20 Most Recent T-Mobile Sidekick ID Cellular Phone - Page 7 Questions & Answers

TMobile has "the catalog" service as other providers have different multimedia apps to add things to your phone. If you are interested in themes, you can get those from other websites (hiptop.com is one) if you Sidekick has an SD card. You can get more help with themes from http://www.sk08themes.com/help. If you are wanting apps, games, and ringtones, they can only be provided through your service provider, and if they (AT&T) have programmed the phone for their network and your MDN for you, they may be able to assist you with a way to get them to your phone.
I worked for Alltel and also have a lot of experience with Verizon's networks. AT&T, I'm just not sure what they can do for you.

Let me start by saying I'm not an expert, but after going through a lot of gyrations I came up with a solution that worked for me. I'm sharing it here because I haven't seen a complete concise answer anywhere.
The activation problem with Sidekick Slides is common. Most of the time, people buy a Slide without realizing that you have to purchase a "sidekick plan" from T-Mobile to get it fully activated. These phones were build especially for T-Mobile, so they're designed so that you have to have a Sidekick rate plan first to get the phone activated. By the way, this applies to a new phone as well as a phone that's been activated before, but has been 'hard reset" (where you hold the R button while re-booting.. My advice, DON'T DO THIS! Because you have to re-activate the phone.
However, there's good news for all you non-T-mobile folks who bought a Slide on eBay (or from a friend etc.) only to find it needs activation. Here's the solution. If you search eBay for "sidekick activation" you can find folks selling prepaid activation kits for around $15. They include a sim card and about $10 worth of sidekick prepaid services. Buy the kit, install the sim, and go online to register your phone (registering by phone is a pain with T-Mobile). Online you have 3 plan choices: Pay By The Day, Pay As You Go, and Sidekick. Pick Sidekick, and then provide the requested registration information. When done, your phone should be ready to go and should activate within about 5 - 10 minutes. You'll be charged $1 a day and airtime for calls, so it's not cheap, but at least the phone won't go to the activation screen when you startup.
The next question is, how to unlock the phone for other networks? IF it's not unlocked you will be prompted for special code (this is different than the user-defined password that simply locks the phone against unauthorized users). It won't work on other networks until it's truly unlocked. Again, the trusty folks at eBay can help. I searched for Sidekick Slide Unlock Codes and found numerous vendors, ranging from $6 to $12, who provide permanent unlock codes for Slides. I found on that provides the code via email (others want to mail it to you) and got my code within 30 minutes. So now I can remove the T-mobile sim and put my ATT (or other) sim in and go. I should mention that some of the Sidekick features ONLY work if you have a sidekick plan, but that's T-Mobile's and Danger's devious attempt to make us miserable. Good Luck! Hope this helps! Rick

Blow into the tracking ball. a little bit of dirt and dust can clog it up.

Try taking a whipe and moving the trackball from side to side and it will become unstuck it happens with every phone that has a trackball

I have a sidekick 2008 that is unlocked with a universal unlocking chip.
I had the same problem, and I spent hours and hours online looking for a solution. Soft resets, full resets, turning wireless off then on, turning my phone off then on. None of it worked.
What did work, was when I desperately needed to send a text, I put my simcard (vodafone network) into my old vodafone phone. After I put it back into my sidekick, and voila, it worked! Not sure why. But every now and then my sidekick gets stuck on emergency calls only and error NET9, I put my sim in a vodafone phone (for you which ever network your sim is from) then back into my sidekick, and it works again.

hit menu and L

You are supposed to have a sidekick plan with t mobile. It will do this until you have this plan. But you can bypass that screen to call and text by holding down the top left button with 3 lines and the letter L on the keyboard at the same time.

press and hold "menu" "0" and "@". it will soft reset your phone

call the company and they will tell you how to unlock it for you if it isnt reported lost or stolen

T-mob, mob-ph.upper & down both connector is damage change flex(patta)

I am sorry but you can not. The only wasy to get those features is with the Sidekick Data plan. It sucks I know, but that is the way Danger and T-mobile decided to do it

The lcd cable on your phone may be coming loose. You can try the procedure at the link below and reseat it.

Failing that, a new screen will do the trick.

Reseat LCD Cable on Sidekick

Search ebay for sidekick id lcd. There seems to be some in the store.

you should go to settings. display settings backlight and the select how many seconds you want it on for.

i assumes you didnt have a data plan on your
tmobile account, yet?

if thats a case, then you would need to have
a data plan to activated it appropriately.

otherwise, it wont be activation which means
you would have to press menu + L manually
to bypass it even time you have the waiting activation
on the screen.

either the trackball is broken or it need to clean.

if its dirty;;then what you need to do is
to have a q-tip and alcohol then drop a small
amount of it on a q-tip and rub(hover) around it
until it works again.

if its broken, then youre looking in get a replacement the whole
phone. so, give a CC ring and let them know about it and they should
be able to get you a replacement that is if they still have some skID left
in the "warehouse" stock. which it has happened with mine as well like few
months ago and i can able to get a replacement. once, i got mines
its working perfectly fine.

(if they cant get you a replacement for a sidekick ID, then i assumes they will
offer you to choice the phone you want;; like,
sidekick 08 or tony hawk sidekick lx)

good luck.

good luck.