New Sidekick features, just in the nick of time

By Cory Doctorow at 6:37 am Saturday, Sep 13

The Sidekick turns a year old this month, and for a lot of us early adopters who bought in at full retail on the (dashed) hopes that T-Mobile would make good on Danger's promise to deliver an open platform (like the Symbian phones from Sony-Ericsson, which anyone can write code for, and which, conseuqently, have a really robust software ecosystem percolating under them), that means that this is the month that we can get rid of our Sidekicks and buy something else. For those of us who were so turned off by the outrageous voice-plan offered by T-Mobile on these devices that we kept our old handsets and used these as handheld Internet terminals, there's precious little reason not to: the carriers are subsidising Symbian phones if you buy into a one-year plan, and who needs number-portability when you haven't given anyone the number?

Coincidentally (?), this month, Danger has announced a bunch of really hot (and long overdue) enhancements to the device, including such basic functionality as copy-and-paste. I may hold onto the Sidekick for a couple months longer -- at least until Novmember 28th rolls around and we get fee-crashing number-portability for cellphones.

The new features include:

* Copy and paste (party like it's 1982!)

* Download manager (with ringtones! Party like it's 1998!)

* More AIM features

* "Usability features" Link (Thanks, Mike!)