifies the service center Danger for the whole of Europe on 31 December, so that any user of the device – no matter under what name – which is affected. In the U.S. offer Danger’s service, however, continue to converge, as there are also more recent Sidekick devices are sold and they are enjoying great popularity. From the termination had several thousand T-Mobile customers affected, the spokesman Dirk Wende.
The affected customers are in the tariff options, but not the whole contract being terminated. As it says in the letter: “Your T-Mobile contract shall remain unaffected and continue to exist.” Turning points, however, if the customer is at the T-Mobile hotline turn, will be a “solution together with the customer” can be found. Here you will also offers customers to switch to current equipment and fares subject. Wool partout but the customer terminate the contract, there will be also a possibility, since each Hotliner a “some leeway”, so the T-Mobile spokesman.

It’s a bit difficult to read, but it looks like Germany is losing the Sidekick, but that it will continue on in the United States: “In the U.S. offer Danger’s service, however, continue to converge, as there are also more recent Sidekick devices are sold and they are enjoying great popularity.” Unfortunately the only English article we can find on this says “A company spokesperson attributed the move to the Sidekick service being terminated by Sidekick manufacturer Danger” and a similar statement is given in the sub-headline of the German article. Hopefully this is just a translation mistake and they intend it to mean that Danger is terminating the German service and not across the board for all Sidekicks. Regardless, it’s a sad day for all the German Sidekick/Hiptop users.

Thanks Mike!

T-Mobile announced earlier today that Exchange support for the Sidekick has finally arrived! It comes in the form of an application named Sidekick Sync, which you’ll need to grab from the Download Catalog. It’s not live yet, but when it is, it will have a recurring fee of $4.99/month and of course requires a data plan. It will support “real time push email, attachment viewing, full sync capabilities, full read and respond functionality and configurable sync schedules”. In addition to all the email handling it will also sync contacts and calendars from an Exchange server. Like some of the other new software features of the Sidekick LX 2009, this one was outsourced to another company, this Remoba was behind development of the Sidekick Sync app.

T-Mobile says that Exchange support was requested by a number of users and I’m sure this will please the handful of you out there that want to get your corporate email on your Sidekick, but how many of you guys out there are actually using a Sidekick for corporate work that requires an Exchange server? How many people actually know what Exchange is? 🙂