Sidekick users share their horror stories
Sidekick's LX, the newest model
(Credit: CBSInteractive)After suffering through a weeklong outage, T-Mobile Sidekick users got even worse news on Saturday, when the company advised them that any data not on their phone was likely gone forever due to a hardware failure.
Since then, Sidekick owners have been sharing their stories with me via e-mail. Here are some of those tales. Feel free to add your own in the comments section or e-mail me (ina dot fried at cnet dot com)
Bram Weiser, a sign language interpreter and computer specialist in New York, wrote on Monday:
Since the outage occurred on October 1st, I've not been able to receive (or, I presume, send) email to/from my Sidekick. (All along, though, I've had phone and text message capability.)On Monday, October 5th, roughly 100 emails seemed to suddenly appear, leading me to think that the outage was FINALLY over, days(!) after it started. However, while I got notification of those new emails (e.g., italicized, boldface sender & subject line information), the actual bodies of those emails was painfully slow in arriving, if they were ever going to do so.
I THOUGHT I saw an advisory at tmobile.com not to try a "hard" reset as an attempt to retrieve data and/or "kickstart" (my word) my Sidekick, so I steered clear of that. So, thinking I saw it written that way (note: I later realized it didn't say "hard," but puzzlingly advised against ANY reset at all), I tried powering my Sidekick on and off, albeit to no avail, and then tried a "soft" reset in good faith by clicking the pinhole on the body of the device. In more "normal" circumstances (read: just about any other time in the years that I've owned a Sidekick and paid for service through T-Mobile), this would usually bring the device back to life with its information intact, because, as we now know, it would download it from the T-Mobile (read: Microsoft/Danger) servers after connecting to the network. Not this time, though...
After doing all of that, and letting my Sidekick power up again, I, as did many thousands of other users, suddenly lost saved emails, device settings in ALL applications, bookmarks for the Web Browser, my entire Address Book (188 or so entries, although three recent entries did reappear later), and all of the nearly 1,000 entries (past, present and future) for my Calendar. To date, all of these remain lost, though I CAN surf the Internet on my own, as well as define settings, add contacts to my Address Book, send/receive instant messages and, I presume, add Calendar entries on my own as well, though I've not tried much of that yet as I await the safe return of my data.
You're absolutely right when you ask how, for instance, a company like Microsoft/Danger (Microsoft!) didn't have sufficient backups of its servers in place, be they daily, weekly or whatever. This is beyond belief in this day and age!
People need to know about this and not give Microsoft a free pass. For us to be without important data that we paid for the privilege of entrusting to Microsoft/Danger for safekeeping only to have this happen 1-1/2 weeks ago, and continuing to this day, to potentially lose it all permanently(!), and (for now at least) to get a credit of only(!) one month's data service (honestly, is that REALLY satisfactory to anyone?!) boggles the mind.
Jeff McGaha, an electrical engineer in Indianapolis wrote that his wife has a Sidekick, was without access to the data network for four to five days, and has now lost all of her contacts:
She's dropping the Sidekick now, something she was on the fence about for a long time. T-Mobile is lucky we're staying with them. They can thank Google and Motorola for that. The Cliq is going to see bigger sales because of this sidekick outage. Long live Android.
Rachel, a veterinary technician in San Francisco who asked that her last name not be used, said that she lost all her data after her Sidekick's battery died.
Unfortunately I was unaware that my phone was at risk during this whole "data service disruption." There were a couple of text messages sent out last week from Tmobile apologizing for any inconvenience during this time period, but not once did it plainly state in a text to NOT POWER DOWN YOUR DEVICE, DO NOT ALLOW THE BATTERY TO RUN OUT and/or DO NOT REMOVE YOUR BATTERY. Instead it advised users to checkout their webpage for more information. At the time I was having no problems with my data and therefore disregarded the "sorry for the inconvenience" text and carried on using my phone as normal, and not bothering to check out the tmobile webpage.Well, the next day my battery somehow died while I was at work (still unsure how that happened as it was charged the night before as it always has been) and after charging the phone at home my phone powered on easily enough, but without any of my personal information on it any longer. So I turned it off again, pulled out the battery for a few minutes, and then reassembled it all and tried again. Still no luck.....photos, address book (250+ contacts!), events, notes, etc.....all gone. It wasn't until this happened that I started to investigate the problem and found this in huge letters across the top of the main sidekick page (t-mobile.com/sidekick): "Sidekick customers, during this service disruption, please DO NOT remove your battery, reset your Sidekick, or allow it to lose power." Along with a note explaining they were trying to recover the data, etc.
Now it seems that all my information may be lost for good. It's infuriating. Especially when they could have been more precise in their text messages and let us users know what actions may be damaging to the livelihood of our stored data!!
I hope you continue to investigate this issue. And I am keeping my ears open for any legal action being taken against T-mobile/MS/Danger for this horrible oversight.
Kayla Haase, a 17-year-old high school student from Hopewell, N.J., wrote that she lost all her data in what she termed this "Sidekick disaster."
I had 411 contacts, now they are gone. I had 5 email accounts set up on the phone as well which are also gone, address book and all. The only thing that remained were the ringtones I purchased, thankfully. Other than that, I had to set up my emails accounts all over again, and have to start from zero to get all my contacts back, a list that had built up over two years. I am extremely upset not only due to the fact that I lost everything, but also because I pay 20 some dollars a month for THIS?! It's ridiculous. T Mobile is offering a month's free to all sidekick users however this does not make up for my zero contacts or the fact that when I scroll up to emails, it says "no accounts". My brother also has the sidekick. He lost all contacts, and although he doesn't use the emailing service, he still has had no reception for the past week. He can't make calls, text, go on the internet. Basically his phone is an empty shell.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
GET AN IPHONE
a lot of sidekick users are deaf and/or only use the data plan, and the last time i checked, only t-mobile hasa data only plan at a reasonable price.
But you won't have to pay the premium to use AT&T's flagging network.
Heh.
/thread
@faceless128: If this is what you need check out the G1, it was created by the same minds that brought us the Sidekick, and it has a physical keyboard (which is quite "Sidekick-like"). Maybe that would suit.
The only reason the data is so cheap is because its EDGE, not 3G...
T-mobile does have 3G data and has had it since 2006 so get your facts straight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile_USA_3G
There were two third-party syncing applications: the Missing Sync product was discontinued in 2006. The other product is Intellisync for Sidekick and was designed to sync contacts, events, and to-do items with Microsoft Outlook only. It did not sync e-mail nor notes; it only ran on Windows (no Mac, no Linux).
While the device has applications and data stored locally, it wasn't true two-way synchronization.
(...he says as his Crackberry syncs all that crap from his desktop, has a MicroSD chip to store pix and such, etc...)
It does spur a question, though - how do the other smartphones stack up? The Crackberry syncs everything from local sources you specify or stores it on a chip. The iPhone syncs with your computer and/or stores it on the local device. Android I think does something similar.
What other smartphones out there rely on the whole cloud computing thingy?
Seesm like there is enough stupidity to go around in this situation without blaming users that had no options available to them.
It seems that some sort of local backup should be a Must Have smartphone feature.
As for my computer, I would never use anybody's cloud as a sole backup.
1 why would you go with tmobile?
2 back up your contacts on a piece o paper.
3 android/google suck (had to throw that in)
4 get an iPhone.
MOST iPhone owners have a signal on AT&T
I purchased a sidekick (owned one for 4 years now)
Backed up my contacts on my Sim Card which doesn't work with the recent data loss
And if I can get out of my contract I will be getting an iPhone.
I am heard of hearing so the sidekick provided a lot of service for my needs. So it hurts for someone to call me stupid, but sadly, I feel stupid after the loss of all of my data and connects.
I am amazed there's no backup, clearly Microsoft DOESN'T know better. Danger is Microsoft now, and has been for the last two years (or so). Just because they still have the "Danger" sign on the door, don't give Microsoft a free pass on this one - it's their fault. Ros Ho is in charge (well she was... I can't imagine she'll be in charge after this) and she's a longtime Microsoftie (from Microsoft's MBU). Let's put the blame where it needs to go. This isn't T-Mobile's fault (you can imagine what their relationship with Microsoft is like today). This isn't Sidekick users fault. This IS Microsoft's fault.
I see your point about Gmail. I don't really use any cloud services for critical things and so even if gmail had failed in the same way I wouldn't be out any info I couldn't do without. I am equally amazed that there was no backup here. I don't agree that MS doesn't know better, they do. I would agree that MS should have managed this situation better but you are laying all of the blame on MS when we don't know exactly what happened. I would not blame Tmobile or the users. Though it is a good example for not putting all your critical info in only one place. I don't think I was giving MS a free pass, I'm just not comfortable throwing all the blame on MS. I also wonder, since now we have started to hear about the possibility that not all data will be permanently lost, how much of this is overblown because of the nature of tech news. Before all details are known we get blog posts from CNET and others pointing to issues and the comments inevitably turn into bickering matches. Just would like to know more about the situation than user reports and high level summaries before judging things.
I'm the Bram who Ina quoted in this article.
In response to some of the posts that preceded this one...
To ddhboy (October 12, 2009 10:11 AM PDT), I don't exactly qualify as a "14-year-old" with a Sidekick...try tripling that. True, it's been a popular device with some high school kids, but that doesn't change the facts that (a) many(!) adults like me have been using it, too, and (b) ALL users are affected by this, regardless of age, and age isn't, nor should it be, a determining factor in who should be able to grieve against the offending party/parties, such as in a class-action suit, if they think it would be an appropriate thing to do.
To JazzyJeffaz (October 12, 2009 10:11 AM PDT), even if some, many, or all Sidekick users had a beef with Microsoft (before this happened) serious enough to want to avoid getting a cellphone/PDA which it was involved with, it wasn't always that way in this case. When I got my Sidekick years ago, it was a device made by Sharp, and serviced by Danger with cell coverage by T-Mobile. Much later is when Microsoft bought Danger, and they've owned it ever since. So, even if we wanted to avoid them, and did so when we purchased the device and activated service, there's not a whole lot we could've done later to get away from them if we wanted to, short of cancelling our service and swallowing any Early Termination Fee that might apply.
Thanks,
Bram
Apple and AT&T does the same thing and we have congressional hearings on exclusive carrier/hardware agreements.
Apple not only allows a user to backup their data but within settings of the iPhone/iTunes hard and software this backup can be done automatically. WinMo users laugh and point at Apple and write entire blogs about how dumb and redundant this is. Why would anyone need to back up their own data; When the cloud does it for you.
Microsoft does not allow users to back up their own data. Taking a trust us and our cloud attitude. This is seen as a brilliant forward thinking move.
Many can laugh and point at Apples control over their devices all they want, but right now millions of Apple owners are backing up their own data knowing it is reasonably safe and secure. Sidekick owners are calling their attorneys.
I don't laugh at Apples control over the iPhone. I don't think it's funny at all - in fact I think it's sad that people are so willing to allow it.
The mystery to me is why Microsoft bought a company that makes a phone which runs a Unix-like OS, and for which application development is done in Java. It makes no sense, unless they were interested in the hardware, which is actually good -- the thumb keyboard is the best one I've used, and the screen is one of the best too, but the software kept me away from it (which was lucky for me).
As for contacts, are those losing hundreds of contacts the same who fail to have a sensible backup of their computer's hard drive / main partitions? And if you live in a cloud and MS won't let you back up your data, then you are using a different format for an operating system of MS than I am. I use both an iPhone and an older Moto Q (Sprint "grey" model) (running Windows Mobile) and backing up is never hard to do.
A $20-$25 credit is just not enough!!
If the auto sync feature is used on Mobile Me, very little data would be lost during an issue such as this. I lost no data during the Me outages that occurred when they were fine tuning the service. Auto sync can be set to operate at specified intervals, or as soon as you turn on the device. It did have a few bugs in the beginning, but for $99 a year you cannot top the features you get with this service.
Google now has the same push/sync Gmail, contacts, & calendar technology that MobileMe does. On the iPhone. For free. :-)
And the really amusing part is that the technology that Apple & Google use to do this syncing is licensed from Microsoft. It's all Microsoft ActiveSync, powered by Microsoft Exchange servers.
You can go back drinking your latte.
T MOBILE SUCKS. i was hesitant about getting an iPhone but now i am definitely switching. thank god my contract just ended !!
If Microsoft/T-Mobile can't restore their users' data, I predict this is the end of the Sidekick. People won't ever trust it again. I wouldn't. It will be interesting to watch how T-Mobile handles the thousands of folks that are going to throw a temper-tantrum and want out of their contract.
What a bad day for that technician that thought he/she was doing the right thing by reinitializing that drive....
Some people shop on impulse and don't do research on the products before going shopping, but point taken. Now is the Sidekick itself okay, can it be saved by someone doing the software correctly?
- by terminalblue October 12, 2009 11:53 AM PDT
- i hope this has been a great lesson for everyone "living in the cloud".
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- by tekwiz4u October 12, 2009 12:55 PM PDT
- Agree.
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- by Jeremy Chappell October 12, 2009 3:07 PM PDT
- The point of this device was that you didn't need to (they were supposed to do that) and in fact, you couldn't. The system was a closed ecosystem. Now that probably sounds like a bad idea (well it does today) but actually if you think about it, such a system is safe from malware. This is the flip side - don't do it like Sidekick and you (potentially) get malware (which sucks on a phone).
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- by QA_Tester October 12, 2009 8:39 PM PDT
- Thyere is absolutely nothing wrong with living in the cloud as lond a you have redundant backups There are online services that allow backup of the data: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ei=a_TTSvXsComIsgPpq6zSCg&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&ved=0CCAQBSgA&q=online+backup&spell=1
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (102 Comments)nothing will ever replace making your own, local backups. i understand that a big part of the service is being able to have your information stored out in the ether, however, there is no excuse to put your personal information in the hands of one single company (or in this case, two.)
anybody that lost anything that wasnt keeping their own backups had it coming.
Relying on one service forbackups is not exactly smart. Two cloud backups and two local backups is the way to go.