T-Mobile Sidekick users can now start restoring their contact lists, lost Oct. 5 to a massive data glitch. On Monday, Microsoft/Danger said it hoped to start restoration later this week, so today’s announcement came as the first pleasant surprise of the entire episode.
According to Microsoft:
“Beginning today, log into the My T-Mobile website, where there will be a recovery tool to restore contacts you may have lost during the recent service outage. This tool will enable you to view the contacts you had on your device as of October 1.
“With a few clicks and a confirmation, you will be able to restore these contacts to your Sidekick. If you have recreated some of the same contacts on your Sidekick since October 1, you can choose to keep both sets of contacts, merge them, or just keep the set of contacts now on your device. You may also edit any partial or complete duplicates on your Sidekick after restoration,” the company said in a statement.
While a million Sidekicks have reportedly been sold, it is not know how many lost data due to the crash. Microsoft describes those only as a “minority” of devices.
“We continue to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to restore your data. We’re making solid progress on the next phase in this restoration process, including your photographs, notes, to-do lists, marketplace data and high scores.”
No date for beginning that second phase was announced, however.
This is certainly good news for those who have lost their data, though it has taken so long to restore it that much of the lost information may have already been recreated.
David Coursey tweets as @techinciter and can be contacted via his Web site.