Some Users May Lose Data on a T-Mobile Smartphone
By ASHLEE VANCE October 12, 2009
The cellphone provider T-Mobile and Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft and one of T-Mobile's partners, said over the weekend that a technical glitch in their computer systems would probably result in some customers losing their personal information like contact names, phone numbers and digital photos.
T-Mobile and Danger operate what has become known as a cloud computing service to store important information for their customers. In theory, such a service should make life easier on people by leaving the management of complex computing systems to the pros and having data held in sophisticated computing centers. But when problems crop up, embarrassment ensues.
Last week, T-Mobile and Danger, which manages the data services, began grappling with a range of technical issues affecting users of the Sidekick smartphone.
Most notably, customers who had removed the batteries from their phones or had let their batteries run out faced the prospect of permanently losing their contact, calendar, photo and to-do list information.
Employees at the companies have worked over the weekend to try and fix these problems, but, as of Sunday afternoon, there were still some data and software application service flaws.
...