Danger's server woes leave Sidekicks in the lurch
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Oct 4th 2009 4:48PM
posted Oct 4th 2009 4:48PM
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
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Never liked the sidekick. Just didn't side well with me..
It's kind of an awkward phone until you really start to use it. It doesn't have all the features of smartphones like the G1 or the Pre, but what it does have, it does really well. I haven't seen a smartphone app that compares to the sidekicks AIM integration. The thing I like about it the most is how easy it is to do what you want it to. It has keyboard shortcuts for everything, and it's easy to reconfigure them how you want. There are even keyboard shortcuts for things you wouldn't think of, like flashlight mode (full brightness white screen)
Really awkward if you have to use it upside down..
Yeah, I'll second that, CZ. The screen resolution wasn't great, it was chunky (even by 2004 standards), the web browsing wasn't the most functional, but damn that phone was so intuitive to use. And yes, the AIM/YIM/MSN messenger intergration kicked much ass. Didn't suck battery life like it does on any smart phone running any IM client I've ever tried. The hardware keyboard was a thing of beauty. I had to regretfully give up my sidekick 3 (which was a replacement for my sidekick 2) because TMo's coverage sucks balls in my neck of the woods.
If you don't mind the bulkiness, the Sidekick is far and away the best feature phone on the market. It approaches smartphones in its usefulness and feature set, and it really has a great UI that's totally easy for non-tech people to figure out. Add to that what is arguably the best hardware keyboard ever to grace a handheld device and unlimited data/text service that's cheaper than the same service on a smartphone and you've got yourself a pretty solid investment.
My wife ditched hers for an Android phone a couple of months ago, but I'm kind of surprised to read this story because she used them for years and the service was always rock solid. I figured being backed up by Microsoft would help make them even stronger.
Go die.
Your comment looks really weird now
Who knew Lando Calrissian was so cruel, and unusual. How far he has fallen, how far....
Losing the Falcon really made my life take a turn for the worse.
You could always get your second-in-command to make you some icecream using that freezer embedded in his skull...
Good thing I upgraded from a sidekick lx to the G1.
the g1 looks like a sidekick but is much better.
the g1 looks like the sidekick except its not gay
I love the Sidekick, had a SK2, SK3 and now SKLX 07.
I switched to the G1 when it came out, i wanted to like it for 3 weeks. but couldn't, it wasnt fast enough, my aim, yahoo, msn would get kicked all the time, emails took longer then a few seconds to get to me, not efficient enough for my needs.
I went back to the SK and only miss the fun apps of the G1, it just wasnt a productive phone, it was a fun phone.
You would have had this two seconds after it happened if this was AT&T and the iPhone. Not two days!
There is a reason for that. See, when it is a problem with Apple, they blame it on an "insane demand" and rush of wildly enthusiastic users (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/itunes-activation-servers-go-down-iphone-3g-customers-being-sen/). When it is another product, such as a company owned by Microsoft, it takes them a few days to write up all that snarkiness as seen in this article (compare this article to the one I linked to).
Can't use that new iPhone or, like in my case, a 1G iPhone that I was told I need to update the software so I did and was blocked from checking my address book, mail, or even making a call for more than 8 hours - it is OK, just look the Apple logo for hours and you will forget about all the problems. Any other company, and it is "how dare you block people from getting to their data."
And no, it is not acceptable for this to happen to Danger users, just as it ***should be*** unacceptable for iPhone users.
stupid spammer
dammit someone hacked my account. im sorry everyone...i know i fail
Haven't had any problems with my LX. Waiting for the Pre to come to GSM before I upgrade phones.
WTF that sucks. Why would anyone want to hack an Engadget account? Some hackers need to be shot..
Yep, its been happening to my friend's sidekick since late friday night. But at least T-Mobile is giving him, and all other sidekick users, a free month of service.
“Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”
"Does Not Compute!"
"Does Not Compute!"
man ..i accidently upgraded my iphone 3g to 3.I...fail..now im stuck using this SK with no data...
sidekick are for kids
Why the f**k does the phone have to phone home to look up contacts thats stupid. I can understand the other things but shouldn't the phone book reside on internal memory.
Sidekicks host everything on a server so that you can see everything on the website. It's pretty cool. I'm pretty sure Sidekicks just download everything quick when you turn them on so you never even notice it unless you have something like the Sidekick ID (edge) but yeah, it's not the smartest method.
@jon.athan
They should do it like Android. Have contacts hosted online but also have it on the phone. Then just sync the contacts. That way even with server or connection problems, you always have your contacts on the phone.
Yeah it's honestly the most stupid thing in the world. A friend of mine dropped his phone and the battery popped out and guess what ALL Contacts/Texts were gone for a whole day and a half before the servers pushed it back to his phone.
It does store your information locally. It syncs in the background normally and will only pull that information (contacts, emails, etc..) when there has been a critical error such as dropping it and such. It's actually nice knowing that there's a backup of that information online that I can check anywhere. But, it is terrible if there's no service and the phone has one of these polling moments. You're screwed.
two days? try four. they gave me an etr last night of 2 to 48 hours. that means a total of five days. im a pissed little sk owner. i love the phone. but seriously? they didnt even know what was wrong for almost 4 days. no wonder there paying half my bill. :)
Hmmmmm.
I guess it's time for everybody to switch to Sprint.
I'll have to pass on that.
News Flash: Just because your carrier suits your needs does not mean it works for everyone else.
Why is the pick upside down?
Actually, your upside down
same things been happening to me, for about 4 days now. I haven't even been able to get through to customer service to try to get comped either, it's really pissing me off.
Time to step up and get a better phone? Blackberry?
I have an upgrade coming up soon, but I love my sidekick.
I'm either getting the new Moto Android (cliq i think it is), or the new Sidekick
This isn't Microsoft's fault?
More like upside-down kick.
Which is incidentally awesome.
Besides, aren't you rolling in royalty checks from carbonite.com?
It's unfortunate but they've only had a few major Sidekick outages like this in the past and T-Mobile is known for compensating their customers well. I remember back in '05 there was one outage that lasted a whole week and T-Mobile offered customers a whole month free of data service and provided a free download section in the Download Catalog.
This happened to me about 50% of the time for 3 months with the LX 2009. After 3 replacement phones, i switched to the myTouch. Wrote a letter to t-mobile and eventually got a full refund for the myTouch even though my sidekick was out of warranty. I really never worked from the get start. Just took 3 months for tech support to believe me and to stop telling me to reboot my phone.
To all of you telling us SideKick users to "get a real phone" etc... I'd love an iPhone, send me a message if you're willing to pay the extra monthly fees it would cost to me to have an iPhone. At present I pay $29.99 per month to use my SideKick. Again you may send me $960 to cover the difference for a 2 year iPhone contact. Otherwise STFU, the SideKick does what I need it for (well except for the current problem)!
Fail bordering on epic, and though T-Mobile is indeed good to its Sidekick people, this outage came as I was asking myself if I seriously need one data-only device (my Sidekick) and one for voice and *some* data (my Pre). Turns out that as brilliant as the keyboard is on the Sidekick, I am in fact ready to move on -- particularly now that it's been made clear that Microsoft is gutting the things that made the Sidekick weird-but-wonderful.
Oh well.
My girlfriend switched from the Iphone to the Sidekick LX. Besides this particular problem, she loves the sidekick. It has all the functionality that she used on the iPhone. It is simple... and usually works. It IS stupid that this problem has cropped up, and the system has been down ALL weekend. In most of the tech world, employees get fired for this epic of a screw up...
this sucks i lost everything!!!
:frown: I orginally undecided about getting off of my sidekick, but it would be wrong for me to stay with MicroSoft/Danger. I've worked in corporate IT for many years. Multi-day outages are only understandable for the very LEAST important applications. A down server is supposed to be merely a down component in a System of multiple redundant servers (and network and power and location and backups). I don't get it. But I do get that these folks can't be trusted as stewards of my information. "Software As A Service". Yeah, right. The days of professionals in IT is in the past. Back to using my phone as a phone and relying on hard copy in my pocket...or we'll see if Google (Android) can be a bit more responsible as a company with REAL IT.