But if it had been a service on which businesses depended, the effects could have been a lot worse. T-Mobile is offering compensation in the form of a $100 gift card and a month's free data service, which doesn't seem likely to excite even casual Sidekick users. Online services can be affected by human error, equipment failures and attacks. There is a growing list of "outages" that also includes failures for Google's Gmail and Amazon's Web Services, eBay's PayPal,, Twitter and others going back as far as AOL. It also provides a further reminder that there is no guarantee that a cloud-based service will always be available. We don't know if that was done, though at least a few users have reported that their data has been restored, and the company now says it is "hopeful" of recovering data for "the majority of our customers".īut while the Sidekick affair has damaged the Sidekick business, Microsoft's image, and the prospects of its secret Pink phone project, it will also have reminded people that they have to take responsibility for backing up their data. Plenty of senior Microsoft engineers would surely regard this as essential. Indeed, even if the online data and the online backup were deliberately destroyed, there should be an older backup stored safely somewhere off-site. Under those circumstances, losing user data is unforgivable. It didn't take the obvious step of providing a simple way for users to synchronise data with their own PCs. Sidekick offered a "cloud based" service where the assumption was that the online data would always be available to update the user's phone when required. Indeed, things seem to have gone so wrong that another suggestion is that the database might have been time-bombed by a disgruntled Danger employee. Something went wrong enough to destroy both the current data and the backup, though at this point, no one is saying what. It seems the "major outage" started when the service's SAN (storage area network) was being upgraded by a third party. T-Mobile’s version of the Sidekick (Image: KnowTechie)o With only one screen, or even two screens, it could easily be priced under 1000 and be a moneymaker because again the engineering. The scheduled date is May 13, but those who choose to preorder it by April 30 will be able to get it before the official release.Now Sidekick has achieved greater fame, after having to tell many users it had "almost certainly" lost their data. What is too cool, however, is that there is a countdown timer on the official Sidekick web page, estimating the time remaining to its release. The new Sidekick LX is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and a tri-band UMTS phone, with frequencies that seem to support T-Mobile USA 3G, as well as European 3G. Specs-wise, it is okay, but we hope that the quality will also be up to grade. Wonder how you would take the images that you’ll later share with friends and family? Of course, with the 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera, equipped with a flash. The new phone is also promoted as the thinnest Sidekick ever, but what really appeals to us is its larger screen, now measuring at 3.2 inches, with a resolution of 854x480 pixels and 65k colors. As rumored, the first 3G-enabled Sidekick comes bundled with the must-have social applications, such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Photobucket. So, it finally happened – T-Mobile has just announced the long-rumored Sidekick LX (2009).
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