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The Linux distillery Telstra sidesteps Sidekick sidewinder
The Linux distillery Telstra sidesteps Sidekick sidewinder | Telstra sidesteps Sidekick sidewinder |
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| Written by David M Williams | |
| Sunday, 06 January 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 3
First – a disclaimer – yes, ordinarily I write on Linux and open source. However, this matter needs coverage and it makes my blood boil. It’s not hard to see why the Hiptop is so popular: it’s a less fuddy-duddy business-like handheld than the popular BlackBerry but still comes with a QWERTY keypad, camera and mobility applications like e-mail and instant messaging. The best part is the special pricing that telcos bundle with it. In Australia, Telstra sell the Hiptop on a $30/month plan which provides unlimited e-mail, web browsing, instant messaging and SMS and MMS messaging. There’s a great peace of mind – particularly for parents – in having flat-rate billing for all the SMSs and e-mails you can chew. The operating system is fairly much locked down and there’s no chance of using it as a laptop modem, or streaming video or television so the telco providers are reasonably safe from the service being misused. All is not well in Hiptop land, however. Early in November, users began reporting their brand-spanking new Slide models would lose power intermittently and require switching on again. This is a definite nuisance for any phone but especially so for the Hiptop; all data – photos, e-mail, contacts, etc. – are stored on a back-end server and not in persistent memory on the device itself. While this offers the nice feature that you can edit your phone’s data via www.hiptop.com.au, it also means when you lose power you start off with a completely blank machine until it sucks all its info back down from the server. If you had uncommitted data like a brand new SMS, or were in the middle of writing an e-mail, then that information is lost forever. Motorola, the hardware manufacturer behind the Hiptop Slide (previous models were made by Sharp), confirmed the existence of a design fault. On November 16th 2007, T-Mobile in the U.S. suspended sales of the model. They made an official statement: T-Mobile USA suspended sales of the T-Mobile Sidekick Slide™ on Friday evening, Nov. 16, after Motorola – the manufacturer of the device – confirmed that some devices may inadvertently power off when the slide door on the front side of the phone is opened or closed. T-Mobile has taken this action to help ensure our customers only receive devices we’re confident will perform at their peak, so they can stay effortlessly connected to those who matter most. Motorola is currently working to identify the root cause of the power cycle issue in affected Sidekick Slide devices. The T-Mobile Sidekick LX™ and Sidekick iD™ are not affected by this issue. If a customer purchased a Sidekick Slide that is experiencing the unintended power cycle issue, they may contact T-Mobile Customer Care, or go to a T-Mobile retail store, for assistance and to discuss available options. How did Telstra respond? Read on. CONTINUED
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