Danger Hiptop
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The T-Mobile Sidekick, also sold as the Danger Hiptop is a GPRS/EDGE mobile phone with wireless Internet capabilities and some functionality similar to a PDA. The Hiptop is sold by T-Mobile in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria SunCom & Australia Telstra. used to sell the device in some parts of the U.S.,[1][2] and Fido is the exclusive Hiptop carrier in Canada—sales in Canada were discontinued after Fido was bought by Rogers Communications, at the end of the Hiptop 2's life; this is partially because the Hiptop is a competitor to Rogers' BlackBerry business. In Germany, the Hiptop service is also offered by E-Plus including a flat rate tariff.
The Hiptop software was originally designed by the company Danger, Inc. (which is now owned by Microsoft), located in Palo Alto, California. The original Sidekick hardware was designed by Danger and manufactured by Flextronics. The Sidekick 2, 3, iD, and LX are manufactured by Sharp Corporation in Japan and designed, respectively, by Danger and then Danger in partnership with Sharp.The Sidekick Slide was developed and manufactured by Motorola. All versions of the Sidekick were developed in close partnership with T-Mobile. Danger provides the Hiptop OS software and back-end services for the device. These include a catalog of downloadable software applications, email hosting, instant messaging and web proxies.
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[edit] Hardware
One of the defining features of all Hiptops is the LCD screen on the front of the device that flips around 180 degrees to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard underneath, with the exception of the Sidekick Slide in which the screen slides up to reveal the keyboard. There are two large rectangular buttons on the left side of the device ("menu" and "jump") and also two on the right ("back" and "cancel"). The left side houses a directional pad and on the right side a scroll wheel (Hiptop 2) or track ball (Hiptop 3). The Hiptop 2's directional pad contains internal multicolored LEDs used in ringers and notifications, while the sidekick 3 track ball contains internal multicolored LEDs used in ringers and notifications. The right side also has two phone buttons: dial (also page-down) and hangup (also page-up). The top of the unit has two shoulder buttons (application-specific). The bottom has volume controls and a power button. An interesting quality of the Hiptop line is its horizontal design meant for holding with both hands, similar to that of a Game Boy Advance or a console video game controller. This design contrasts with the vast majority of other cell phones which have a vertical design. It allows the user to easily type with both thumbs, but makes it difficult and impractical to operate with one hand.
[edit] Sidekick
The original Hiptop was unique compared to all other hardware versions, in that all keys were hiddden beneath the keyboard, save a scroll wheel, featured on the right side of the case. The Hiptop also featured a speaker which is used for device sounds but not speakerphone. Along the top edge of the phone bezel is an infrared transceiver, though it doesn't seem to serve any purpose. The headset jack serves a dual purpose, as it is also used for the accessory camera. A later revsion of the Sidekick upgraded its screen from a monochromatic LCD to a color LCD. It is slightly bigger than any other sidekick, also much older. It is very hard to find.
[edit] Sidekick II
Danger added a D-Pad to the left side of the Sidekick, along with left and right shoulder buttons, volume and power on bottom of phone. The Sidekick II also features a VGA camera,
The Hiptop 2 has two speakers; The phone speaker built into the D-pad, and a speaker on the back of the unit (near the VGA camera) for sounds, alerts and speakerphone calls. The microphone is located near the end-call button, right side of the phone there is a power jack, a mini-USB port (usable only by developers, not for the general public) and hands-free headset jack. Scroll Wheel Still the same place
The dimensions of the Hiptop II are 133 mm x 66 mm x 23 mm.
On October 9th 2006, The Australian Hiptop 2 was released through Telstra. The Australian version is basically the same as the Hiptop 2 in America but re-constructed for the Australian audience - it has MSN built-in as the default messenger and Yahoo which is downloadable from the catalog.
There are also two limited edition variants of the T-Mobile Sidekick II: Juicy Couture (Pink) and Mister Cartoon (Black). These are different case colors with the same hardware and operating systems.
[edit] Sidekick 3
Released July 10th 2006, the SK3 created by Sharp was made smaller and measured 130 mm wide x 59 mm high x 22 mm thick. The industrial design was changed as well as a new color scheme to a dark gray shell with silver trim and gloss black buttons. The scroll wheel was replaced by a multicolor led lit six-direction trackball replacing the D-pad as the indicator light. The keyboard was also changed to a rigid plastic keyboard differing from the rubber keyboard of previous models known to peel away from the unit.
New features were introduced including a removable 3.7v 1500 mAh removable battery, a miniSD slot capable of up to 2GB of flash memory storage, a 1.3 Mega pixel camera capable of 1280 x 1024 an improvement from the sub-megapixel VGA camera 640 x 480, and a built-in 1/16" audio jack for the newly included mp3 playback software. The MiniUSB functionality was changed from allowing access to the sidekick's internal communications to only allowing access to the MiniSD card over a USB v1.1 port. The built-in storage allows for end-users to store files for mp3 playback, camera, user customizable themes and other catalog application's uses.
The Sidekick 3 was made available in three limited edition models which only differed in cosmetic color changes:
- Diane von Furstenberg - Black with Pink Lips - Released October 30th, 2006
- Lifted Research Group - Green with Tree Logos
- Dwyane Wade - White and gold with a basketball texture (Released February 21, 2007 to coincide with the NBA All-Star Game February 17, 2007)
[edit] Sidekick iD
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The customizable exterior of the T-Mobile Sidekick iD provides quick modification of the outside of the device with fashionable colors to match anyone's style, mood or that evening's outfit. Other than aesthetics, the iD is essentially a stripped-down Sidekick 3, retaining most of the software features but not including a miniSD slot, a camera or an MP3 player. It does, however, contain an USB port, hidden under a tab near the power port, though the port does not allow any interaction with a computer. It is offered at a significantly lower price than the Sidekick 3 or the LX to appeal to customers on a budget and newcomers to the Sidekick family who still want the essential features of the Sidekick. On April 7,2008 the iD was discontinued by T-Mobile.
[edit] Sidekick Slide (Motorola)
T-Mobile USA suspended sales of the Sidekick Slide on Friday evening, Nov. 16, 2007 after Motorola confirmed that some devices inadvertently powered off when the slide door on the front side of the phone was opened or closed. Sidekick Slide owners that reported the power issue received a free upgrade to a blue Sidekick LX with free express shipping.
On November 21st, 2007 Motorola stated the failures were triggered by poor battery contacts; sliding the screen out to type on the keyboard sometimes loosened the contact and forced the device to shut off momentarily.
On December 6th, 2007 the Sidekick Slide was once again available for purchase.
Australia note: The Hiptop Slide has had some problems in Australia with powering down and has not been withdrawn from sale by Telstra. Various reports can be found with various responses from Motorola and Telstra about failures. Mostly they deny any fault although up until Jan 2 this year Telstra immediately replaced any "reported faulty" units. Now each faulty unit has to be sent to a repair center for "assessment".
No replacement/upgrade is offered to the LX as it is not yet available in Australia.
Some users are reporting getting replacement or "fixed" units with plastic lugs glued to unit to keep battery in place. Others report newer units are free of the powering off issue. No statement has been made by Telstra or Motorola about the Hiptop Slide.
[edit] Sidekick LX (Sharp)
The Sidekick LX was released on October 17, 2007 for existing T-Mobile customers via the Internet and five special locations. A week later, on October 24, 2007, the LX was released to new T-Mobile subscribers. The Sidekick LX is available to two different colors, Midnight Blue and Espresso Brown. In addition to the two color selections, the LX includes a wider, higher-resolution screen, an upgraded keyboard ( much like that of the II), blue led mood lights on all four corners which coordinate to the user's settings you can download music and backgrounds , a lighter weight, picture messaging, micro-sd card slot with a 128mb card included ( over the 3's 64 mb mini sd card) and an updated operating system.
[edit] Software
For more on this subject, see Hiptop Included Software.
[edit] Web browser
The Hiptop Web browser requests pages through a proxy running on Danger's servers. The proxy does most of the heavy work of resizing images, reformatting tables, and cutting out content the Hiptop browser doesn't support (such as Flash animations, videos, music, etc). The browser itself supports XHTML 1.0, CSS 1 with some CSS 2, JavaScript (Hiptop 2 and 3 only) and CSS 3 (Hiptop 3 only). T-Mobile has announced that Sidekicks will run by EDGE networks and there are no plans for upgrading Hiptop web browser to 3G.
[edit] Email client
The Hiptop email client supports outside mail accounts as well as the vendor-provided one, and can display attached images, PDF files and Microsoft Word documents.
The client only supports POP3, IMAP, AOL, and Yahoo! mail accounts in addition to the T-mobile account. Email is constantly pushed to the device for T-Mobile, AOL, and Yahoo! accounts and pulled for POP3 and IMAP accounts.
You can use the Email Client to send picture messages (also known as MMS) if the user does not possess a Hiptop/Sidekick LX, seeing as how previous versions did not carry a MMS feature.here.
[edit] IM client
The Hiptop offers AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger clients. The Yahoo client was not built into the Hiptop 2, but was available as a download from the Download Catalog. However, the Yahoo client, along with AIM and MSN, is built-in on the Hiptop 3, and all three are supported by the iD, Slide, and LX. The AIM client can also connect to ICQ (also owned by AOL), and it has hidden support for AIM chat rooms (menu+shift+J). A user logged into AIM from a Hiptop has a miniature device as their icon, rather than the standard mobile phone-shaped "mobile" icon. .
[edit] Usage by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
The Hiptop (in all versions) has become closely associated with the Deaf/Hard of Hearing community, and has been used by many who are unable to hear/speak. The device has replaced the use of many standard TTY/TDD machines (allowing those who are Deaf to still be able to keep in contact while not at home), due to its versatility in being able to communicate via text messaging (SMS), instant messaging, e-mail and web browsing. A feature that has been added to the device by third-parties is the use of device side TTY software provided via IP-RELAY and i711, which allows users who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing to still place calls and have a relay operator serve as a "go-between" for them (see Telecommunications Relay Service and 7-1-1). The software for this is provided at no additional charge in addition to the normal data plan, though the i711 client provides extra services to the Deaf at an additional fee (such as sending TTY messages {similar to an SMS}, AAA roadside services, and finding Open Captioned movies, etc). Many Deaf users sign up for the "data only" package, saving the money normally spent on voice time. Some local Deaf non-profit groups in the US will either pay all or part of the cost of the device/monthly service fees for the user to keep them "connected". Some groups have even set up a "discount" program (in place of the non-profit group paying for the service), where if a certain number of Deaf users sign up, each will receive a discount on the cost of the device and a discount on the monthly service fee.[3]
[edit] Developing for the Hiptop
The Hiptop operating system is largely based on Java. For hiptop development, Danger has its own proprietary APIs. Danger introduced support for J2ME, the Java language optimized for mobile devices, to its hiptop OS with the release of OS 2.3.
To aid third-party software design, Danger has released a comprehensive Software Development Kit (SDK) that contains a Hiptop simulator, development installation utilities, and Danger API information. The SDK is available without charge from Danger's development website, and is supported on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. [1].
There isn't a way to add applications to a standard Hiptop device without the use of the Download Catalog (also called the Download Fun catalog on Sidekick II devices). This is ostensibly done to ensure only tested and compatible software is capable of being installed on a production device.
Application developers can bypass this functionality by using the included programs in the Danger Hiptop SDK to install user-written applications to the hiptop device directly. To do this, you must apply for a special software key known as a Danger Developer Key. The Danger Development Key is a special security certificate that is provided by Danger that enables the device to be used as a Development Device. This will allow the installation of user-written applications to the device, but will void any software warranty provided by Danger and/or your wireless carrier. Any applicable hardware warranties should still apply.
While the hiptop OS uses .jar files for applications, they are uploaded to the device in special files called "bundles". Bundle files have the extension '.bndl'. Each bundle file is encrypted to a specific operating system version and build number. For example, a bundle file for v3.4/155053 (T-Mobile Sidekick 3) would be denied installation on a v3.3/149695 device (T-Mobile Sidekick iD). Installation of bundles require a developer key to be installed on your device if you are using a Production OS. Internal OS builds do not require developer keys.
[edit] Japanese-language support
Since the OS 2.3 update in 2005, Japanese in UTF-8 encoding has been supported in the browser, email, and IM clients.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=560
- ^ http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?p=964
- ^ {{cite web Additionally, it has appearances in numerous TV shows, such as Chelsea Lately, which is known for flipping the phone open, and texting the final thought. | title =Danger, Inc. Announces Improvements to hiptop for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Communities |date=2004-09-15 | url =http://www.danger.com/press/pr.php?cat=2004&id=20040915 | accessdate = 2007-05-18 }}
