Sidekicks might top a dubious category: theft

BOSTON -- Nisha Taylor was just about to put her beloved T-Mobile Sidekick in her bag. She thought the cellphone would be safer there than in her pocket. In the few seconds it took for the 18-year-old to unwind the string loop that held the Sidekick to her wrist, someone else eyed the device and made off with it.

"He just runs and he hits the phone," Taylor said. "The string pops. The phone goes up in the air. He catches it and he runs."

Although the Sidekicks — which have flashy flip screens and the youthful cachet of endorsements by rapper Snoop Dogg and basketball star Dwyane Wade — aren't among the country's best-selling phones, they might be the most stolen ones.

Boston police reported more than 300 stolen Sidekicks in 2008, accounting for 14% of all robberies in the city. New York City saw a 59% surge in subway robberies in December compared with the previous year, driven largely by thieves targeting high-end cellphones, especially the Sidekick.

And Adrian Portlock, whose company Checkmend.com tracks stolen cellphones, ranks the phone among the most-taken worldwide, even though the Sidekick's primary market is the United States, where it is available for $100 after a rebate.

Thieves have long targeted trendy items, from Air Jordans and Starter jackets to iPods and GPS units. But the Sidekick is not ubiquitous — it has never cracked the list of the five top-selling cellphones since the consumer research firm NPD Group began the ranking in 2005. Instead, thieves target Sidekicks because of their urban hipness quotient, and because they're easy to resell.

All T-Mobile phones use a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card, a small computer chip usually stored behind the phone's battery that holds the owner's personal information, such as account data and phone contacts.

SIM cards are convenient for cellphone users because to switch to a new device, they simply pop out the chips and put them into another phone that employs the same technology. All the consumer's saved information moves to the new phone.