How messed up is this? T-Mobile is “updating” the new color Sidekicks, using their ability to modify the device over-the-air to remotely remove a bunch of the games that had come pre-installed. Which apparently means that they can pretty much do whatever they want to your Sidekick, whenever they want to, something that our buddy Cory from BoingBoing, who owns a Sidekick, isn’t particularly pleased about:
They still haven’t delivered a synch tool that lets you download your PIM data (calendar, contacts, to-do) from your Sidekick to your PC, and what’s more, this latest move shows very clearly what you can expect to happen when you stop being a T-Mobile customer: they will “withdraw their support” from your handset, erasing your personal info. Who owns your Sidekick? T-Mobile does, apparently, even if you spent full retail on it (I dropped $250 on mine). You need T-Mobile’s permission to install software on their device. T-Mobile will, from time to time, decide to erase software from your device. And when you stop subscribing to their service, T-Mobile will delete all your data forever, without giving you any mechanism for moving it off the device (and without giving you the ability to design a tool that would let you do this).
