Nisha Taylor was just about to put her beloved T-Mobile Sidekick in her bag. She thought the cell phone 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.
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 percent of all robberies in the city. New York City saw a 59 percent surge in subway robberies in December compared with the previous year, driven largely by thieves targeting high-end cell phones, especially the Sidekick.
And Adrian Portlock, whose company, Checkmend.com, tracks stolen cell phones, ranks the phone among the most-taken worldwide, even though the Sidekick's primary market is the United States, where it's available for $100 after a rebate.
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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.
By removing a SIM card, a thief can quickly and cleanly erase the owner from the phone.
For its part, T-Mobile says it has "a long history of working with law-enforcement agencies across the country on their investigations."