Sidekick 3 available to current T-Mobile customers

It pays to be a T-Mobile customer: while the rest of the country will have to endure nearly two more weeks of excruciating waiting to get their hands on a Sidekick 3 (well, except for us), current Mobbers have been snatching up the new device since it became available at one minute after midnight. Agreeing to a one-year contract extension will net you an SK3 for $350, while two more years of living the Mob life will knock off another fifty bucks, and a "naked" unit will set you back an even $400.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this is]

[josh @ Jun 28th 2006 1:04PM]

heck yeah. Ordered mine last night at midnight.

I've tried nearly every PDA type device out there and none of them come close to offering as good a "portable" experience. Not the Q, MDA or Blackberry.

While some PocketPC OS stuff can be more powerful in terms of what you can run, they are more fiddly and offer nowhere near the speed and efficency that you get from the sidekick. 99% of the time all I need is IM, browsing, email, calendar, camera, and a phone. The sidekick UI is streamlined to do those tasks faster and better (even using one hand) than any other portable OS on the market. And all while synchronizing all those apps to the web in the background (no pc synch needed).

This phone is also the ONLY phone that has a truly usable keypad due to it's size and the phone's surrounding form factor. I don't carry a notepad to meetings, it's that fast. I call it my portable office.

On top of it all it messages important things across applications. If i'm browsing and i get an instant message, i actually see a little speech bubble at the top of the screen with what was said and who said it, so i don't have to swap apps to find that out (even though jumping from one app to another is easy as pie).

It's funny really cause i'm a gadget lover. I'll hop to any platform and new gadget that comes along if it is better than the last. Ever since I got the first black and white sidekick on it's launch day i've yet to find another device that can sway me. I keep trying, but they all fall short.

[L.J. @ Jun 28th 2006 1:04PM]

i bought one two minutes after midnight...
...sweeet

[garit reuble @ Jun 28th 2006 1:06PM]

WELL, after two hours on the phone last night, I was givin the run around. "I am too new of a customer to get the SideKick 3" Then I was told I could. Then I was told I couldn't, then again I was told I could exchange it, then i was told I couldn't. The issue was that I started up service with TMO again (two weeks ago) with my SK2, that I had. But when I did the update, it fried the Radio Fimware and my SK2 was not usable.

So after an hour on the phone again with TMO this morning. Finally have a confimation number and it is on its way. (total with shipping $342.71) Not all that much when you think about it. I don't need a smart phone. I just like having quick email access and a simple (non-windows) interface. So under $350 is well worth the cost. I CAN'T WAIT.

[luxury affair @ Jun 28th 2006 1:11PM]

tell you what: if the sidekick is good enough for Snoop, it's good enough for me. lol

[ZyphBear @ Jun 28th 2006 1:20PM]

Just a note, as it states in the article, us current Sidekick2 users get NO discount other than how long you are willing to dedicate your life to being stuck with a Sidekick. I have had a Sidekick2 that I bought in Feb '05 and it's already showing signs of usage and buttons no longer working, but since it's outside the 1 year warranty, i can't get it replaced or fixed without paying everything out of pocket.
I was really disappointed in T-Mobile that they are not giving current Sidekick2 users any kind of discount other than the "sign away your cell phone life" kind of deal. $300 (with 2 year contract) is just way to expensive since I just shelled out just a little less last year when I bought them to keep in touch with my hearing impared spouse. Its also stupid since t-mobile has been still selling the sidekick2 on their site even as of today, so what are these people who don't keep in touch with the tech industry going to do when they find out there is a new sidekick that they missed? Looks like i'm going to be switching to a blackberry soon since they have some for much cheaper than the new SK3 with minimal extra features than the SK2.

Am I bitter about it? yea, just a little. T-Mobile needs to give us loyal "testers" more of a reward. (due to the sheer number of bugs in the SK2).

Maybe a couple of those units they are giving out to some celebrities should find their way back to some of us regular users.

[Nick @ Jun 28th 2006 1:37PM]

There is a line down the street and around the corner at a T-Mobile store in midtown NY. This was at 9am when I made it to work, it's still there at 1:30.

[mrdelayer @ Jun 28th 2006 1:51PM]

So, uh, if I sign away eight years of my life...

[shon @ Jun 28th 2006 1:55PM]

garbage. $300 and 2 years. im sure in a year there will be SOME phone alot sweeter (and dare i say easier to make a freakin phonecall?) for probably less cash. tmo in general sucks. the ONLY thing they have is decent data plans, so if you dont mind droping half a ps3 for a pocket weight, then the sidekick is for you.

[daaper @ Jun 28th 2006 2:17PM]

kinda makes the guy who spent $4,050 on a "pre-release" SK3 4 days ago look like a real idiot...not that he wasn't already

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-SIDEKICK-3-SIDEKICK-III-AVAILABLE-NOW_W0QQitemZ9745053595QQcategoryZ64355QQcmdZViewItemQQisPrinterFriendlyZ1QQpvZ2

[scott @ Jun 28th 2006 2:22PM]

so not only is it bigger than a blackberry, it costs more too?

sign me up!!!!!

[J.Hockenberry @ Jun 28th 2006 2:25PM]

So WHAT IS THE DEAL! Everyones radio firmware is frying the radio reciver in the phone. My phone died three days ago and i find out that this is happening to hundreds and hundreds of people. I think something is up. SK3 yeah you are probably smooth to use but I am sick of Tmob and their ever crappier service. Oh and not to mention when i went from just data on the phone to data and phone service the guy said it would be 9.99 for the 400 min plan, i totally was down with that 39.99 for the sidekick, hell ya. I even asked him 3 times to make sure that price was right. Of course it wasnt. I get a bill for $60 bucks a month and they wond do anything for me. Total crap. I will never pick a plan from any company over the phone again.

[kelly @ Jun 28th 2006 2:29PM]

I don't get these... what's the advantage over a treo 700p? it's big, kinda fugly, low resolution screen, doesn't have push email from Outlook... I must be missing something.

[kerry @ Jun 28th 2006 2:38PM]

I and a friend of mine both got the same deal, we were only offered $349 plus tax and shipping, no other options available on the TMobile upgrade site. The total came to $391, but then I think they changed their mind about the shipping because my confirmation said $381. Also, the description of what I was buying said "no contract extension." We're both located in Chicago. Maybe it's a regional thing.

[Jason @ Jun 28th 2006 4:43PM]

If you are not a T-Mobile customer, take my advice and wait for the Amazon deal. While people were still waiting for the SK2s to arrive, Amazon already began offering a promotion where the phone was $50 or $25 or something crazy like that. There's no reason to believe it won't happen exactly like that again. People who buy straight from T-Mo sorta get scammed.

[dewd @ Jun 28th 2006 4:51PM]

I called at 11:53 EST and kept the tmobile guy on the phone until it was after 12:01; still, even then it wasn't showing up right away on his system. so then he asked me to do it online myself, I did it but kept him on the phone. after clicking "upgrade phone" it was giving me a server error. eventually it showed up for him, and he was able to do it for me. one note, when i finally got to the screen to select the upgrade option, there was an option for 349 w/o having to extend contract, I clicked on that, and tried to proceed, but then the page wouldn't advance. heh. the tmobile rep put the upgrade through for me, and without the extension. it seems like this was a blunder because before tmobile was indicating 400 for an outright purchase without contract extension. supposedly they "fixed the glitch" shortly after. w3rd

[DDDDDan @ Jun 28th 2006 5:04PM]

I dont understand mobile phone contracts in America. Over here practically every single phone is free on a 12 month contract costing £30 (about $55) or above. I've never paid for any phone ever, either on a new contract or upgrade, I got my Nokia N70 for free on a £25 a month 12 month contract and just got an N80 for free on a £35 12 month contract! Crazy...

[bri @ Jun 28th 2006 5:07PM]

I gotta agree....
Too much for too little. The upgrade to the sidekick II was $100 bucks. I jumped all over it. Guess t-mobile does not care about the people who kept the trend going and put up with the Danger downtimes and poor signal from t-mobile.
Screw 'em
//gluing my keyboard back on tonight.

[gio @ Jun 28th 2006 5:08PM]

Don't waste ur money, Invest on the new T-Mobile Motorola Razr V3x 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera Phone/bluetooth/Internet/Chat IM/Video/Live Video Conf/SD Memory Card Mobile, w/2year Contract for $239
Ask the store manager, he may have a few under his desk, not on T-mobile website yet.

[Veronica @ Jun 28th 2006 5:19PM]

Gio is right: See Link

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_v3x-pictures-1120.php

[G MOney @ Jun 28th 2006 5:20PM]

SK's are ghetto!

[DrBuzzo @ Jun 28th 2006 7:02PM]

meh.... T-mobile???

Have you ever even used T-mobile? It's the worst network.....eva. Maybe if you live in a city and NEVER go anywhere else, you could get by with it. Meanwhile, Verizion already has a sizable high-speed network, Sprint is working to catch up and Cingular is starting to roll-out their super-highspeed service.

meanwhile, T-mobile...

(insert sound of crickets)

Yeah...you're still stuck with GPRS. If you're lucky and next to one of their towers (the three they have). Then maybe you'll get 28.8 modem like speed.

Me... I'm sticking with my Treo. It runs palm OS, which already has a MASSIVE software library avaliable. Hence, I can watch TV, listen to music, take videos, emulate NES, run a graphing calculator, voice dial, use bluetooth headphones, edit photos...ect ect ect...

I'd imagine TMobile will need decent phones to sell their crappy service. Or maybe they could change their name again (omnipoint -> Voicestream -> T-Mobile).

And as for the razor? Well...yeah, it is thin and small. I'll give it that. However, a piece of paper is even thinner and smaller and it's even MORE useless for communicating. Style is nothing without function.

[Dan Dickinson @ Jun 28th 2006 7:37PM]

Yeah...you're still stuck with GPRS. If you're lucky and next to one of their towers (the three they have). Then maybe you'll get 28.8 modem like speed.

SK3 uses EDGE. Thanks for playing.

For those who are not seeing the appeal of the Sidekick, here's a big one: the dataplan is $20 a month, end of story. All the email, web, pictures, SMS, whatever you want that the device can do - it's $20/mo on top of your voice plan. And *that* is a steal.

[SN @ Jun 28th 2006 8:46PM]

Dr. Buzzo.... you seem to know nothing of the wireless industry. T-Mobile uses EDGE over most of their network, which consists of over 33,000 cell sites. Verizon Wireless has just over 25,000 cell sites I believe. T-Mobile is consistently rated 1st or 2nd for network quality in most areas throughout the US and always on top for customer satisfaction. You almost seem angry that you overpay for poor service on another carrier that will never have a hip image like T-Mobile and her Sidekicks.

Oh well, I guess its typical that morons speak (or type) even when they know nothing about the subject at hand.

One other thing, Verizon Wireless has had just a few more name changes than T-Mobile (GTE/NYNEX/BELL ATLANTIC/Verizon Wireless) Wow, when I think about it your entire post is flawed and should be considered an embarassment to yourself.

Rock on Sidekick 3!

[josh @ Jun 28th 2006 10:23PM]

Blackberry lol.. sad. Yeah, go buy your Blackberry and then you'll see why you should have gotten a SK3.

Blackberry has nowhere near the finesse that the SK OS does. I've been down that road before. No thanks. Blackberry for the loose.

[Magoo @ Jun 28th 2006 10:32PM]

I think of a Blackberry as more of a "professional" type phone as opposed to a sidekick, which is for more of the "younger" type person... I am shocked they added Blue Tooth to it though, as well as an SD card and .mp3 player

[DrBuzzo @ Jun 29th 2006 1:01AM]

SN, Sir.... What are you smoking and can I have some of it??

Okay..perhaps they have upgraded the system from GPRS to EDGE. This is a software upgrade and it is marginal. No..it is not "braodband" not even close. It claims speeds of 120 kbps+, but when you consider factors like lag and sustained speed, it comes out from an upgrade from a 28.8 kbps modem to a 56k modem. It's still on-par with dialup.

T-mobile has the SMALLEST network of any of the carriers. It has nowhere near the coverage of Verizion or Cingular. Take a look at http://mixlolitas.wo.to/. And that's not even just their network. It also shows areas where you may be able to use another network they have an agreement with. (often in analog mode).

Also.. t-mobile is GSM, which is based on TDMA. Verizion and Sprint use CDMA 1.2. And both have deployed large EVDO networks. The difference? 3 times the penitrating power (more when you consider that Verizion is on a UHF band, not a microwave band). CMDA also offers better quality and more consistant connections.

Oh but....but....but...I can use my GSM phone overseas! Ok point taken. If you're going to travel outside the US on a *constant* baisis, then maybe you should get a crappy phone becasue it'll work elsewhere....although you'll either have to get another sim card or pay outragious fees for international roaming.

As for me....I'd get a *good* phone for the US, and if I need to travel, I'll either rent a phone or buy a cheapo phone for my travels. It's a much better option that buying a crappy phone for that one feature.

Personally...I have a Treo-700p. It's from Verizon. I used to have Sprint and a treo-650, which I was very happy with. (their network is kinda small, but I could roam on the Verizon network for free so no biggie). I got verizon because their broadband coverage is better.

And for international...I have an Iridium phone (satellite), but only use it for travel in the boonies most of the time. Sometimes I just get a prepaid sim and stick it in an old GSM phone.

Cingular, however. Their broadband is a bit behind, but once they deploy it in mass, it will awesome.

T-mobile...will always suck. Well..no, I don't know that. It's possible that they'll decide to clean up their act. But I doubt it.

[Jonathan @ Jun 29th 2006 7:33AM]

EDGE on my phone is very, very fast. I browse real websites with Opera Mini or I use the built in browser on my HTC depending which phone I'd using.

Reception is always great.

Customer service is always great.

I pay the least for all the features I have than any other carrier would offer.

I am pleased with T-Mobile a lot. So are many other people, they win tons of awards.

I think you're a bit misinformed, DrBuzzo. T-Mobile is nowhere near as bad as you want them to be.

BTW, GSM actually offers better quality over CDMA. Not reception, but consistant sound quality. I'm getting ready for work and you seem to stubborn to admitt you're wrong once I explain this, so to each his own.

[The Jeremy @ Jun 29th 2006 2:34PM]

T-Mobile uses the same GSM network that Cingular and the former AT&T Wireless uses. So its not the smallest network in America.

And unlike Cingular and Verizon, you can get a 1 year contract for phone service. And unlike Verizon, they aren't anti-Bluetooth either.

I am very happy with my T-Mobile service since dumping Cingular.

However, I really hope Vodafone can come over here and buy up T-Mobile USA and show Cingular, Verizon and Sprint how mobile phone service is supposed to be done.

[tekdemon @ Jun 29th 2006 4:48PM]

Wtf is wrong with you DrBuzzo, linking to a porn site?! Seriously uncool since people probably read Engadget at work.

[kamron_1 @ Jun 30th 2006 12:14AM]

The Jeremy, if i remember correctly, vodafone actually owns part of Verizon

[Julio @ Jun 30th 2006 11:43PM]

I just got my Sidekick 3 and they no longer have the AOL MAIL download in the DOWNLOAD CATALOG under applications. Hope they do so soon cause I need that!!

[Popfrogs @ Jul 2nd 2006 2:23PM]

Hey Julio, do some googling on configuring Imap with AOL mail. You can setup your sidekick 2/3 to send and receive mail from AOL through the Imap settings. No extra software needed.

[MBR @ Jul 3rd 2006 9:25PM]

Let's get some facts str8 between CDMA and GSM (TDMA).

CDMA technology has a Soft Accommodation feature, that is, when the number of users of the network goes up, the voice quality progressively gets poorer. Though GSM (TDMA) will not accommodate more than a finite number of users (the user will get the Network Busy message if this number is exceeded), there won’t any be deterioration in voice quality due to traffic. In addition, GSM (TDMA) network is also equipped with Frequency-Hopping, i.e., when a lower frequency is cluttered, the mobile phone effortlessly jumps to a higher frequency (e.g., from 900 MHz to 1800MHz). GSM (TDMA) technology also employs the EFR (Enhanced Frequency Rate) add-on, which improves the voice quality greatly.

GSM (TDMA) started getting used in mobile communication early in the mid-1980’s. A lot of time, energy and money has been spent upon improving the quality of the GSM (TDMA) technology, and because of these efforts, GSM (TDMA) won over as the standard of mobile communication in most developed nations, particularly in Europe, and as on date 500 million mobile customers all over the world use GSM (TDMA). Services like mobile banking, ticket booking, info services are today exclusively available on GSM (TDMA) networks only.

Only in 1995 CDMA was, for the first time, used for mobile communication in the U.S.A. Today, the CDMA customer base hovers around 80 million, concentrated mainly in South Korea, North America, Australia, Taiwan and parts of China.

GSM (TDMA) carries voice data by chopping up the channel into sequential time slices. Each user of the channel takes turns transmitting and receiving in a round-robin fashion. In reality, only one person is actually using the channel at any given moment, but he only uses it for short bursts. CDMA on the other hand, uses a special type of digital modulation called Spread Spectrum, which takes the user’s voice stream bits and splatters them across a very wide channel in pseudo-random fashion. The receiver undoes the randomization in order to collect the bits together in a coherent order. Talk time is generally higher in a GSM (TDMA) phone due to its pulse nature of transmission, in comparision with a CDMA phone which transmits all the time.

Would anyone else like to spew senseless garbage about something they know nothing about?

[Alex @ Jul 6th 2006 11:38AM]

Ok, like Julio I'm disappointed in the AOL Mail not being offered on the SK3. I tried setting it up through IMAP, but the problem is that it won't let you set up an outgoing mail server which operates through SMTP. It is perfect for POP servers and strictly IMAP servers. Otherwise, you guys just talk a lot of crap! Who cares?! The phone does what it's supposed to - makes calls!!!

[John @ Jul 8th 2006 9:29PM]

Im gettin ready to purchase the sidekick 3 but i want to make sure their not havin problems like my sidekick 2 (which i sent back) did. I would be on my sidekick 2 and the person im talkin to on the phone could hear themselves echoeing and then my speakerphone wouldnt work right and i would also hear like alien fuzz when id be on the phone to someone and the confusing thing is i live in a really good coverage area so if theirs any problems let me know if not then im good to go.I still think the mr. cartoon sidekick looks cool.

[Dean B @ Jul 9th 2006 1:20PM]

I HAVE A SK3!!! IT'S AMAZING! EGDE IS BLAZING FAST!! THE NEW DANGER OS IS AMAZING!!! 20$ A/MONTH UNLIMITED EVERYTHING?!!!!

GO GET IT........YOU WON'T REGRET IT

[KEITH DICKERSON @ Jul 10th 2006 4:15PM]

a
Any one having problems with aol mail on their sidekick 2 except myself. problems such as very slow getting on the site and inbox mail retrieval.

[Frank @ Jul 21st 2006 1:26PM]

does anyone use the sidekick 3 with myebay. I had the sidekick 2 and was unable to log in to myebay with it. I have heard the sidekick 3 supports new web browser functions (java) and i was wondering can anyone log in to my ebay with the sk3

[Shaniva @ Aug 29th 2006 5:09PM]

Wow, I can't believe it! Almost everyone has a sidekick except me. You don't understand, I'm gonna be in 9th grade this September, and I don't even have a phone. Oooh I want my hands on a sidekick so badly. After reading the comments and surfing on every site possible that has the sidekick 3, I am definetley obsessed and will get one. Hopefully. =(

[mike @ Nov 15th 2006 1:59AM]

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