T Mobile Sidekick
The Hiptop is sold by T-Mobile in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Austria. SunCom used to sell the device in some parts of the U.S., and Fido was the exclusive Hiptop carrier in Canada until sales were discontinued after Fido was bought by Rogers Communications, at the end of the Hiptop 2's life.
The discontinuation was mainly 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 was also sold in Singapore by Starhub in 2004 , but is no longer available.
Overview
The Hiptop software is designed by the company Danger, Inc., 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 2008 are all manufactured by Sharp Corporation in Japan and designed, respectively, by Danger and then Danger in partnership with Sharp. 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. There are two buttons on the left side of the device ("menu" and "jump") and also two on the right ("back" and "cancel").
On all Hiptops except the original the left side houses a directional pad and on the right, a scroll wheel (Hiptop 2) or track ball (Hiptop 3, LX, 2008 and Slide). The Hiptop 2 and Slide's directional pad contains internal multicolored LEDs used in ringers and notifications, while the 3, 2008 and LX track ball contains internal multicolored LEDs that provide the same function.
The left side also has two phone buttons: send call (also page-down) and end call (also page-up). The Hiptop line is designed to be held horizontally with both hands, allowing typing with two thumbs, 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.
Hiptop (Danger/Flextronics)
T-Mobile Color Sidekick
The original Hiptop was unique compared to all other hardware versions. The Hiptop also featured a speaker which is used for device sounds but not telephone.
It is very hard to find.
Hiptop 2 (Danger/Sharp)
T-Mobile Sidekick 2
Danger moved the D-Pad (directional-pad) to the left side of the Hiptop (from the inside where it was previously found), along with top-left and top-right shoulder dials, volume up/down and power on bottom of phone. 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.
Another important feature of the Hiptop 122 is the ability to easily view the screen even without a backlight.
This has improved features such as a high resolution 2 megapixel camera and video functionality. A new Sidekick 2009 is believed to be coming soon to the T-Mobile network. MCI Relay and Hamilton Relay both released AOL Instant Messenger relay systems in July of the following year.
By 2005, at least four Relay Operator providers (Hamilton, MCI, Sprint, Sorenson, and i711) were providing direct Relay Operator access from the Sidekick using either one of the instant messenger clients or through a free download from the Catalog, and two companies (Lormar Logic and i711) were providing direct TTY access. The i711 client provides extra services to the Deaf at an additional fee (such as AAA roadside services, and finding Open Captioned movies, etc).
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.