Although the T-Mobile’s support of the Danger-based Sidekicks has been waning for years–and dropped precipitously after a major server failure in 2009, the company said the brand has remained strong and kept a loyal following.

“It was kind of a no-brainer for us to bring it back,” said Joe Fernandez, the product manager for the new Sidekick.

T-Mobile said it spent a long time researching what attributes defined the Sidekick as well as which of its quirks were just a bit too quirky. As with past Sidekicks, the device features a unique pop-open screen and large five-line Qwerty keyboard. Also retained, though tweaked a bit for Android is the dedicated “jump” button for moving between applications. Out, though, is the color-changing mood-light scroll wheel that cycled through different colors when a call came in.

As with past Sidekicks, a key feature is the device’s messaging capabilities. While early Sidekicks focused on instant messaging, this time around, the focus is on social networks and text messaging–including built-in Twitter and Facebook connections and group text messaging added to the main texting program. Although this Sidekick has far fewer cloud services than the Danger-based models, T-Mobile does plan to offer a program for viewing and sending text messages on the Web.

From a hardware perspective, the Sidekick 4G is similar to Samsung’s Galaxy S models, paking a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor along with a front-facing VGA camera for video chat and a 3 megapixel rear camera. (For those that can remember all the way back to the original Sidekick, it had no built-in camera and an optional camera attachment could create photos about the size of a postage stamp.) The interface is similar to Samsung’s TouchWiz Android UI, but has some Sidekick-specific tweaks including keyboard shortcuts, custom ringtones and wallpapers.

T-Mobile is clearly aiming at the same younger demographic as were targeted by earlier Sidekicks, albeit with different features and services than in the past. In addition to building in apps for Twitter and Facebook, the Sidekick 4G has a means for updating social network status right from the notification screen and also integrates social contacts into the address book. The Sidekick will come in two colors, black and a pearl magenta and T-Mobile said it was too soon to say if this would be only the first in a new family of devices. Rather, T-Mobile said it wants to see how this initial Android model does before committing to future products.

The Sidekick 4G will also include T-Mobile’s DriveSmart and optional DriveSmart Plus software aimed at discouraging users from accessing their phones while driving.

While T-Mobile won’t guarantee it, officials say the company is hoping to have the Sidekick 4G ready for customers before it flips the lights off on the Danger servers at the end of May.

Below is a photo timeline of T-Mobile’s Sidekick line from the original black and white model from 2002 through the new 4G Android device announced on Monday. (Special thanks to ATD intern Erik Silk for putting this slideshow together.)

T-Mobile announced on Monday that it plans to kill off the Microsoft Danger service that powers the current generation of Sidekick devices as it prepares to transition that brand to a series of new Android-based models. T-Mobile sold the first black and white Sidekicks back in 2002 and has been selling various evolutions of the youth-oriented mobile until as recently as last year.

After May 31, though, the Danger service will be unavailable. While not shocking, the move means that those with existing Sidekicks will soon have devices that not only are shaped like a bar of soap, but have about as much smartphone capability as a wedge of Irish Spring.

You see, the Sidekick wasn’t just a smartphone, but it was a cloud powered one at that. As a result, nearly all of the device’s capabilities require a connection to Microsoft’s servers (Microsoft bought Danger back in 2008). That means that once the servers are shut down, the phones will only be able to make calls and send and receive text messages.

T-Mobile said it will provide various unspecified offers ahead of that date to help current Sidekick owners move to a new device. It will also offer Web tools on its myT-Mobile.com Web Site to allow customers to export contacts, photos, calendar info and other data from the Danger service.

“We’re working with our Sidekick customers to help make that transition easy,” spokesman Tom Harlin told Mobilized.

The demise of the Danger-based Sidekick line has been coming for some time. Its fate was probably sealed after a massive outage in the fall of 2009 that left many users without access to their data for weeks.

For itself, T-Mobile has said it plans to keep the Sidekick brand around, but will base future models around Google’s Android operating system. T-Mobile hasn’t offered much in the way of details, but did promise in January that the first Android Sidekick devices would arrive this spring and will tap into the company’s fastest network. (T-Mobile has posted a teaser page on its Sidekick Web site.) The switch is somewhat fitting, given that the co-founder of Danger, Google’s Andy Rubin, is also the father of Android.

T-Mobile pitched the move as just the standard lifecycle of a product.

“It’s just a natural order of products to be replaced with newer technology as technology evolves,” Harlin said.

However, the move highlights the illusory nature of cloud-based devices. Sure, T-Mobile can’t take away the Sidekick you bought, but by shutting down the servers, the product is quite literally a shell of its former self.

Harlin said that the decision to shut down the Danger servers was made jointly by T-Mobile and Microsoft, but declined to say what specifically was prompting the shutdown or elaborate on how much it would have cost to keep the service running for existing Sidekick users.

Microsoft and Verizon made a similar move to pull the plug on the Kin service after killing that ill-fated product, though the Kin had only been on the market for a few weeks and less than 10,000 of the devices had been sold.

The end of the line for the Sidekick also means that Microsoft is effectively out of the business it acquired with its $500 million purchase of Danger. While it will surely argue that some fragments of the technology have made it into Windows Phone 7, most of the Danger team was focused on building the Kin and didn’t transfer over to the Windows Phone team until that product was nearly finished.

“T-Mobile is ideally positioned to grow in the expanding U.S. market with the mobile Internet, if possible to a disproportionately large extent,” T-Mobile Group CEO Rene Obermann said in a statement issued by parent company Deutsche Telekom. “Philipp Humm and his team have a broad-based strategy to put T-Mobile USA back on course for growth.”

Among its plans are to offer the most competitive data rates while also introducing a faster version of its HSPA+ network, the one T-Mobile bills as America’s largest 4G network. Lacking an iPhone to offer, T-Mobile has been running a pointed ad campaign poking fun at AT&T and, more recently, also at Verizon.

T-Mobile also hopes to boost its fortunes by increasing sales efforts to businesses and allowing other carriers–so-called MVNOs–to sell services on its network.

The company reiterated its plans to eventually move to a Long-Term Evolution network (the same technology being adopted by Verizon and AT&T). However T-Mobile said this will “probably not be for a few years.”

While T-Mobile spoke to the business and technical hurdles associated with moving too quickly to LTE, it also acknowledged the other big stumbling block–it lacks enough spectrum to do so.

“Deutsche Telekom is exploring various options to acquire additional spectrum and reduce the gap regarding economies of scale compared with its larger competitors, including partnering with other companies,” T-Mobile said.

T-Mobile also announced the Samsung Galaxy S 4G and said it would bring back the Sidekick brand with a 4G, Android-based device to be introduced in the spring.

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

And the hit reporters/bloggers keep on coming at All Things Digital.

Today, we are honored to add Tricia Duryee to the staff of our site, where she will be covering commerce, online payments, gaming and more.

In other words: She’ll show us the money.

Or not, in some cases.

The broad commerce beat is important to ATD, as we focus on what we think is another key space on the Web–a topic that straddles retail, mobile, social and virtual, as companies old and new try to come up with sustainable business models online.

While Amazon and eBay, as well as new upstarts such as Groupon and Square, are the obvious candidates for Tricia’s coverage, how commerce is innovating on the Internet is a wider-ranging story we aim to cover closely.

And Tricia is just the kind of superb beat reporter we were looking for to pioneer the coverage for us.

She comes to ATD from her recent job as Editor of mocoNews.net, an online site dedicated to covering the wireless industry. MocoNews is a sister publication of paidContent.org, and both are owned by the Guardian News & Media.

Tricia joined mocoNews in February 2008 and has written about how the Apple iPhone has changed the cell phone industry, how ringtones are giving way to mobile TV and how the carriers are building out the next-generation of networks.

Prior to mocoNews, Tricia spent eight years at the Seattle Times. In her first five years, she covered venture capital and Seattle’s start-up scene.

And, in her final three years, she wrote about the regional wireless industry, which included stories such as Cingular’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T and how T-Mobile’s Sidekick was a must-have among celebrities, including NBA All-Stars such as Ray Allen.

The Seattle native attended the University of Oregon, where she received a degree in journalism and a minor in business.

Tricia is located in Seattle still, in a 102-year-old house, with a 10-year-old dog and a more recent husband.

We’re also thrilled Tricia is reporting from there and hope she’ll give our readers a flavor of what’s going on in tech in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the key digital hubs in the U.S.

Next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft is likely to unveil Windows Mobile 7, the new version of its mobile operating system, trying to create some excitement around its foundering mobile strategy.

“Foundering” is probably kind, given the innovative strides both Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have made in the smartphone arena in recent years by comparison.

That’s why rumors about the various attributes of the new mobile OS escalated again after Microsoft (MSFT) CFO Peter Klein noted at the company’s most recent earnings call: “As we have been saying from a product perspective, we are working very hard on the next version of Windows Mobile…we will be talking more about that in Barcelona in a few weeks.”

The most prominent of those rumors is that the new OS morphs into a kind of “ZunePhone,” incorporating functionality from the software of Microsoft’s digital music player.

And as one hand does software, Microsoft has also been doing the smartphone equivalent of a Long March with its “Project Pink,” the long anticipated multimedia touchscreen device that has been in development for a while by its Premium Mobile Experiences group.

That team is apparently hidden away in a Seattle office–as opposed to its nearby Redmond, Wash., HQ–and still includes some employees from Danger, the iconic company that designed the once-popular Sidekick mobile phone and was bought by Microsoft in 2008 for $500 million.

There, both Microsoft-designed hardware and software are being created, with some sort of device to come out this year, sources said, despite persistent rumors that the whole project would be scotched.

The hope–when the tech giant finally does end this very long gestation–is that it can finally get some traction in the increasingly important smartphone space, which is dominated by Apple’s iPhone and, farther behind, phones using Google’s Android operating system.

While Microsoft tirelessly argues that Windows mobile software is on many more phones around the globe than that of competitors, the challenge is clear externally–and internally, if you listen carefully to the griping about the company’s mobile strategy, which one exec there recently admitted to me was an “embarrassment.”

Indeed, this is why Microsoft and its giant wallet might be better served by buying one of the big and more established telecom companies, such as Research in Motion (RIMM), Palm (PALM) or even–as another Microsoft exec said to me, “Why not?”–Nokia (NOK).

Nokia has a market cap of close to $50 billion, with RIM at close to $38 billion. And Palm? A paltry $1.74 billion. Microsoft’s current valuation is $246 billion, and the company has $40 billion in cash and marketable securities on hand.

While the purchase of Danger was pricey given how little it has yielded as yet, to do such a deal would send shock waves throughout the industry and–if it were Nokia or RIM, both of which are non-U.S.-based companies–change the game immediately.

And, in fact, many sources at Microsoft have told me that CEO Steve Ballmer has expressed interest in buying RIM many times (while also dismissing any interest in Palm).

Well, at least, Ballmer is thinking big. And he should, because mobile, which everyone knows is the key platform in the coming era of computing, will be all about getting–as the saying goes–big or getting out.

Microsoft’s feisty little search service, Bing, has finally made an iPhone app, which is now up at the Apple iTunes app store.

Bing planned to show off the free application at a party thrown by its mobile team in San Francisco tonight, but BoomTown found it live on the site much earlier.

Information about the new app is also now on Microsoft’s Bing blog here.

The Bing app’s description at the iTunes Store says, “Make decisions and get where you need to go with Bing. See the Bing daily image and related trivia on the home screen. Search maps or the Web with your voice–even say an address. Use Image Search and flick through previews. Download Bing today to find stuff nearby and get there fast.”

A Bing PR email noted that key features of the app include a daily image from Bing.com; easy-to-access voice search; tips and tricks on the homepage; “Locate Me” functionality; and the ability to add pushpins, save locations and show multiple locations on a single map.

It’s all a sweet little irony, since Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) have been frenemies over the years.

But bowing to the power of the iPhone as the premier smartphone out there, Bing has to be on its ubiquitous platform if it wants to compete with Google (GOOG) and others in the mobile arena.

In related news, according to November data from comScore (SCOR), Bing’s market share rose to 10 percent. The growth is coming, apparently, from Microsoft’s new search partner, Yahoo (YHOO), rather than from Google.

Before all the hell-has-frozen-over jokes let loose, it should be noted that Microsoft already has some apps for the iPhone, such as the one for its Seadragon photo app, a Tag Reader app and various manual book apps.

And, while others have made apps that allow Microsoft’s popular software to work on the Apple device, it has yet to release one of its own, although sources said the company is working on them.

Microsoft has already made Bing apps for Windows phones, the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM), the Sidekick and select BREW-based devices on Verizon (VZ), as well as Bing mobile from a browser.

Company execs recently showed off a spate of innovations for Bing, including new mobile features, but not in an iPhone app.

But no matter how you look at it, the iPhone app is the big time.

Here are more screenshots of the app:

Again, nice to hear this talk of a full data restoration after T-Mobile’s warning that all personal data had been permanently lost. Clearly, Microsoft (MSFT) is doing everything in its power to remedy the issue, which has led many to question the company’s protocols for redundancy and server failure, and beyond these, whether the software giant can even be trusted to safeguard user data. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Network World, the Sidekick fiasco was “not good.”

“It is something we are going to have to address and explain to customers, our method and process and quality approach and what went wrong in that case and how we are making sure that it does not happen again,” Ballmer said. “Non-Sidekick users, we are not earning their trust back but I think people are going to say, ‘Hey, look, show me what you are doing to insure this does not happen to me.’”

Again, nice to hear this talk of a full data restoration after T-Mobile’s warning that all personal data had been permanently lost. Clearly, Microsoft (MSFT) is doing everything in its power to remedy the issue, which has led many to question the company’s protocols for redundancy and server failure, and beyond these, whether the software giant can even be trusted to safeguard user data. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Network World, the Sidekick fiasco was “not good.”

“It is something we are going to have to address and explain to customers, our method and process and quality approach and what went wrong in that case and how we are making sure that it does not happen again,” Ballmer said. “Non-Sidekick users, we are not earning their trust back but I think people are going to say, ‘Hey, look, show me what you are doing to insure this does not happen to me.’”

Kara and the Boomtown blog were in New York this week and started the party early with Bob Pittman–well known media and Web exec. Kara wasn’t dancing on the tables, but did admit that Pittman’s new venture, a top-shelf tequila, was plenty tasty. BoomTown went straight from the sauce to the nose candy in a short interview with Ford’s (F) social media guru, Scott Monty. While Monty might have been using cocaine as a metaphor for a new kind of marketing that changes consumption of all other marketing, Weekend Update gets his subtext. As if BoomTown didn’t have enough hardcore “cred,” Kara headed off to fabulous Las Vegas for the annual meeting of the blogs at BlogWorld. Nothing that happens in Vegas this weekend will stay there–not with thousands of bloggers roaming the Strip in search of a new meme to latch on to.

Digital Daily trapped a Snow Leopard early in the week. John reported on Apple’s (APPL) admission that the Snow Leopard version of OS X occasionally overdelivers on its promise to free-up disk space. In certain circumstances, the furry filcher can sneak in and make off with all your user data. If it was data loss you were looking for though, no one beats the good folks at Danger who, up until recently, housed all kinds of personal data associated with the Sidekick line of smart phones. The Microsoft (MSFT) subsidiary permanently lost contact, calendar and other personal data associated with many accounts. Weekend Update thinks that Sidekick users were given fair warning, though; the company name is, after all, Danger. John rounded out the week with something unusual–good economic news from the tech sector: Intel (INTC), Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM) and AMD (AMD) were all feeling a little more flush than their prognosticators had predicted, each beating their admittedly dismal forecasts by at least a little.

MediaMemo followed up on some important stories, beginning the week with Twitter’s spam problem. Peter reported that the Web’s biggest microblogging pipeline updated its tools for trapping the flotsam and jetsam. Twitter is reportedly in talks with several leading search engines that want to feed on all that delicious real-time data. Peter also updated the readers on the tough times over at Condé Nast. This round of cuts was a little closer to the magazine publisher’s crown jewels than last week’s cuts and closings, with the layoff of at least six staffers from Vogue. Peter closed out the week with a cheeky little open letter to the Federal Trade Commission. He asked some important questions regarding the FTC’s recent obsession with bloggers and disclosure. He seems to think that most serious bloggers don’t like to sell their credibility for tiny discounts to obscure events.

Walt and Katie were all over Windows 7 this week, with help on all fronts for those making “the switch.” Before he got to that, though, Walt spent some personal tech time with some supersmart phones. He elevated Motorola’s (MOT) CLIQ and RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm2 to the level of potential iPhone killer and praised their updated features and power as mobile computers rather than simply phones. Mossberg’s Mailbox heralded the beginning of the Windows 7 flood and was chock full of questions about upgrading and replacing some of the functionality that was built into Vista. The Great One also offered thoughts on installing Windows 7 on a virtual machine running in OS X, but couldn’t speak to the boot camp option until Apple releases more info…and the proper drivers.

Katie tested PC Mover from LapLink as an all-in-one option for moving precious data to Windows 7. While she praised the $15 program’s efficiency, she thought it was a little sleazy that it also tried to get her to purchase other programs while it had her data in its clutches. All went well, and the moral of the story is that this one-trick pony upgrade assistant was worth the minimal price tag.

Breaking News: Weekend Update is getting intermittent reports that Kara may have been kidnapped from BlogWorld by a roving band of mommybloggers in white robes, all slowly chanting “mon-eh-tize” as they piled into their Honda minivans. They may or may not have sealed her into a 30 foot-wide, saucer-shaped balloon, which could be floating westward toward the Bay Area.

If we get her back, you can look forward to another fully staffed, fully loaded week at AllThingsD.

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Roz Ho, corporate VP of Microsoft’s ironically named Premium Mobile Experiences division, said in a letter to customers.

“We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

That’s quite a change from what Microsoft (MSFT) said a few days ago when it warned that user data had “almost certainly” been lost and that the likelihood of recovering it was “extremely low.” Still, it’s clearly the best outcome for a bad situation.

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage,” Roz Ho, corporate VP of Microsoft’s ironically named Premium Mobile Experiences division, said in a letter to customers.

“We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

That’s quite a change from what Microsoft (MSFT) said a few days ago when it warned that user data had “almost certainly” been lost and that the likelihood of recovering it was “extremely low.” Still, it’s clearly the best outcome for a bad situation.