Cory grouses that T-mobile has withdrawn support for the games built into the Sidekick PDA/communicator and in doing so can automatically delete the games from his device at the same time. He extrapolates from this that they would also remove any other data on the device if he ever left their network. I really doubt T-Mobile could or would delete all his personal data from your Sidekick without his permission. But their unilateral removal of the games does go to show just how un-web-like and closed the mobile phone operators want the mobile “Internet” to be…
[Later] I subsequently discovered that one’s personal data is not held on the Sidekick – it is stored by the network operator. So in fact you might indeed lose all your data (at least if you hadn’t backed it up elsewhere somehow) if you stop paying network charges for the device – so you’d end up with a useless lump of plastic even if you’d bought it outright. Pretty disappointing!
