Danger Hiptop
The Danger Hiptop, also re-branded as the T-Mobile Sidekick, Mobiflip and Sharp Jump, is a GPRS/EDGE/UMTS smartphone that was produced by Danger, Inc. from 2002 to 2010.
The original Hiptop with revised color screen | |
| Brand | Danger Inc, T-Mobile |
|---|---|
| Developer | T-Mobile |
| Manufacturer | Danger Incorporated / Flextronics / Sharp Corporation / Motorola / Samsung |
| Series | Hiptop/Sidekick |
| Compatible networks | GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, 3G |
| First released | 2002 |
| Availability by region | 2002–2010 (Sidekick Web Services to 2011) |
| Discontinued | 2011 |
| Successor | Microsoft Kin |
| Type | QWERTY Slide/Flip/Spin Phone |
| Form factor | Messaging Phone |
| Operating system | Danger OS, NetBSD |
| Memory | 128MB |
| Display | Color (Monochrome for the 1st gen Sidekick/Hiptop) |
| Media | MP3, MIDI, WAV, JPEG, BMP |
| Sound | Mono (stereo for later models) |
| Rear camera | Attachable 0.3 Megapixel (Built in for later models) |
| Data inputs | Scrollwheel, Pop out keyboard |
The Hiptop software was designed by Danger, Inc., which was located in Palo Alto, California, and purchased by Microsoft for $500 million in 2008. Danger provided the Hiptop OS software and back-end services for the device. This included a catalog of downloadable software applications, email hosting, instant messaging, web proxies and a cloud service for the entire personal data on the device. The original Hiptop hardware was designed by Danger and manufactured by Flextronics. The Hiptop II, 3, Sidekick iD, Sidekick 2008 and Sidekick LX (2009) are all manufactured by Sharp Corporation in Japan and designed, respectively, by Danger and then Danger in partnership with Sharp. All versions of the Hiptop were developed in close partnership with T-Mobile, although carrier-specific features were either removed or added for each carrier, such as the addition of MMS for SunCom and Telstra Hiptop 2 users, where the feature was not available on T-Mobile USA devices until the Sidekick LX in 2007.
The Hiptop/Sidekick became incredibly popular in the U.S. and has been considered to be iconic in the mobile devices market.