T-Mobile dropping existing Sidekicks Friday, plans more
updated 03:45 pm EDT, Thu July 1, 2010
T-Mo promises Sidekick series reboot in months
T-Mobile today said it would drop all existing Sidekick devices tomorrow, July 2. It still plans to support the Sidekick LX 2009 and 2008 but won't sell either of the devices anymore. In a statement, however, it insisted the messaging phone line wasn't going away and promised a "new and fresh experience" sometime in the "months ahead."
The line has faced tough prospects in the years since Danger was acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Alongside a less frequent hardware update schedule, the Sidekick line almost faced collapse last year as a botched server upgrade nearly cost all users their data and led T-Mobile to temporarily stop Sidekick sales altogether.
Need for the Sidekick line has also gone down since the addition of Android devices on the network; these already have cloud sync and, in many cases, the slide-out QWERTY keyboards that have defined the Sidekick line. The myTouch 3G Slide is considered better in most respects and costs as much or less as Sidekicks did in the past.
