It's truly remarkable to see almost every trace of a successful, well-established Valley start-up's work wiped out in the span of 24 hours, but here we are: T-Mobile's discontinuing the Sidekick line as of tomorrow, July 2, which effectively means that the
Sidekick LX 2009 will no longer be available. As a refresher, the latest Sidekick LX was the last product holistically engineered by Danger as it got shoehorned into Microsoft -- square peg in a round hole, as it were -- before repurposing the team to work on the just-killed
Kin line. In a way, it's a miracle that the LX ever went back on sale following the
nightmarish data issues they'd gone through last year, so we suppose it's a silver lining that they made it this far -- but still, it's sad to see Danger's years of design effectively vaporized without a trace like this. For what it's worth, T-Mobile says that it's working "on the next chapter of [its] storied Sidekick franchise" and to "stay tuned" for a "fresh" experience, but since T-Mobile owns the Sidekick brand (not Danger / Microsoft), we've got every reason to believe these new products will be based on Android considering the carrier's huge investment in its myTouch line. Adios, Sidekick -- we'll do one last screen flip in your honor.
posted July 1st 2010 3:49PM
sidekicks were a good phone they were the first to offer an open market for freelance developers which no one ever gave them props for im just hopeing this article doesnt drive up call volume since i take tech calls for sidekick oh and sad that travis barker's sk tattoo are now as irrelevant as him
Those phones are money machines, why stop?
Android is the mobile OS future.
Will RIM gets rimmed too?
I can imagine the last version of the LC with a touchscreen, and Android. I would seriously buy a sexy beast like that.
Death of the feature phone, and the Smartphones are starting to pick up steam more than ever before. Progress, lovely, lovely progress.
Now if Microsoft could only kill Windows Mobile (Classic not 7)
All this is going to do is make everyone gun-shy and simply not believe in any phone that Microsoft puts out in the future. They're definitely not off to a good start.
Burn me once, shame on you...burn me twice, shame on me!
I've had SideKicks since they came out. I switched to a BlackBerry in Nov. after the whole data fiasco with the SideKicks. The only reason I didn't switch to an iPhone or Android was the data-only option for the SideKick & BlackBerry that T-Mobile offers.
all these deaths, and MS is still moving the Danger team to WP7? good luck :D
The Kin, to me, felt like a joke, the combination of a slider and full keyboard AND touchscreen felt floppy to me, I have never tried a sidekick before and it seems ten times nicer than the Kin
I have commented on engadget, but i just gives me message saying the comment is saved and a mail is sent to my id. But i never get a mail from them. Thats why none of my comments are getting live.
cdmacellulars(dot)com.
R.I.P T-Mobile Sidekick