Danger Hiptop - Overview

Overview

The Hiptop software was designed by the company Danger, Inc. which was located in Palo Alto, California. The original Hiptop hardware was designed by Danger and manufactured by Flextronics. The Hiptop 2, 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. 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 Hiptop was sold by T-Mobile in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Austria. SunCom and Edge Wireless used to sell the device in some parts of the United States, and Fido was the exclusive Hiptop carrier in Canada until sales were discontinued after Fido was bought by Rogers Communications, at the end of the Hiptop 2's life. The discontinuation was mainly because the Hiptop is a competitor to Rogers' BlackBerry business. In Germany, the Hiptop service was also offered by E-Plus which included a flat rate tariff. In Australia, the Hiptop device and service were sold by Telstra, until October 1, 2009. The Hiptop was also sold in Singapore by Starhub in 2004, but is no longer available.