T-Mobile to End Sidekick Services May 31

From DailyTech: T-Mobile's once trusty Sidekick is being put out to pasture – a bigger, stronger, faster device running Android will replace it.

The nation's fourth-largest carrier officially announced that on May 31 it would be discontinuing the Danger Service used by Sidekick devices to synch contacts, calendars, and other data.

"T-Mobile will provide offers for our Sidekick customers before May 31, 2011, to help make an easy transition from their existing Sidekick device to a new device," the company said in a press release short on details.

The question arises: What kind of offers? Free Android devices with the trade-in of a used Sidekick?

Though it was never the best-selling device on the market, the Sidekick appealed to a particular audience -- the young, trendy, and text-happy -- with its large screen, swivel-out QWERTY keyboard, and multimedia capabilities (making it the most stolen cell phone at one point). It also synched most users' data over-the-air, which caused some bad PR for the line, the carrier, and Microsoft (which bought Danger in 2008) when the servers lost most Sidekick customers' data.

It was also the forerunner to Android. Danger was founded by Andy Rubin, who after being nixed as the company's CEO in 2004, left to start another little company called Android. It's fitting that the Sidekick name will live on at T-Mobile and the new devices will be powered by Rubin's Android mobile OS (and manufactured by Samsung).

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