Don't call it a comeback...

Android-powered T-Mobile Sidekick poised to make a comeback

By Ben Patterson ben Patterson – 33 mins ago

It's been six months since T-Mobile retired the last of its venerable Sidekick handsets, but the carrier revealed Thursday that a new Sidekick—complete with speedy HSPA+ data access, plus Android under the hood—will be making its debut in 2011.
A T-Mobile spokesperson confirmed to me via e-mail Thursday that the Sidekick 4G is slated to arrive in the carrier's lineup this year. PC Magazine was the first to report that a new, Android-powered Sidekick was in T-Mobile's 2011 pipeline.
The news comes more than six months after T-Mobile finally dropped the aging Sidekick LX, which first landed in stores in 2009, from its selection of messaging phones.
Rumors had been circulating for the past several months that an Android-based reboot of the Sidekick line might be headed for T-Mobile, and it's little wonder why. Andy Rubin, Google's designated Android guru, was a co-founder of Danger, the company that launched the original Sidekick almost a decade ago.
Danger was ultimately acquired by Microsoft, which recently tried—and failed—to launch its own line of casual messaging phones, the ill-fated Kin.
While T-Mobile went ahead and confirmed that an Android-powered Sidekick is in the offing, it wouldn't reveal any further details about the upcoming handset besides the name—Sidekick 4G—and the fact that the phone will support T-Mobile's HSPA+ network for speedy data access.
It could simply be that the new Android phone will be a Sidekick in name only, with (perhaps) a custom interface skin that resembles Sidekick handsets of old, but that's just a guess on my part.
The Sidekick has a long, proud history, with the original Sidekick models—particularly the Sidekick II, which was my personal phone in 2004—delivering a slick, intuitive, and smartphone-like experience back when most mobile UIs were still clunky monstrosities.
The Sidekick's graphical, icon-based "jump" screen made it a snap to switch from, say, the Web browser to an app (yes, the Sidekick had apps, even in the pre-iPhone days), but its signature feature was the jumbo display that twirled up to reveal a full QWERTY keypad.
For years, the Sidekick was one of the few choices out there for mobile mavens who wanted a slick interface, a usable Web browser, and top-notch messaging features. It also became a red-carpet favorite, with Paris Hilton famously getting her Sidekick hacked back in 2005.
Slowly but surely, though, the Sidekick line began to fall behind the times, with no 3G or GPS support until the Sidekick LX landed in 2009. By then, of course, the iPhone had already managed to change the mobile game.
Then came the great Sidekick server meltdown of October 2009, which left millions of Sidekick users locked out of their e-mail and contact lists for days.