Some Sidekick users report data has been restored

Network World - Nearly a week after what started out as a service disruption,  a few users of T-Mobile’s Sidekick device are reporting that personal data feared lost forever in a backend server failure appears to be restored.

That’s encouraging news for many others who are still waiting for today’s promised update from T-Mobile about the status of their data, stored on servers run by Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary, the original creator of the device. Those that have discovered restored data are busy saving it to what they have available: their onboard SIM card.

"I was just on my phone and when I got off my phone all my contacts returned," wrote tommyd2107 this morning. "I do not know if this will last for long but the [sight] of my contacts returning is encouraging." He had begun last night manually importing his contact data into his Sidekick. "[T]hen today when I went out on my phone and after I hung up the rest of my contacts came back."

In one response, Dariahna wrote, "The same thing happened to me...I shut my phone off several times without removing the battery...voila! My contacts returned!" Another frustrated but relieved user, Generalblue, reported his phone had frozen completely. He took out the Sidekick’s battery and replaced it (a common step for users in restarting their phone). "Once my phone was on about 5 minutes later I checked my address book for some reason and they were all there. I saved all my contacts to my simcard."

Also from Network World: A short history of cloud computing outages from Sidekick to Gmail 

How widespread these experiences are is impossible to determine yet. Some seem to be users who did not disable their phone by removing and then reinstalling the battery, so keeping local data intact. But others, as the above examples show, did exactly that.

And there remain plenty of complaints and frustrations and sheer rage boiled down into terse posts. "This outage I was all fine about at first but now it is just to[o] much," posted Siber54. "I mean the sidekick does not even have a mass contact save Option. The user has to save them one by one. If I do stay with the sidekick I would like to see options to save all on SD [cards] because a SIM can only hold around 250..I have lost business and meetings from this outage and I am not happy."

T-Mobile offers two Sidekick models, both of which are now labeled "temporarily out of stock." That label was already sparked speculation that the carrier is killing the product line.