Microsoft buys Danger, Windows Mobile Sidekick imminent
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted February 11th 2008 10:43AM
posted February 11th 2008 10:43AM
posted February 11th 2008 10:43AM
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MY WORLD, IT IS CRUSHED.
my disappointment, let me show it to you.
well, i guess i'm definitely going to the xperia 1 now. danger, you've let me down.
Symbian, Android, and even Windows Mobile and the iPhone's OS seem more capable than the Danger OS; this purchase really makes zero sense. And as an ol' Sidekick II owner. It was buggy, would have to be rebooted when it slowed down, what not.
This seriously makes no sense as far as a purchase for Microsoft goes. Perhaps they'll overlay Silverlight on top of the OS and make it "look pretty"...
A)One less competitor out there
B)"Windows Mobile... not just for your dad's phone"
C)Hope to eventually have those "15 year old hipsters", that everyone stereotypes SK users to be, grow up and adopt another Windows Mobile platform phone.
It's like religion or McDonalds' advertising..."get 'em while they are young and impressionable".
you guys haven't a single clue as to what you're talking about. danger was really only relative, oh, THREE YEARS AGO when they came out with the color sidekick. every reiteration since then is pretty much the model from four years ago with one or two extra features, while lacking the real features real users wanted.
(wait, am i talking about the sidekick, or the ipod?)
anyhoops, danger hasn't done anything right since then, their last deal with Motorola turned out problematic (and they also might leave the phone business), they're releasing more of the same, while not being innovative at all. if anything, microsoft will help danger be more creative, with a solid hardware design team and a lot of UI lessons learned with the Zune and Surface.
oh yes, i mentioned zunes and phones in the same comment. i went there, girlfriend!
wait, does this mean the next sidekick won't have yahoo messenger or aim?
MSN can talk to Yahoo already. Perhaps they'll add the others in the name of "remaining fair and balanced"... lest the EU or FTC sue them again.
not true, as Microsoft devices only have MSN on them. the next sidekick will be a Microsoft device, n'est-ce pa?
Desktop clients can - http://get.live.com/messenger/addyahoo
I can't comment on the current state of affairs on the Windows Mobile clients... only thing I have with Windows Mobile is my iPaq 2215 (2003) that HP will never release an update for it.
its AOL's fault Live isnt (interplatform?) i kno theirs an actual word (so ive read). if that is so, AOL would have to come into some sort of agreement with MS or they would lose a lot of mobile bandwidth. Everyone i kno with a kick uses AIM.
@Mo Kim
you buy phones for their camera features? do you also buy cars for the cigarette lighters too?
You're a cantankerous dumbass. Of COURSE some folks will buy phones for the camera features. I'm seriously looking at the 5MP Nokia N82 just for that reason -- yes, S60 is great, and yes, Nokia makes top-notch phones. Throw in a 5MP camera with flash that's actually USEFUL, and I'll shell out the extra $100 or so to get that. You know why? Because you just can't have enough pics of the kids, and you don't always have the proper digicam around. My current phone has a quite-usable 2MP camera, which I probably use 3-4 times a week, and as much for 3gp video.
all i'm saying is: if you want a good cameraphone, tape each of them together like bret did for jermaine's birthday.
Billy is coming to Waterloo (Canada) next week.. lets see if i can ask him about this ^_^
Ahhh, I *love* the Sidekick. I've had three of them. And before you slap your tired *ss stereotypes on me, I'm 54, father of 3, and Pres/CEO of a software company.
No, it ain't perfect. Yes, the web is slow on it. No, it ain't compact. Yes, it garnered stares from young and old when the geezer in the corner whipped it out.
I'll tell you this: I trying a T-Mobile Dash running WinMo now and it sucks big time. Just plain sucks. The keyboard is BS.
Now? I'm not looking to Sidekick/T-Mobile/Danger et al. for my next phone. I'm not going to buy an iPhone til I see what Google has in mind. And don't get me started about carrying 98052 around in my pocket every day.
Just my 2 cents worth.
slow web browsing is tmobile's fault, not the sidekicks. and what does what keyboard you favor have to do with who purchases what? the next iteration could have any number of possibilities.
for a "CEO of a software company," you sure are dumb. i take it you're the only employee?
You should check out the Sidekick Slide or the LX. I came from the T-Mobile MDA and love the Slide, but it's very small; I have small hands, but the buttons are tiny on the Slide. Bigger on the LX. If you don't need Excel, Word, Outlook, etc. and all the BS on Winmo, the new Sides are awesome.
Actually, Danger has a lot to do with the slow Web browsing, since they insist on stuffing all pages through a proxy to be reformatted before sending it along to the Sidekick to be displayed.
On the relatively new LX -- I don't know if it's true of the Slide -- you can finally use a range of font sizes in the browser. But often the proxy overrides your choice. And when you hit the key command to use a larger size? The browser has to re-request the page and wait for it to be re-transmitted from the proxy at the new larger size. It can't just display a font size change. Foolish.
THIS SUCKS! SUCKS! SUCKS! No good can come from this.
Here's the million dollar question:
WHAT ARE THESE "PROBLEMS" AND "WOES" OF WINDOWS MOBILE THAT EVERYONE KEEPS WHINING ABOUT?
or are you just assuming that it's problematic because it's made by Microsoft?
Lousy contact management, no sync over wifi in ActiveSync 4.5 (it was available in 4.2 -- what the?), too much overhead for the small processors, lousy phone-interface, esp on touch-screen devices, too many clicks to get to SMS functionality or recent-call list. Overall very non-intuitive. It feels like a half-baked PDA with a phone-addon, which also isn't done very well.
Not to mention crappy A2DP, no USB mass storage mode as standard, no OS X support, no native Lotus Notes support, no profiles (on Pro), shitty built-in apps (WMP, PIE)...
... and that's not before the random resets/crashes.
Who's seen the movie called "Antitrust"?
no seriously!
I can see it now: Sidekick 4 Zune
they might as well buy the iphone.
Zunekick
Microsoft is crazy if they think the business world will drop their berrys for a phone that looks like a sidekick, but apple wasn't really targeting that consumer group either and they did ok.
That said, if microsoft works with existing danger software people to develope a less buggy, microsoft based "clone" of the sidekick's software, that does not contain icons that look like they came out of an anime cartoon, they will do ok. The zune's sofware would be a decent platform from a strictly style standpoint.
keep windows mobile off of it, but make it microsoft based, and we may have a winner.
microsoft can do anything! MONEY=POWER (unfortunately). all they gotta do is keep throwing around the cash from their unlimited bank account and ppl will follow, if not be forced!
Just test-drove a T-Mo Wing... never touched a side-kick, but I do have to say that Windows Mobile renders a perfectly good device nearly unusable. It's so-so as a PDA, but it's ridiculous as a phone. The only "phone" device I found less usable in recent months was the iPod/Phone.
If Microsoft really wants to make a splash they should buy HTC. Now, THAT would be a good buy.
yea, but if they start manufacturing their own phones, that would ultimately be a loss rite, cuz why would their partners stay partners if their gonna directly compete with them? well i guess there are reasons why, but i would be happy if my partner decided to do that to me.
It actually sounds like a good fit. I always thought the sidekick was cool except it was made and marketed for teenage girls. If they make a more "adult contemporary" version with WM...it might be cool.
the only thing i dont like about the kicks is they dont have WinMo. (oh and not touch screen or wifi and its tmobile).
i'd be a liar if i said WinMo was flawless, a BIG liar! However, i refuse to get a phone without it. My experience with it has been buggy, but not too much that it turned me away from them. i started out with the ATT 8125 for about 6 months. and know ive had the 8525 for about 1.5 and i think the amount of things u can actually do is amazing. WinMo 6, is far better and I havent had a single prob with 6.1 (about a months use).
a ZuneKick would be awesome i think hahah. just not with tmobile, ew
Guys, WM is not that bad. The problem is the coders of these billion-dollar companies rushed everything and you get memory leaks and such that makes the device painfully slow and nearing unusability. Fix: update a different ROM through xda-developers or anything of the like and the phone you hated is much faster with a lot of options in terms of looks and software.
WinMo Pro, WinMo Standard and now, WinMo Teen coming soon. This is about as useful as buying Garrnet.
i love the sidekick but its for kids. cheap, plastic and very limited in what you can do.
I don't think anyone is really getting the significance of this. The last time I used a sidekick, the OS was great. WinMo isn't. MS buys Danger. Danger adds their good OS(mobile) making knowledge to MS's bank account and we get an amazing release of WinMo. Or am I just crazy?