The carrier officially confirmed plans on the matter

Mar 16, 2012 18:11 GMT  ·  By

Wireless services provider T-Mobile has officially confirmed plans to discontinue the Sidekick 4G smartphone that landed on its airwaves less than a year ago.

Launched in April last year, the mobile phone was meant to provide Sidekick users with the possibility to switch to a device that packed similar looks and capabilities as their original handsets, but which did not rely on the Danger service that was discontinued one month later.

Running under Android, Sidekick 4G also offered support for the wireless carrier’s fast HSPA+ network, along with access to a variety of services and applications designed for the platform.

Following a series of rumors regarding the possible discontinuation of the Sidekick 4G device, the wireless carrier stepped up and confirmed such plans.

However, the company also announced that it intended to continue offering Sidekick devices to its users, which means that new models might become official in the near future.

“While the T-Mobile Sidekick 4G is being retired, it doesn’t mean we are discontinuing the T-Mobile Sidekick line,” a T-Mobile spokesperson reportedly stated.

“T-Mobile continues to update and expand its 4G product portfolio and we’ll keep you posted when we have news to share on T-Mobile’s latest 4G devices.”

A successor to this device should pack better hardware specifications, while maintaining the popular form factor of its predecessors.

For those out of the loop, we should note that the Sidekick 4G device came to shelves with a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, complemented by a sliding QWERTY keyboard, and a single-core 1GHz application processor inside.

The deal breaker, however, is the fact that it is based on the older Android 2.2 flavor of Google’s mobile operating system.

One thing that T-Mobile has not unveiled for the moment is what the successor of this device might look like. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before it makes the announcement, so stay tuned for more on this.