T-Mobile USA said it will resume sales of its Sidekick line of phones. Additionally, the company said it has reduced the price of the phones. New pricing for the Sidekick LX 2009 will be $149.99 with a two-year contract and the Sidekick 2008 will be $49.99 with a two-year contract.
In mid October, Sidekick users were rocked by news from T-Mobile that Danger, a Microsoft subsidiary that makes the phones and hosts much of the user data generated by them, had lost most of their personal data, including photos and messages.
Initially, T-Mobile said that nearly all of the data was irrevocably lost and offered users gift cards and refunds. However, nearly a week later, Microsoft said it had restored nearly all the lost data.
Microsoft said that a computer system failure caused the loss of data both in a core Sidekick database and in a backup database. The company said it made changes to improve the Sidekick service’s stability and the backup process.
The failure resulted in a backlash from analysts and bloggers who suggested that the security and reliability of cloud-based storage should be carefully scrutinized going forward.
