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The T-Mobile Sidekick’s Jump button made mobile multitasking easy


Remember the Danger Hiptop?

It introduced cloud sync long before iCloud, popularized unlimited data and real web browsing on mobile, and made instant messaging and email a breeze thanks to its landscape hardware keyboard. Unlike Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, and flip phones of the era, the Sidekick didn’t kill apps when they were closed, he says — it had a “true multitasking architecture” where they kept on running in the background, connected to the internet. For more on the Danger Hiptop, I recommend co-founder Joe Britt’s 2007 Stanford lecture on how it was built, Chris DeSalvo’s essay on its innovations, and retrospectives from MrMobile and TheUnlockr.

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Photo of Jump button

Jump button

Photo of Mobile Sidekick

Mobile Sidekick