Hanging with T-Mobile's Sidekick 2

T-Mobile Sidekick 2At the time I am writing this story, there are probably few mobile devices in the USA that have a higher profile than the T-Mobile Sidekick 2. You can thank the notorious Ms. Paris Hilton for that. Not only does she star in T-Mobile's Sidekick 2 television commercials (along with the likes of Wayne Newton and Snoop Dogg), but she was recently the victim of a very high-profile 'social engineering' attack that enabled somebody to rest control of her T-Mobile account from her and to access Ms. Hilton's Sidekick information on T-Mobile's servers.

Normally this type of thing wouldn't have been that big of a deal, since with normal devices little interesting data from the phone is stored online - perhaps the call logs. But with a T-Mobile Sidekick 2, most everything is stored online and is readily available from T-Mobile's website. This can include (naked) photos, and (dirty) email messages, as Paris Hilton found out.

T-Mobile's Sidekick 2 was developed by a company called Danger, who markets the hardware reference design under the name of the Hiptop. Danger also supplies the back end infrastructure that a carrier, such as T-Mobile, requires in order to support Hiptop based devices. It is this very infrastructure that makes the hiptop system such a good one. Sidekick/Hiptop devices are constantly connected to the back end servers that are hosted by the carrier or Danger, making use of the carrier's GPRS network for connectivity. The organizer type applications on each device (email, calendar, etc) act mostly as front ends for the real applications that are running on the central servers. This allows for other front ends to be used on the same applications, such as the web based portal that T-Mobile offers to its Sidekick subscribers. All photos, email messages, calendar appointments, and many other bits of data that the Sidekick user has "on" their device are actually on a central server and accessible from the web portal.

This is generally a good thing in terms of backup for your precious data, since we can safely assume that T-Mobile's backup procedures are better than yours, but can lead to some problems if your account's security is compromised. In Paris Hilton's case, it appears that the perpetrator was able to have her password reset to something of his/her choosing by calling T-Mobile and claiming that it had been lost. The default security question T-Mobile uses in such cases is "What is your pet's name?" Paris Hilton's pet dog was featured quite prominently on her TV series, so this was pretty easy to figure out. If you choose to get a T-Mobile Sidekick 2, I suggest that you keep your pet off of any nationally televised TV shows....

The Sidekick 2's Physical Aspects

The Sidekick 2 is not a small phone. It measures up at 132mm x 66mm x 23mm (5.2" x 2.6" x .9"), which makes it physically larger than pretty much any of the PDA phones on the market, with perhaps the exception of the Nokia 9500. At 186g (6.55oz), though, it is probably not as heavy as its size would suggest. Sure, it is heavier than a Sony Ericsson P910, but not so bad - especially when you consider all of the functionality.

The star of the design has to be the unique flip-out display that the Sidekick 2 uses. With a nudge from your thumb, the display's spring loaded hinge will flip the screen out to extend from the top of the device, rotating 180 degrees in the process. This reveals a small but usable QWERTY keyboard that makes all sorts of the Sidekick's organizer type functions much easier to use than with a traditional numeric keypad. About the only function the keyboard doesn't improve is dialing a phone number. As you can see in the photos later, part of the keyboard has an orange color to it that shows it doubles as a numeric keypad. When dialing in the Sidekick's phone application, the Sidekick will intelligently determine if you are entering numbers or looking up a contact by entering letters. There is also an on-screen keypad you can work with if you want to digit dial when the keyboard is hidden.

 

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